The Media Lost Too

Charlie Cook: “All of us in the news me­dia need to get used to the idea that Hil­lary Clin­ton and the Demo­crat­ic Party were not the only losers this year. The Nov. 8 elec­tion was a re­pu­di­ation of journ­al­ists as well, a group that is widely viewed as smug, of­ten snarky, and al­ways self-in­dul­gent. As out­raged as journ­al­ists are about Trump ditch­ing his press pool to go out to din­ner at the 21 Club with his fam­ily, the av­er­age Amer­ican’s re­ac­tion was ‘get over yourselves.’ Yes, there are im­port­ant reas­ons for press pools, but if journ­al­ists think that Amer­ic­ans give a rip about this, they are even more out of touch than their crit­ics thought.”

“On so many levels, vari­ous parts of the me­dia es­tab­lish­ment should look back at the en­tirety of their cov­er­age with re­gret and in some cases shame, wheth­er it was cable net­works hand­ing over their air­waves to Trump early in the race, or au­gust news­pa­pers tramp­ling on journ­al­ist­ic stand­ards in the fi­nal weeks in a des­per­ate bid to stop him. It was not a pretty sight. Just as it’s hard to get tooth­paste back in the tube, it will be hard for the press to re­store the bright line between re­port­ing and opin­ion.”