The Daily Beast has published an interesting piece by Michael Tracy that examines the mainstream media’s “blind spot” when it comes to covering Donald Trump.
Trump is obviously an unusual candidate, but the media’s coverage of him has been downright bizarre at times. For example, it’s odd, at the very least, that Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager was allowed to accuse Trump of being a “puppet for the Kremlin” without any substantial pushback by members of the establishment press.
Members of the elite media set have also, at times, accused Trump of committing treason, promoting genocide and nuclear war, and being clinically insane. However, all of this commentary has been deemed within the bounds of acceptable discourse.
As Tracy points out, Trump himself deserves much of the blame for provoking these reactions. Trump often says and does outlandish and sometimes offensive things, and operates well outside the bounds of what might be considered “normal” behavior for a politician. The same can be said for many of his surrogates and supporters.
But it’s still pretty weird, Tracy argues, that a candidate nominated by one of two major parties in this country, someone who will garner the voters of tens of millions of Americans on Election Day, can be denounced as a murderous traitor without any significant pushback.
It’s also readily apparent that virtually no one who exists in what might be described as the “elite” media, from anchors and reporters at mainstream outlets to the editors of “prestige” conservative publications such as National Review and Weekly Standard, are willing to support or even defend Donald Trump.
Paul Krugman might think otherwise, but in this media environment, denouncing Trump and defending Hillary Clinton is about the least courageous and exciting thing a member of the media can do. Donald Trump may be the most unpopular candidate in history, but the media is also widely disliked and distrusted by the general public. Political and cultural elites from both parties are also mostly united in their disdain for Trump. They aren’t very popular, either.
This disparity, Tracy writes, has resulted in countless media analyses of “The Trump supporter” that treat them like “exotic creatures to be analyzed in a pseudo-journalistic lab,” their existence like “some inexplicable phenomenon.” Hillary supporters, on the other hand, receive no such scrutiny. They are the “normal” ones.
Not only is the elite media in near unanimous agreement that Donald Trump would make a bad president, but many seem to agree (some more explicitly than others) that he would be dangerous for the country. One can sympathize with this assessment while still taking note of the enormous imbalance — between the media covering Trump and the voters who support him — and wondering if this dynamic is healthy.
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