There were post-election complaints that the media enabled Trump by giving him $2 billion (or maybe even $3 billion) worth of free attention and coverage, but what would the alternative have been?
Trump was making shocking, totally non-conventional statements and tactics and his candidacy was far outside the norm from the start. The media would have given any candidate - such as Romney, Paul, Hillary, Jeb, etc. - a large amount of free attention and clicks and views simply by virtue of being a presidential candidate, but a candidate like Trump was bound to pop a lot more eyeballs.
So what was the alternative? When Trump said or did something shocking, should the media have all colluded together to squelch reporting to prevent him from getting attention? That sounds impossible, and even if possible, highly problematic.
How many cranks do you think run for President every year, spouting shocking/crazy nonsense?
If the Republicans run a joke candidate, they should have been treated like the Rent Is Too Damn High Party or the Legal Marijuana Now Party. Being crazy and stupid should at best earn you a couple of columns that go through your policy and point out how it’s stupid even for a 10 year old. But in general, it should just keep you from being presented at all, because otherwise you’re just doing the same thing as covering Anti-vaxxers and Global Warming Conspiracists, and making it sound like there must be a there there.
Reporters should obviously take the calls of prominent figures, but they don’t need to broadcast them live. Talk and ask questions, and then print them later if anything is significant and newsworthy.
The alternative would be to have called him a liar and be much more aggressive in the coverage, and knocking him out of politics into the ditch where he belonged. No one would refer to it as “free coverage”. 2 Billion free coverage assumes much of it was benign.
He is a fascist threat. They could have covered it like that.
NY Times finally grew a spine, what, about a month before the election? Said they were going to start calling bullshit, stop with the false equivalency.
Ted Cruz was the first to say “what took you so long.”
The 4th estate completely punted, and deserve a fair measure of blame for helping Trump be elected. Buncha whores that thought the ad revenue was worth it.
Don’t know about the relative weighting and whatever Russia did it is unacceptable. That said, there was a “perfect storm” of Russia, Hillary picking a zero benefit VP, 4th estate punt, Comey putting his finger on the scale, ad nauseam, and any one of which might have swung the electoral college.
I don’t have a problem with reporters covering and reacting to the comments in pursuit of real journalism. I would also submit that it’s not just the fact that any candidate made the remarks; the fact that Donald Trump, a known celebrity, was saying these things was the story.
The problem I do have is in legitimizing his campaign and treating him as an equal to others just because he started to move up in the polls. I would acknowledge that covering Trump was difficult. Nobody expected his sudden rise, particularly in light of the things he had said. Indeed, most people intuitively believed he would collapse precisely for that reason. But somewhere along the way, someone at CNN should have said, “We’re not bringing Corey Lewandowski or Jeffrey Lord on our networks - we’re just not. We’re not going to treat Trump as the same.” Yes, they would have taken heat for being the elitist media, but so what? They’re already hated anyway. I guess my problem is, the media knew Trump was a real contender - fair enough, but he was a fake presidential candidate with no real ideas other than just white rage and yet continued to treat him like a real one.
Didn’t Les Moonves say flat out, “Trump may not be good for America, but he’s GREAT for CBS?”
Initially, the media loooooved Trump, and gave him round the clock coverage. If they talked to other candidates at all, it was to ask them, “What do YOU think of Trump?” It’s hilarious to see Joe Scarborough posing as a Trump foe after he and Mika gave Trump so much fawning coverage and so many softball questions.
My guess is, much of the media figured Trump was a joke candidate who’d eventually implode, but who was awesome for ratings in the meantime.
As for the “serious” liberal media, they sat on all the most damning stories about Trump during primary season. They figured “Let Trump win the nomination, then we’ll release all the dirt we have afterward and hand the election to Hillary.” What they didn’t realize was, the dirt they had DIDN’T hurt Trump much. They might have torpedoed Trump if they’d released all their “Grab her by the pussy” type dirt right after he announced his candidacy, but he was already too strong by the time they did.
During the election, Huffington Post decided to treat Trump news as celebrity news, not political news. It didn’t last.
If a dangerous and unsuitable person had a reasonable chance to get elected, the media has to cover them. Not doing so is not doing their job. Most of the media attention was, and is, negative. Unfortunately all publicity is good publicity, apparently.
I think the reporters honestly couldn’t figure out how Trump remained popular–his opening comments alone would have destroyed an ordinary candidacy–so they thought they were hurting his election chances and had a duty to report on him to reduce those chances further.
It is the media’s job to point out accurate and inaccurate things, and I don’t think they did that enough with Trump during the campaign. They’re doing better on that now, IMO, even if they’re still very far from perfect.
This bar chart speaks volumes. The phony email “scandal” was covered significantly more than any other topic in the campaign. Sticking with Donald even as he peddled steaks was just one of many low points, switching from Hillary and/or Bernie’s speech/event to show a podium awaiting Cheeto was another.