How the Media Failed in Covering Donald Trump
I blame the media. There’s not a conspiracy, just YUUUUUGE malfeasance in the face of the biggest blustering buffoon ever to run for office. That buffoon act shielded him from serious scrutiny and questions the entire time he was winning, because nobody honestly thought he had a chance.
But that’s hardly a defense of the press’s performance. It’s an overgenerous way of letting journalists off the hook without paying attention to what they actually did.
And that argument overlooks three key points:
1. The media largely missed the story when it came to Trump’s appeal and rise.
The man has basically led in the polls for 10 straight months. Real Clear Politics’ rolling average of national polls (I know, the primaries require a state-by-state battle, but bear with me here) shows Trump ahead since mid-July, with one fleeting exception of a statistical tie with Ben Carson in November. And Trump generally led not by a hair but by an entire pompadour.
And yet for all of their obsession with horse-race coverage, much of the political press treated Trump’s campaign as pure spectacle, which it undoubtedly was, instead of something that could also draw support from real voters. As readers and viewers, we heard much more about what political insiders were telling us the voters thought than about the voters themselves.