Nicholas Kristof says it right out loud:
The
news media and the cable TV talking heads are helping to sustain the terrifying
Trump thing.
Kristof’s
March 27 op-ed in the Sunday New York Times quotes the Times’ own finding that “we
in the news media gave Trump $1.9 billion in free publicity in this
presidential cycle.” That’s almost 200 times as much as Trump has spent for
advertising.
The
facts are clear: the news media have given Trump pretty much a free ride because
Trump-talk pumps the audience ratings.
Kristof
points out that the news media “were largely oblivious to the pain among
working-class Americans and thus didn’t appreciate how much [Trump’s] message
resonated.”
Of
course some journalists have challenged Trump’s preposterous claims and his
lies, but Kristof quotes Tom Brokaw about the impotence of fact-checking Trump:
“His followers find fault with the questions, not with his often incomplete,
erroneous or feeble answers.”
The
op-ed concludes: “…on the whole we in the media empowered a demagogue and
failed the country. We were lap dogs, not watchdogs.”
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
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