Are the media to blame for Trump´s success?
Few have any doubt that Donald Trump is good at playing the media. With his extreme points of view, his sense of timing, shooting from the hip and sense of what triggers gut reaction, he hits one home run after the other. If media exposure were the main criterion for explaining Trump, it would be easy: No one else even comes close. But looking more closely, we also find that a lot of the media attention is either negative or extremely negative.
So, how should we think about the Trump-media two-way dependency? Nicolas Kristof is one of those commentators at the New York Times worth listening to.And he asked himself that question a few days ago in one of his columns.
According to Kristof in a recent NYT article (March 26th, 2016):
“Although many of us journalists have derided Trump, the truth is that he generally outsmarted us (with many exceptions, for there truly have been serious efforts to pin him down and to investigate Trump University and his various business failings). He manipulated television by offering outrageous statements that drew ever more cameras — without facing enough skeptical follow-up questions.”
One the one hand is the question of the coverage devoted to Trump´s candidacy. How come he gets all the attention that he does? On the other hand is the idea that it ought to be up to journalism to expose political misuse of facts and contextualisation.
At the end of the day, a key aspect of contemporary political culture in the US – and elsewhere – is ur tendency to attach more importance to attitude than correct information.
Journalism, in an age of uncertainty about the future and the viability of the economic foundations of critical journalism in an age of social media and information overload, has been reluctant to insist on critical analysis, says Kristof.