Let's be honest
Christiane Amanpour, who was recently on Anderson Cooper's show, balked at Steve Bannon telling the press to shut up.
She stated, "If I was going to be funny, I’d say that he’s angling for an order of merit from president Sisi, Putin, Erdogan and all the others,” she said, via Media Matters. “That is how they treat their press. That is what they believe the press should be, a compliant state propaganda unit in the service of the president.”
Let's be honest. Being a propaganda unit of the government is in the news media's blood. The press has been just that so very many times. You act in the government's interest over its people all the time. You hold on stories, you don't say all the information you actually have and worse, you never tell a story, because the government told you not to do it. That is being a propaganda unit if you like it or not.
Worse, CNN and MSNBC and ABC and all the others were propaganda units for trump before the election, why would now be any different?
With few exceptions, all we have is Trump's propaganda core in the news media.
I'll change my mind:
* when they stop letting trump think he rules by edict. That he can simply write Executive Orders to rule from the WH.
* When they stop their current normalization of him and his administration.
*When they start asking serious questions, directly to trump and his surrogates and demanding actual answers (not word salad, no fake news stories and no false statements)
*Stop letting trump surrogates on their shows to monologue for 5-10 minutes straight and then move on to their next segment leaving the trump surrogates unchallenged and unanswered.
*When they start actually addressing trump's criminal actions in a serious manner and with as much effort and vindictiveness as they did with non-criminal actions of Clinton or Obama or Sanders.
*When they actually challenge the insanity of a president using a social media app as a tool to bullly and abuse and intimidate people as well as to air half-baked policy positions with no foundation in reality.
*When they humbly and without reservation, apologize for having a live video on full screen of a empty podium, for almost 30 minutes, that trump would eventually walk to while a Democratic Party candidate was small screen with no audio for that entire time while giving a speech at a large event.
News media cares a lot more about ratings than it does about journalism. Generating controversy on half-baked or fake news stories and ensuring a "horse race" when the other has no business being on the same stage is how you ensure there is a "reality TV" feel to your news and people watch.
They honed that formula against president Obama. Doing their very best to keep public opinion in flux and fostering that "can't be trusted" vibe against Obama, just enough to keep people watching to see what Democrats or Republicans were going to do next. Reality TV.
what does all that get you? A reality TV president.
