Blame Trump, not the media.
It doesn’t matter where you live: Donald Trump will find you. Not literally, of course. (Even if he is elected president of the United States next month, world domination is not likely in the cards for the Donald.)
Rather, he will find you virtually, in your newsfeed and anywhere you browse online. The rabid Republican candidate’s cyber-presence is so pronounced, in fact, some Trump-wary Internet users have begun downloading special browser extensions (“Trump Filters”) that have the power to literally erase all mention of the candidate from their Internet experience.
For those with a scatological bent, there now exists “Firewall Trump,” a browser extension that turns all mentions of the candidate’s name into smiling poop emojis.
But there appears to exist another more popular way to blow off steam among those frustrated with the U.S. election, a method that doesn’t involve the downloading of name-eradicating browsers or the cursing of candidates, but the excoriation of — who else — “the media.”
Yes, the big, bad mainstream media, argue American conservative commentators like Dinesh D’Souza, is “Hillary’s secret weapon.”
This is familiar territory; every election cycle, be it U.S. or Canadian, conservatives cry liberal media bias.
But what’s astonishing this time around is how many liberals themselves appear to be convinced that media organizations are stirring up conspiracy and peddling scandal in the Trump-Clinton campaign when what they ought to be focused on are “the real issues.”
I have lost count of the number of comments and posts I see daily from otherwise progressive friends on Facebook who seriously question the motives behind the media’s reportage of Trump’s bad behaviour and, more recently, the motives behind a New York Times article in which multiple women allege Trump sexually assaulted them.
This mistrust isn’t relegated to my own Facebook feed. Statistically speaking, people, left and right, aren’t too fond of media. According to a survey by the American Press Institute, 41per cent of Americans “say they have hardly any confidence” in the press.
Perhaps then, a reminder is in order that, when a candidate denies sexually assaulting women, it is in the public interest for media to test that claim. Candidates make statements and media scrutinize and report on those statements. The alleged criminal behaviour of a political candidate is in the public interest and it is the media’s responsibility to cover it.
For what it’s worth, as David E. McCraw, the Times’ lawyer, pointed out in a letter to Trump’s attorneys, the media didn’t introduce the topic of Trump’s alleged assaults and indiscretions. Trump introduced those things and chose to talk endlessly about them all on his own.
“Nothing in our article,” McCraw writes, “has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself.” (Put simply, the guy can’t help himself.)
I understand that many people are overwhelmed by the volume of Trump-related stories appearing daily across their screens. Trust me, I am overwhelmed, too. But volume is not proof of bias. It’s often proof that something is seriously wrong in the world.
That said, I also understand personal aversion for media. We are, by and large, an insufferable lot of socially anxious know-it-alls; the kind of people who interject at dinner parties to offer kernels of sobering, fact-based wisdom no- body asked for in the first place. (“Well, actually, I wrote about the housing crisis last month and it really isn’t as it seems.”)
And yet, like parking enforcement, elementary-school lunch monitors, and tax collection agencies, we are a necessary aggravation, whose absence would be a far worse plight on the earth than our presence.
And without us, dangerous blowhards like Donald Trump would continue to crowd your newsfeeds all the same, but their error-ridden invective would go largely unchecked. And the “scandals” so many of us bemoan having to read about every day would cease to be scandals.
They would be far worse. They’d be secrets.
So despise us all you like, but please, bear with us. Emma Teitel is a national affairs columnist.