Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza has been routinely punching away at attack lines against the liberal media. In April came the complaint “'The Media Isn't Biased in Favor of Hillary.” Now he’s asking “Can we please stop blaming the media for Donald Trump?”
One of the most persistent — and persistently wrong — storylines surrounding the 2016 presidential race is that somehow the media has installed Donald Trump as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
The theory goes like this: Donald Trump is good for ratings/clicks/whatever metric for success you want to cite. The media, knowing this, over-covers Trump at the expense of every other candidate in the field. Trump rises in the polls as a result of that flood of coverage.
I have two words for that theory: absolutely ridiculous.
Here's why: To believe that Donald Trump is a media creation born of a desire for ratings, you have to believe one other thing: that conservatives, who comprise much of Trump's support base at the moment, take their marching orders from the media. Which, of course, they don't.
But Cillizza had singled out a tweet by speechwriter Michael Freeman, who said of the Trump polling lead: “He hasn't done that himself. Media, particularly cable news, has made a conscious decision to give Trump disproportionate coverage.”
Freeman never said the media alone was responsible for Trump’s rise in the polls. He merely suggested the “conscious decision to give Trump disproportionate coverage” played a role in Trump’s ascent. It’s not easy to deny that narrower claim. What's "absolutely ridiculous" is to deny Trump is getting wildly disproportionate coverage.
Cillizza is right that conservatives (and conservative-leaning independents) don’t “take their marching orders from the media.” But the combination of Trump overcoverage – and the routinely negative tone of it – can have at least some effect of endearing Trump to media-loathing conservatives.
He argues that Fox News has also overcovered Trump. “But wait, the conspiracy theorists will argue! Fox News has covered Trump a TON. Sure. But the dominant storyline between FNC and Trump has been his battles with Megyn Kelly, the face of the network.” Again, many in the Fox audience seemed to choose Trump over Kelly, so it's more likely that fighting with the media -- even with right-leaning media -- is a persuasive argument to many. Cillizza concluded:
If you are looking to "blame" someone (or someones) for the pole position Trump currently enjoys, you should look around you. Trump is resonating with the American public — or at least a portion of the American public — thanks to his ability to channel their fears, hopes and frustrations. The media didn't create Trump, and the media won't bring Trump down. Only Trump can determine what happens from here. Deal with it.
