Tornado Alley (PROG)

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"How Trump Took Over the Media By Fighting It"

"It's interesting to listen to the denials."

Was Obama stupid not to have pushed the Russian warfare more strongly? Maybe. Sure feels
he should have. Yet, with the media having been so compliant with Trump who knows for sure?

How Trump Took Over the Media By Fighting It

He made himself the biggest news story since 9/11, and almost neutered the press in the process.

By JACK SHAFER November 05, 2016

Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.

[...]

In mid-October, his traveling press corps had to be secreted out the back door at a rally held at an arena after the 15,000-strong crowd chanted "Tell the truth" and “CNN sucks” and called them "whores" and "press-titutes." He claims reporters are part of the globalist conspiracy against him and workers. By month's end, a heckler was heaving spittle into the press pen as he screamed that reporters were the “enemy,” adding the cheer, “JEW-S-A.”

As a result of Trump's attack-the-messenger strategy, for perhaps the first time in U.S. history no mainstream outlet has any influence over the voters backing one of the presidential nominees. This neutering of mainstream media by Trump has made it more difficult for the press to frame the issues effectively. It has also diminished the impact of big Trump exposés. David A. Fahrenthold's stories in the Washington Post about Trump's grifting ways at the Trump Foundation and Susanne Craig's revelations in the Times about Trump's income taxes were the kinds of stories that would have brought down a more conventional candidate. But by the time they landed, Trump had already established the ground rules: He and the media were enemies. "Reporting" wasn't any different from an attack ad. Trump's loyal followers discounted these stories as expressions of bias against their man if they acknowledged them at all.

[...]

There's one media channel that the Trump machine has almost completely bypassed: advertising. It wasn't long ago that the cost of advertising, and the bottomless appetite of campaigns for ad money, was supposed to be the force destroying politics. That arrow might now be reversing: In a recent Financial Times feature (subscribers only), Matthew Garrahan reported on the diminished clout of campaign advertising. Total U.S. campaign spending is projected to fall from $4.4 billion to $3.65 billion this year, the first decline in decades. As Election Day has approached, Trump has increased TV spending, but not dramatically, reducing it to random, half-hearted late airtime buys. He has essentially ceded the old medium to his opponent—denying the mainstream media, along the way, the financial support it usually collects even from hostile politicians.

***

For all of Trump's complaining about his media treatment, and all his success surfing the crest of public fascination, it's not evident that all the attention has really changed anything for Trump over the past year and a half. A majority of Americans couldn't stand him before the campaign, and a majority of people still can't stand him. A 2015 Quinnipiac University poll, released about three weeks before Trump announced, found that 69 percent of respondents held an "unfavorable" view of him as a person. That's astonishingly high for a presidential candidate, and it basically remains unchanged as Election Day approaches. The media's product, which Trump can't stop criticizing, has hardly moved the dial on him one way or the other.

[...]

...All along, Trump's defiance of decorum, good manners and campaign tradition was counted by his supporters as an asset: If the press and the elites and the fact-checkers wanted to label him a Four Pinocchio liar, his fans would gladly take that as an backhanded endorsement of their man, additional evidence that the press was against him.

[...]

Barely rid of our current Trump, are we jumping the gun to be fretting about the next one? Nobody approaching his celebrity, shamelessness, and charisma seems interested in the office. Like Trump, Ted Cruz has tried on the costume of comic book villain, but he’s way too dark: there is no joie de vivre in his performance. Trump supporter and billionaire Peter Thiel can’t run because he’s not a natural-born citizen. But I can guarantee you that in a secret room in some political skunk works, consultants are searching for somebody with high name-recognition, preferably rich (to work around the campaign finance laws), to take the Trump baton. Some captain of industry? A movie star with a big Twitter following? Kanye, anyone?

The Trump campaign playbook, written by him over the past 15 months, is just begging for somebody to pick it up and create shiny things for the press to chase in 2020.

With links - https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/2016-election-trump-media-takeover-coverage-214419

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After being rolled so comprehensively by Trump have the media learned anything? Why haven't we seen more such as his relationship with

The Drug Trafficker [Joseph Weichselbaum, a thrice-convicted felon] Donald Trump Risked His Casino Empire to Protect
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=129523675
.. 2nd from bottom in the one you replied to ..
So in 2016 Obama didn't push the Russian interference publicly, basically in fear...
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=148350033

Will Trump's ugly attacks on all and sundry be as successful for him in 2020? Will his mobster connections remain as unimportant to so many voters as they have been? The situation since the election suggests his support remains fairly (actually unfairly and incredibly stupidly) steady. It seems certain that whoever faces Trump, to succeed, has to hit Trump personally, as hard as he hits others, but in a different way as copycat stuff wouldn't work. I'm feeling lines like, "You are a liar." "You are a mobster in disguise." "You are a disgrace." Slip them in as nice, short, well-placed counter punches. Evidence abounds to justify any and all of them. Simple little truth-lines. Why not? Delivered with a calm and collected assurance. Everyone knows they are right.

Surely at least some of his supporters must shift ground if they heard such truth-lines enough, because they would all be unadulterated truth.