Someone has to hold Donald Trump to account, because the corporate media isn't.
DONALD DRUMPF - or Donald Trump as he likes to be known - has been moaning that his First Amendment rights have been violated. His claim has been backed by right wing commentators like Megyn Kelly of Fox News - who, ironically, Trump lambasted not so long ago.
He claims that he was denied his right to speak because the good people of Chicago had the bad manners to turn up in large numbers to protest at his public rally. It has been reported that perhaps half of the venue was occupied by folk who did not think Trump was the next best thing to sliced bread.
He claims that he was denied his right to speak because the good people of Chicago had the bad manners to turn up in large numbers to protest at his public rally. It has been reported that perhaps half of the venue was occupied by folk who did not think Trump was the next best thing to sliced bread.
Faced with the prospect of not being idolised and people not laughing at his jokes, Trump decided to 'postpone' the rally, claiming that he had consulted
the police over his concerns for public safety. The Chicago police later stated that no one from the Trump camp had been in touch with them.
So the big man with the bad hair who claims he 'will make America great again', ran away to a more sympathetic crowd elsewhere. I'll lay odds that there
won't be any rally in Chicago. Or Detroit. Or Compton.
Trump's sudden concern for his First Amendment rights was surprising. He hasn't displayed much concern for the First Amendment when he's had reporters
removed from his meetings simply because they published articles unfavourable to him.
Trump is welcome to say what he likes - and he obviously does - but that does not give him a free licence to be xenophobic, a bigot, a sexist creep and
an all round ugly person. People also have the right to protest. And they did in Chicago.
Someone has to bring Trump to heel because the American corporate media surely isn't.
Instead of holding him account for such things as his demonisation of minority groups and whipping up a climate of fear and distrust , the news channels
have given Trump unfiltered access to the American people 24/7.
He never seems to be off CNN or Fox News. According to Media Matters between March 1-8, Trump did 17 live interviews with ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and
MSNBC.
Trump has been given the kind of favourable media coverage that Bernie Sanders has been denied. Hey, Trump might be a racist and a bigot but that Bernie
Sanders - he's a bloody socialist for crying out loud.
The corporate media have basically ignored Sanders. The Tyndall Report , an independent media monitoring group, has been tracking the nightly news shows
of CBS, ABC and NBC. It found that between January and November last year Trump received 234 minutes of coverage. Bernie Sanders received less than ten minutes.
ABC News- ABC is owned by Walt Disney - awarded Trump 81 minutes of airtime while Sanders received, wait for it, 20 seconds. You read right. 20 seconds of
airtime.
Sanders, the implacable opponent of corporate America , has had the plug pulled on him by the corporate media.
With the help of the corporate media, Trump's unpalatable political views have become part of the national conversation. Trump can appear on national
television and talk about thumping protesters in the face. He can refuse to condemn the Ku Klux Klan. He can mock the physical disability of a journalist. He can talk about Mexicans being rapists and murderers. And he gets away
with it. Its all grist to the mainstream media mill because its good for ratings.
Writing in The Observer, Ryan Holiday suggests that there's a new game in town:
'Politicians have always sought to manipulate the public. What's changed is that media is now not only a willing co-conspirator, they are often the driving
force behind the manipulation. No longer seeing itself as responsible for reporting the truth, for getting the facts to the people, it has instead incentivized a scrum, a wild fight for attention in which anything that attracts
an audience is fair game. And as long as theirs is the ring where the fight goes down, they'll happily sell tickets to as many as will come."
"He's getting by with a lot of stuff that no candidate should get by with," said Walter Mears of Trump last week. Mears is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former
Associated Press campaign reporter.
Donald Trump is not good for the American people but, right now, he's good for the corporate media.
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