WaPo - Trump’s history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?

[Native]

The reason Trump stories never gain any traction while Hillary is covered ad nauseum is because news organizations assign tons of reporters to cover Hillary and only one or two to cover Trump....

Waldman begins his piece by bringing up the whole Bondi bribe scandal and asking why we're not hearing more about this. He then goes on to tell us why...

Turns out there's a shitload of reporters that get assigned to write stuff about Hillary, and those stories then get stretched out for months "with the insistence that questions are being raised and the implication that shady things are going on, even if there isn’t any evidence at a particular moment to support that idea."

But Trump doesn't get assigned a "squad of reporters" to cover him. If a story does emerge about some corrupt shit he's been part of, it is generally because of "the dogged efforts of one or a few journalists," and after a couple of days it simply disappears and, for lack of reporters, "no new facts are brought to light and no new stories get written."

The end result of this process is that because of all that repeated examination of Clinton’s affairs, people become convinced that she must be corrupt to the core. It’s not that there isn’t plenty of negative coverage of Trump, because of course there is, but it’s focused mostly on the crazy things he says on any given day.

But the truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:

• Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money
• Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses
• Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.
• The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money
• The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins
• Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did
• Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work
• Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work
• Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination
• Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction
• The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company
• The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.

Bottom line - if stuff like this were happening with Clinton - you can bet that news organizations would be falling over one another to get more coverage - more reporters would be assigned, more questions would be asked, and more would be learned.

That’s important, because we may have reached a point where the frames around the candidates are locked in: Trump is supposedly the crazy/bigoted one, and Clinton is supposedly the corrupt one. Once we decide that those are the appropriate lenses through which the two candidates are to be viewed, it shapes the decisions the media make every day about which stories are important to pursue.

And it means that to a great extent, for all the controversy he has caused and all the unflattering stories in the press about him, Trump is still being let off the hook.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/05/trumps-history-of-corruption-is-mind-boggling-so-why-is-clinton-supposedly-the-corrupt-one/?utm_term=.7269c467c378

[unblock]

1. the real problem is trump being a liar, a terrible businessman, and a con man is simply not news.

it's seems to be pretty well-established fact by now.

meanwhile, after a quarter-century, they're still trying to pin something on hillary.

news organizations don't generally report well-established facts.

[Native]

2. I hope that more pieces like this are written. The real disconnect for me is this...

We keep hearing about how coverage of Trump on air is really doing wonders for their ratings and pocketbooks, so why isn't this happening in the print media? Personally, I think the public would be just as interested in Trump scandals as they are in his outrageous statements. So if there's money to be made by covering him more in depth, but they still refuse to do it, then that leaves only one reason in my mind as to why the media is assigning so many reporters to cover Clinton in a negative light while basically ignoring anything of real concern with Trump - they simply hate her. It's nothing but pure dislike.

And it disgusts me.

[mcar]

3. Why aren't they assigning more reporters?

That makes no sense. They cover him 24/7, but they won't assign more people to him?

Look what happens any time there is an accident, shooting or crisis: every reporter they've got is assigned and they mostly report nonsense. The seriously can't pull a few from the Hillary "scandal" brigade?

[Native]

4. That's why I posted & summarized it all - it boggles my mind too, & I'm glad it's been outed

Like I said in the post above, I think it's because they hate her.

[Native]

5. Also, I'm going to try and get his email address and ask him. Wish he would have given us a reason.

Perhaps he just can't put it in print.

[mcar]

6. Let us know if he responds!

[Native]

7. Will do. I've sent him a tweet, but can't find his email address.

[Gothmog]

8. K&R

[Lsantos04]

9. Because the media is on the side of the RW

The Repukes have been vilifying Clinton for over 20 years now. And sadly, too many people are buying into the lies without questioning them. That is very worrying.

[Native]

10. Between this piece & Krugman's piece & Soledad's comments the other day, maybe we'll see a change?

I'm hoping they are smart enough to realize that ratings won't matter if we are all nuked.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

11. Trump intimidates with vexatious litigation. He sues anyone who gets close to his secrets.

David Cay Johnston interviewed by Amy Goodman

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/5/the_making_of_donald_trump_david

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: I wrote a piece for Politico magazine back in April about all of Donald Trump’s connections. And Donald finally called me. He’s had my home number for years. He’s called me at home in the past. And he said to me, "Well, you know, you’ve written a lot of things I like. But if I don’t like what you’re writing, I’m going to sue you." I said, "Well, Donald, you’re a public figure." In America, that means that he would have to prove that I deliberately, knowingly told a lie about him. And he said, "I know I’m a public figure, but I’ll sue you anyway." And it’s one of the reasons the news coverage of him has been so soft. He has threatened to sue everybody. That Politico piece that I wrote, I’ve been an investigative reporter for almost 50 years; I’ve never been lawyered like I was for that piece. And it didn’t have anything that hadn’t been published before. [font size = "+1"]He has intimidated the news organizations, and they’re not willing to talk about that.[/font]

[Native]

12. Bingo. I don't know why that never occurred to us schlubs - makes perfect sense. Totally logical

that the media would be just as affected. I think it's time for all news organizations to grow a pair, pool together and set up some sort of entity to fight this bullshit.

[Fast Walker 52]

13. well, but he's at a whole higher level now-- and I don't think he can do this to the whole media

pretty disgusting if he can pull it off.

At least the WaPo is doing a good job on him.

[napkinz]

14. yep!

[crim son]

15. From what I've read,

the perception is that Clinton's "corruption" is damaging to the entire country, and has cost people their lives and nothing Drumpf has done even comes close.

[Hekate]

16. KnR. Nice of them to notice that this generation's Deep Throat et al are missing from the picture

...when it comes to Business,an Teump