US election race puts harsh spotlight on media
The juxtaposition of Donald Trump’s latest attack on what he described as “among the most dishonest groups of people I’ve ever met”, and the accolades for Spotlight has laid bare the uncomfortable status of US journalism as 2016’s rancorous political climate adds to business pressures on an industry facing sweeping digital change.
Political bashing of the news media tends to peak during elections as candidates vie for coverage but lash out when that coverage is not to their liking. Marty Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, said: “On the one hand, when they’re succeeding they say they don’t need us and when they’re failing they say we’re to blame. I don’t know that both of those can be true, actually.” Baron said the criticism in this year’s presidential primary season has come from all sides: “The ones who said they succeeded, they said they did it despite the media. So Trump succeeded despite the media, [Ted] Cruz did it despite the media, [Marco] Rubio did it despite the media . . . And that’s true on the Democratic side too.” But, he noted, “the reality is they need us for some things and they can do other things on their own and there’s a very complicated media ecosystem that they operate in . . . When the Rubio campaign started to falter a little bit, he made himself much more accessible to the media.”