Is the news media to blame for Donald Trump?
There's little doubt that the Republican front-runner has received a huge amount of coverage since he launched his astonishing run for the White House. He has dominated the conversation, and received far more airtime and print and digital newshole than his foes.
There is a school of thought that news outlets are out of control, that they shouldn't be showering the bombastic billionaire with so much attention, that they are, at least in part, to blame for his stunning success in the polls and at the polls, not to mention the prospect of a Trump presidency.
CBS executive chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves helped fuel this notion with his appalling comments that while Trump may be bad for the USA, he was very, very good for CBS. "Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going," Moonves said. Thanks, Les.
The media, of course, is not a monolith but a massive collection of wildly divergent entities. And there's no doubt that there have been excesses. The decision by the cable networks to stick with Trump's bizarre 45-minute news conference/infomercial on a primary night in early March — Trump wine, anyone — was horrendous, and reflected the cable Trump obsession. The Sunday morning shows have erred by allowing him to call in week after week rather than come into the studio, There's no doubt that at times the Trump fixation makes it very tough for his rivals to be noticed. And that's a problem.
But in the main the heavy focus on Trump is appropriate, and unavoidable.
First of all, for better or worse, The Donald makes a lot of news. We have never seen a presidential candidate quite like him. His outrageous statements, his endless stream of provocative tweets, are extremely unusual, especially when coming from the odds-on favorite to become a major party's presidential nominee. The wall to keep out Mexicans, the ban on Muslims, the embrace of torture, the initial reluctance to rebuff the Ku Klux Klan, on and on — how can these not be heavily reported?
And then there are the threats — to "spill the beans" on Heidi Cruz, that anti-Trump funder Marlene Ricketts better "be careful". These coming from the would-be commander in chief.
Just this week the front-runner suggested that maybe we should withdraw from NATO because it's too expensive.
And these are just a smattering of The Things Trump Says. It's a constant rat-a-tat-tat of did he really just say that? They call it "earned media" in the trade, and Trump has earned it.
I'd argue that it would be irresponsible not to pay close attention to such things. Imagine if they had been ignored (difficult, I know) and Trump made it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. What an outcry of cover-up there would be when they surfaced, and rightly so.
Adding to Trump's newsworthiness is the fact that he has totally blown up the Republican Party and what is left of its establishment, and has completely rewritten the rules of political campaigning. Big news there.
News is also a reflection of what people are interested in. It's not just eat-your-peas budget analyses. And people, whether enamored or terrified, are very, very interested. He is an inescapable topic of conversation. Not long ago I was supposed to give a talk at Arizona State about the evolving news media. At the outset, the moderator asked if he could shift gears at the start and talk about Trump. And there was no shortage of questions from the students about the mogul.
So sure, some of the motivation for the media's Trumpmania is crass (see Moonves, Les). But there's a lot more to it than that.
It's also important to remember that the coverage has hardly been fawning. There have been many pieces poking holes in Trump's often sketchy proposals and examining his business travails. Fact-checkers have had a field day reporting on Trump's often complete disregard for the truth.
None of which, of course, has slowed down the juggernaut, at least so far. But that's not the point. The press' job is to fully report. What happens next is up to the voters.
USA TODAY has hardly shortchanged Trump when it comes to attention, both digitally and in print. I asked Lee Horwich, who is responsible for our election coverage, for his take.
"As the front-runner for the GOP nomination, Trump needs to be covered aggressively and in an enterprising way," he says. "That said, the rest of the Republican field and the Democratic race also deserves the same level of attention. Trump, however, has managed to overwhelm the broadcast/cable media with his constant access and availability. That, in turn, influences coverage for the rest of the media, traditional, Internet and social. So that can create an avalanche of Trump coverage that buries everyone else."
The irony, of course, is that while the media is accused of being Trump's enablers, the candidate has made no secret of his contempt for the Fourth Estate, singling out individual journalists for abuse at his rallies and deploring them as a group as the worst people in the world.
