Live from the Roasterie: : Why Is the Press Corps So Smitten With Donald Trump?: "Jack Shafer is unhappy about calls to stop giving Donald Trump the attention he so obviously craves...
...In order to write this piece, Shafer needed someone to call for a ban on Trump coverage. And finally, a few days ago, someone did: former CNN anchor Campbell Brown.... It gave Shafer the chance to write an easy column making the obvious case against banning Trump. But why write an easy column? Why not wrestle with the real issue: the fantastic overcoverage of Trump on cable news?... In the past week, he's gotten an astonishing 3x the coverage of every other candidate combined. Forget about whether this is good for America. Doesn't it demonstrate some seriously flawed news judgment within the press corps?... But Shafer cavalierly waves this off: 'The notion that the press has dreadfully overcovered or tragically undercovered a topic is the idiot’s version of press criticism'.... Well, then, call me an idiot.... Trump is getting vastly more coverage than any serious assessment of his news value justifies. And turning off my TV doesn't change this, any more than turning off my TV will end poverty or put ISIS out of business.... How about a look at why the press corps is so smitten with Trump? Is it because he's a godsend for campaign reporters who love easy stories that save them from having to dive into tedious stuff like taxes and abortion and all the other chestnuts we argue fruitlessly about every four years?... Now that we've reached the point where Trump is getting 75 percent of all cable news coverage, isn't it a question worth asking?
If I had a dollar for every time a Washington journalistic insider has said to me, "Jack Shafer is a friend of mine, but..." I would be able to buy more than two fancy drinks at Starbucks.
