Want to understand why some in the "mainstream media" are beginning to focus on Donald "Rump" Trump's ugly lies and raw racism? David Roberts at Vox has a must- read article analyzing the political media's self- perceived role in political campaigns and why Rump threatens that role. After tracing a history of Republican "truthiness," Roberts focuses on why Rump makes these faint- hearted guardians of "both sides do it" so anxious, and concludes:
Thus the dilemma. The old-guard political media has always seen itself as a disinterested referee. But what they confront now is aggressive, unapologetic nonsense, piped up from a nationalist, ethnocentric, revanchist conservative base through the mouth of one Donald J. Trump. He is forcing them to choose sides, to accept his bare assertions and make a mockery of their purported allegiance to accuracy ... or to call him out and, in the eyes of his supporters, formally align against him.
The conceptual space for neutrality has all but disappeared. Media outlets are being forced to take sides, and facing the grim possibility that even if they do, they have no power to affect the outcome. Their twin idols — objectivity and influence — are being exposed as illusions. That's what has them so anxious about Donald Trump.Well, at least Mad Magazine has taken sides.
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