John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON CBC NEWS
“'He directed me to make the payments': In an interview Cohen says Trump's denials aren't believable
“Trump says Cohen acted of his own volition and it was a private matter, not a campaign expense”
Of course, Cohen Is right. That virtually goes without saying. It simply could not be otherwise.
A lawyer would, on his own initiative, undertake such an improper step, effectively putting his client at risk?
But why does the press keep gracing the almost meaningless tweets of Donald Trump as though they had substance and were real information?
I suppose it has the excuse of having no history dealing with such a bizarre phenomenon as a President who tweets what he had for breakfast and when he is making a bowel movement, but that really is not an adequate excuse for a serious lack of judgment in reporting.
The press has been guilty of publishing Trump's noise from the start, on any number of topics he touches, and I view the practice as just a further degradation of journalism, already in low repute by many.
Of course, the odd incident of reporting a "tweet" would have been appropriate just to document how Trump works. And some of them are more consequential than others and deserve exposure, but only some.
It is not appropriate to publish them in the numbers and frequencies we've seen. Virtually, daily. The press has reduced itself to a promotional vehicle for social media.
Unlike Trump himself, serious journalism is supposed to display judgment and intelligence. It is not supposed to repeat the kind of kindergarten noise that goes on in social media twenty-four hours a day.
Trump appears to have succeeded, single-handedly, in measurably lowering all standards of public discourse. Both by his method of communication and the sleazy topics he focuses on.
And in doing this, I think the press has effectively served Trump's political interests, keeping him constantly in the news, even when he is just making noise. There's nothing a big noisy ego likes better than being talked about all the time.
And I suspect his "flock," his political base, loves it too because it seems to validate claims about the press and Trump being under attack.
If it wasn't mainstream journalism's job to avoid this, whose was it?
