Why Are Mainstream Media Reporters Still Letting Trump Play Them for Suckers? Arun Gupta - Raw Story
go to original November 29, 2016

Leading Latino Journalist Jorge Ramos Was Among 1st to Take on Donald Trump (The National)

When Donald Trump’s transition team dangled word that potential senior-level officials in his administration include billionaire Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as U.N. ambassador and former presidential candidate Ben Carson as secretary of housing and urban development, the media took the bait.

The Financial Times declared “Trump adds diversity”; the New York Times top headline blared “Trump Diversifies Cabinet”; and the Los Angeles Times affirmed that he “adds diversity.”

Playing the race and gender cards was a cheap parlor trick for a master manipulator like Trump, but it beguiled the media nonetheless. The picks shifted attention away from a White House being stocked with despots and demagogues. Days earlier Trump had tapped Mike Pompeo, a Christian fanatic, as head of the CIA, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a blatant Islamophobe and conspiracy theorist, as national security advisor, and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a “symbol of black voter-intimidation,” as U.S. attorney general.

With Trump assembling a regime eager to roll back everything since the Renaissance, it’s an open question if mainstream journalism can adapt to the alternate universe we now inhabit.

The corporate media is still operating by the old rules in which they defer to power by taking each presidential announcement and action at face value. That’s been a dubious approach for years, especially in the post-9/11 era in which the Bush administration boasted about creating “our own reality.” Now the media are confronted by a Trump administration whose chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, was likened to notorious Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl with “sincere admiration” by dead fabulist Andrew Breitbart.

The media need to wrestle with how Trump will be all about affect - the emotional bond and mood he creates with his supporters will outweigh any allegiance to fact or reason. In October Trump lied about stopping Ford from building $2.5 billion worth of factories in Mexico. On Nov. 17 Trump lied about preventing Ford from moving a separate plant from Kentucky to Mexico. Then on Thanksgiving Trump claimed he was “making progress” in stopping Carrier from moving an air-conditioner plant and its 1,400 jobs from Indiana to Mexico. The company acknowledged it was talking to Trump but added, “Nothing to announce at this time.” Months earlier Trump lied about being able to impose a tax on Carrier’s goods imported from Mexico if it moved the plant - only Congress can do that. He also lied about U.S. manufacturers paying a 16 percent tax in Mexico as the tax applies to all manufacturers there.

Trump has not saved one job, but he’s lining his pockets by treating the presidency as an extension of his branding empire. He’s banking on the frenetic action and deal-making making his supporters feel as if the country, and by extension their fortunes, are being revived. Trump will likely bully some companies into not shipping jobs abroad, which will provide the appearance of truth just as senior officials like DeVos and Haley provide the appearance of diversity. But beneath the veneer of deception will be unrelenting brutality carried out by his administration.

This is why the media need to revive their role as an adversary to power, rather than a mouthpiece, and even more important to base their coverage on the reality that Trump has not changed.

Read the rest at Raw Story

Related: Media Helps Boost Donald Trump's False Claim That 'Millions' Voted Illegally (The Huffington Post)

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