Why the Media Have Been Greasing Trump’s Wheels

[Commentary] How to explain the indispensable role of the news media in lubricating the unfathomable rise of Donald Trump? It can’t be favoritism. I venture to say that a survey of US journalists taken at the start of the primary season would have found support among the working press for the idea that Trump was a plausible, let alone desirable, presidential candidate would have been infinitesimal. Donald Trump? Really?

He was viewed as at best a mildly comic oddity, and if pressed, I suspect most journalists would have said he was little more than a vain, preening, ill-informed, self-absorbed, loud-mouthed TV celebrity. He was distinguished mainly by his wealth, iridescent hair, multiple wives, mixed record of business success, and passion for naming things after himself — in short, a curiosity who had never shown any inclination to serve the public or, for that matter, anything other than himself. So why is this? Trump moves the needle. If this was still the print age, we’d say he sells papers. The GOP primary debates draw huge audiences, largely because he’s there, spouting off, insulting his opponents, uttering the unutterable, being Donald. In short, as disheartened as I have been by the boost the news media have given Trump’s ascent, we may be entering a realm when the same notoriety is a liability, because it exposes his candidacy to a scrutiny it cannot withstand. What was catnip in the primaries may prove toxic in the general.

[Edward Wasserman is the Dean at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism]