The Media's Troubled Relationship with Trump

Nick Bryant a BBC New York Correspondent wrote an interesting article analyzing the Press's "Trump addiction".

In response to Turmp's bashing of the press at his most recent press conference in Trump Towers this week Bryant said," For all the abuse, for all the belittlement, we as reporters show no sign of ending our relationship addiction with Donald Trump."
He explains that much of the press's addiction to Trump could easily be explained by the millions of online hits Trump has generated.

" A human headline, he more than satisfies the viral requirements of our new media age. At a time when media organisations are struggling still to monetise online news content, and to make the painful shift from print to digital, along comes the ultimate clickbait candidate, a layer of golden eggs."

But he says that the media's unhealthy relationship with Trump is not "explained by commercial imperatives alone."

Then Bryant gives a fascinating peek into what goes on behind the scenes of campaign coverage:
"Political reporters have a tendency of writing a campaign narrative that comports with the race they ideally want to cover. It's not an invented narrative, as such - we can't simply make up storylines. But I would suggest it's a slanted narrative, which, rather than betraying a liberal bias, reveals a "great story" bias.

In a reworking of the old newsroom adage "if it bleeds, it leads", candidates tend to be assessed on the basis of their journalistic entertainment value.

"My sense, while covering the 2000 campaign for instance, was that reporters handicapped the race in favor of George W. Bush because the possibility of a son following his father into the White House… was a better story than seeing Al Gore become president.

"This tendency was even more pronounced in 2008, during the Democratic primary campaign, when journalists were more excited by the prospect of the first African-American president than the first female president, Hillary Clinton. Everyone wanted to compose their own first draft of that dramatic historical moment.

"Trump is also a beneficiary of great story bias. Never before has there been a candidate with such journalistic entertainment value.

His unexpected emergence meant that we ditched our initial narrative of Campaign 2016, which we had set up a dynastic showdown between a Bush and a Clinton, in favor of a better storyline."

Bryant admits that while "the media didn't create Donald Trump… we have been more willing enablers than we would care to admit."

He also "credits" the preference of American broadcast journalism to end interviews on amicable terms, there is not the adversarial tradition of British interviewing…"
As an example he cites Jake Tapper's interview with Donald Trump," in which the billionaire failed to disavow support from white supremacists and said he needed to do more research on the Ku Klux Klan before condemning it...Tapper, who has done some excellent interviews during this campaign, was tough and probing but did not go in for the kill. An obvious follow-up question would have been "do you really need to do more research on the KKK to condemn it" but he did not ask it."

Bryant also says that because of social media journalists have lost some of the power they used to have. The broad use of Twitter by Trump and the other candidates has allowed them to bypass the media and become part of the new media themselves.

"The billionaire's Twitter account has more followers - 8.5 million - than the Washington Post, ABC News, NBC News, the Huffington Post or Buzzfeed. He has become a self-publisher, and provided an unfiltered commentary of his own. Trump's strength is a measure of the mainstream media's weakness."

Bryant also said that the very fact that Trump hasn't been weakened by all the negative stories written about Trump, about his incitement of supporters to punch protestors in the face, his inappropriate language, his flip-flopping on policy and his refusal to release his tax returns, is another illustration of the comparative powerlessness of the press.

Byant ends off saying," Like every other journalist, I dare say I'll be back the next time he summons us to Trump Tower. Perhaps, if he continues to be so personally abusive, journalists should stage a walkout. That said, I suspect we'll remain planted in our seats, sufferers of co-dependency, fellow Trump relationship addicts."

קישורים:
US election: Understanding media addiction to Donald Trump

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