Wednesday, January 20, 2016

What Would Walter Cronkite Do?

Or Howard K. Smith, or Harry Reasoner, or any of the old school, fair-minded mavens of the media? Well, they certainly wouldn't sit by and get stomped on.

Trump Bullies The Press -- And The Press Yawns | Blog | Media Matters for America:

...On and on the bullying goes and the pushback remains minimal. This is a profound embarrassment for the national press corps. It's a profound embarrassment for editors and producers in positions of influence who have voluntarily acquiesced their power in order to bow down to Trump and his campaign road show.

The gleeful bullying of the press meshes with the bullying that often goes on at Trump rallies, where violence percolates. Like those thug rallies, we've certainly never seen this kind of behavior from a major party's political frontrunner.

But like the Trump rallies, where's the indignation over the constant press intimidation? Where are the outraged editorials? Where are the endless, handwringing TV panel debates about what Trump's hatred of the press really means; what it tells us about his possible character flaws, and his would-be presidency.

It's possible the press doesn't want to make itself the story, that it wants to maintain its role as observers and not newsmaker and that's why it has refrained from turning Trump's bullying into a big story. That theory takes a hit though when you consider the same press corps has written endlessly about Hillary Clinton's relationship with the press and has stressed over and over what a central role reporters play in her White House push...

3 comments:

Alessandro Machi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alessandro Machi said...

I think I wrote a piece on Daily PUMA last year in which I pointed out that if Hillary Clinton did and said some of the things that Mr. Trump is saying she would have been blasted by the media.

Bob Harrison said...

Yeah-- it's the double standard squared. The media has made a disgusting habit of rummaging through the Clinton's personal life but it seems the GOP could eat puppies for breakfast and that wouldn't make a blip on the screen today. Of course, there is no liberal media-- it's all the voice of the owners, which is to say the rich, so I guess it what we should expect. Still, is is disappointing that there so little actual love for country and truth in the patriot party. I remember your piece from last year-- well said. Media hypocrisy is point we need to hammer on constantly.