As 2020 Looms, the News Media Looks Forward, and Back

Basically happens, which the article does not say, is that after every presidential election, some group of media, media critics and journalism professors say, "the media coverage of the election was bad." And the news media sheepishly say, "yes, you're right, four years from now we'll do it better." And then four years later, the news coverage of the next presidential election is as bad or worse than before. This has been going on now for about 40 years.

We simply can NOT continue to allow mainstream media to be the kingmaker for our country. They were elected by NOBODY yet they wield power like they are a branch of our federal government. Their power to report and interpret information about our candidates AND the state of the election, itself, has become, in the digital age, excessively large and, not surprisingly, corrupt (as they have essentially no 'checks and balances'.) Nearly EVERY democracy of the world have pre-election blackout periods for their major elections, also known as "election silence". But not our country! We prefer to give our media extreme power to decide who we have to choose among - and extreme advertising revenues, while analyzing their own VERY DUBIOUS polling data and while reporting voter behavior (knowing full well they have great influence over it).

I read that article and it seemed like regrets from the press that a man such as Trump could ascend to the presidency on their watch. Had Hillary won, would that same press coverage be getting second-guessed? The press shouldn't be too hard on themselves. Trump was/is a first for this country. A liar and con man and carnival barker the likes of which we've never seen before and likely never will again. Nobody, including the press, thought he'd actually win so you gave the public exactly what we wanted. Good television and written press. The press constantly calls him out on his lies now and pays little time covering his silly rallies. Good progress is being made. Keep it up. Stop fretting. His side mostly focuses on Fox News and extremists on radio and Twitter anyway. Not much can be done about that. You don't hear them contemplating their mistakes in press coverage.

If "every minute of every day" is a test for the media, and if the "test" is whether or not the information it disseminates improves the public's understanding of facts essential to sound policy decision-making, I'm afraid it's failing. To cite a couple of examples: Covering Trump rallies or repeating any of Trump's tweets that do not contain specific newsworthy information (e.g., the firing/resignation/appointment of key officials) contributes nothing of value to public debate, as we already know he is not a reliable source of factual information. Likewise, covering critical policy disputes as if they are boxing matches ("Pelosi won that round") instead of as choices that reflect our values and that have real-world consequences in people's lives (including those of future generations), diminishes the quality of public discourse and exacerbates division when finding common ground is essential to solving our biggest problems. I'll be watching for evidence of improvement, as "the consequences are going to be significant."

The question is not how will the media report the 2020 election, but how it will spin it in favor of the radical left? Thank you.

Not to defend the media in their coverage of the campaign, it was colossally bad. That pollsters got it wrong is a fallacy. The 77,000 votes in the rust belt doomed Hillary, and that polling was probably within the margin of error. The fact that so many pundits were wrong is beyond dispute.

No. Full stop. The lessons of 2016 have yet to be learned but our current Hobbesian abyss is nothing compared to the nightmare that will have its Genesis in 2021 under the moniker "Trump Media, LLC" when the gilded guilty grifter in chief brings to fruition his real plan from 2016.

I went out interviewing voters in California, Maryland and Pennsylvania in advance of the 2016 election. One woman in Frederick, Md., asked me what my prediction was on the outcome. I replied, "50/50, it could go either way." I said basically the same thing in an extended comment here on the NY Times online (before the length of comments was reduced drastically and, fundamentally, made it impossible to make subtle points with vivid writing.) As one who worked in the daily news grind for years, at NPR and as a Washington reporter for more than 80 local televisions stations (and others), I found it refreshing to be out of the mix so I wouldn't have to compare my reporting and insights to "the crowd". Had I not been a faithful reader of the Times and its surveys, I probably would have called the election for Trump. (I did predict that he would carry Pennsylvania, the state where I went to high school and spent almost half of my time growing up.) The point is this: to be a reporter is to be in the know and to know everything the other reporters know and then a little bit more. The herd instinct is real. Everyone HAS TO reflect everyone else's reporting or it looks to editors and producers like you are ignorant, don't know anything. You CAN'T consistently go against the grain and keep your job. Prediction: reporters will do just as bad in 2020. They will be running all over the place interviewing diehard Trump supporters and miss whatever the big story is then.

Journalists don’t have a free hand here, they are subject to the ethos of their employers and prevailing newsroom bias, both of which bend towards establishment candidates for financial and herd instinct reasons. The NYT has already started waging a campaign against progressive candidates, including those not officially part of the race yet. In due course it will officially support the person most favored by rich donors, big business, and running the most lackluster campaign promising least threat of genuine change.

Please don't automatically give the loudest, most boorish candidate the most coverage (free exposure) even if that person is the incumbent.

Will media watchdogs alert about Roger Stone alike type people who can rig any election. 2016 election didn't6 happen in America , it happened in face book.

After Trump raised his right hand and gave false oath on January 20th, 2018, I was listening to Wisconsin Public Radio interview a pollster. The first question asked was why the polls and media got the election results so wrong. I'll always remember the response: Polls don't predict, they measure. And measurements, depending upon the variables, can change or be measured incorrectly. Right now, the media asserts that a 3rd party candidate, Mr. Schultz, of Starbucks renown, has the Dems worried. Really? What is the premise for that assertion? And yes, Dems squawking about that should stop doing so. I have observed that the Dems are united, suburban voters have abandoned Trump, and the Democratic Party and its voters are is in no mood to tolerate anything less than handing Trump a resounding defeat. If anybody's election is at risk by a 3rd party candidate, it seems to me it would be Trump. So, what drives the media narrative that a 3rd party candidate hurts the Dems? Every day I willingly, with full consent, submit myself to the manipulation of the media. I come, however, armed with critical thinking skills; the ability to question premises and assumptions; mostly my own. Trump has observed that he loves the uneducated. I don't have to wonder why. I've concluded he loves that the media is ratings-driven to make a profit. I don't have to wonder why.

The news media failed the American public in 2016. I am not sure that it won’t fail us again. Too often the reporters and pundits find a convenient narrative and run with it, ignoring evidence to the contrary. In 2016, this convenient narrative set up the rich businessman with a populist heart versus the corrupt, globalist, Establishment candidate. In reality, we had the amoral, corrupt globalist oligarch, failed businessman versus the fairly typical labor-oriented Democratic candidate. I see little sign that most in the news media are willing to challenge the conventional narrative.

To me, there is big news and small news; day-to-day stuff vs. the big picture. In 2016, there was very little attention paid to the news around the candidates, news that should have given the audience more clarity. In retrospect, what was bigger news? Hilary's emails or Trump's Russian support and his highly questionable business relationships around the world? The big story was sitting there-there were some nibbles, but not enough follow up to really make a dent in all the fluff that was happening. Trump made sure he said something stupid every day and everyone's panties twisted. Meanwhile, I only read one article about the Trump Org.'s deals all over the world and the idea that Trump might compromise America to line his own pockets. And where are we now? Give us more substance, less polling, more reporting.

If journalists are once again going to focus on "the race" and not on the ISSUES, they are going to once again do the country an enormous, and possibly fatal, disservice. Frankly the only issue that matters to me, aside from and related to getting Individual-1 out of the White House, is ensuring we do everything we can to limit the harsh effects of climate change. This topic should never be off the front page--otherwise, in 20 years, what will be left to talk about???

There’s another issue that is STILL not being sufficiently addressed by the media: The Bubble!! A very significant percentage of media decision makers, executives, editors, reporters, etc. live in traditional coastal media centers, and spend most of their time talking to people very much like themselves. After debacles like 2016, there’s a great hue and cry about “getting out and understanding people outside Manhattan” (to paraphrase Dean Baquet), but the efforts are half hearted at best. The famous New Yorker cover showing the rest of the country as viewed from Manhattan still resonates strongly at TNYT, and similar views are held in other media centers. Articles that feebly attempt to illustrate that other areas of the country do indeed have culture, intelligent inhabitants, fascinating things to see and do, etc. are strained and obvious, when compared to the obsessive attention and worshipful adulation of very facet of doings between Battery Park and 86th Street. Until that truly changes (I’m not holding my breath) the problem won’t be addressed.

"Mr. Oppenheim, of NBC News, noted that journalists ought to contextualize the news, not censor it." Maybe they should just report the facts as they happen. You know, or maybe not, the truth.

In 2015, ABC World News Tonight devoted 81 minutes to Donald Trump and 20 seconds to Bernie Sanders. Despite the across-the-board media blackout, Sanders still won 23 primaries, and I'm guessing the corporate news media collectively sighed in relief because Trump guaranteed ratings and was certain to cut their taxes. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/12/03/how-media-iced-out-bernie-sanders-helped-donald-trump-win The disgraced former head of CBS, Les Moonves, famously said of Trump, "He may be bad for America, but he's good for CBS." Given what I have seen since Trump became president, I see no chance of this changing as we head to 2020. It will be the Trump show all over again. He's turned the news media into chumps, victims of their own desire for profit, leading you all by the nose with his every tweet and change of subject.

Shame on you all for continually describing Mrs. Clinton as a flawed candidate. Oh, I guess Trump had no flaws so that was okay.

Ha! The media has learned their lessons and have just perfected their techniques of controlling the message. Kamala Harris is going to be their favorite to get elected this election cycle and will use their platforms to get it done. The NYT has already decided to shelter her from criticism.

It occurs to me that all of today's problems can be traced back to the day "The News" became "The News media".

Donald J Trump is the POTUS today because the MSM including the NYT dropped the ball and allowed Trump to distract voters away from the real issues to follow the antics of a clown turned political demagogue. Will this happen again in 2020?

Here's an idea: Instead of making faulty predictions based on thinking clouded by emotional energy, the discounting of the possibility of events that have not occurred, and the playing out of movies in their minds, why don't political journalists just STOP MAKING PREDICTIONS!!! Sure it's fun but unless you're planning on placing a bet on the outcome it's meaningless.

“One is, ‘Are they trustworthy, are they on my side?’ And the other is, ‘Can they do stuff? Are they competent?’” There was ample evidence out there that Trump did not meet these criteria, yet he won. The cheating of investors and people who worked for him, the Trump University scam and the multiple bankruptcies were all known beforehand. Yet people chose to believe a known liar and crook. Many still do. Better cheaper healthcare for all, Mexico paying for the wall, big, new gleaming infrastructure, and “only I can fix it”, were claims that any reasonably thinking person should have rejected out of hand as impossible or improbable. Yet they voted for him. Why? Were they that desperate? Do they really believe reality TV is real? Did his racist remarks appeal to them? Would they vote Republican if the Devil himself were running? It seems to me the emotional took over, for whatever reason, and Trump was the beneficiary.

Noah Oppenheim's remarks says it all. TV coverage will be driven by the # of eyeballs not by informing the public.

Because the voting public is, on the whole, so polarized, the media is largely only important within political parties. Thus if you're a republican presidential candidate, then it is important what Fox, Breitbart, Drudge are saying and writing about you, and it's more or less completely irrelevant what every outlet is saying about you. Same goes for Democratic candidates -- it is relevant what the NY Times, WaPo, CNN, Politico, etc are saying or writing about you but basically irrelevant what Fox News, Breitbart, NR, etc. say. So liberal media outlets can reduce Trump's air time to the bare minimum and fact check his puffery and run story after story demonstrating that he's a liar, crook, buffoon and racist and it will still have only a negligible impact on the election. The factors driving his winning or losing will be something other than the media, such as the economy.

Considering the rabid Anti-Trump "reporting" by CNN and most other media creators in the USA in the past two years, the media did not simply fail to predict who the winner of the election would be. It is more a matter that the propaganda campaign to get Hillary elected failed. There was nothing objective about the Fourth Estate reporting of the past election. Even the NYT managing editor says that the NYT was biased, and is still biased, against Trump. The NYT is an opposition "news"paper. CNN has gone completely off the rails with their rabid anti-President Trump rhetoric. How many times has the now identifiable, and self identified, left wing opposition media had to issue retractions for their false reporting about Trump? That's not a result of failing to predict who would win a presidential election.

Oh, we're ready. Tan, fit and ready.

I subscribed to New York Times online. I trusted it to be the source of truth and unbiased news. To my surprise NYtimes is no more an objective news source. The news start with Trump bashing and ends at Trump bashing. I am not saying the news are incorrect but definitely it is with an agenda to give more prominence and coverage. I want to see the truth and only truth and give coverage to the other side of the story too. I read about an analysis about NATO, all it talked about Trump is bashing NATO, while it never talked about why he is saying that and the majority of NATO costs is borne by US for their defense. The analysis was definitely not objective - it was biased against Trump. All we are interested in the truth and truthful presentation, period!

Stop the false equivalency. Please. The media’s only responsibility is to make an assessment of what is the truth and report it. With Fox News broadcasting Republican LIES around-the-clock, the rest of the media can not afford to give additional airtime to lying GOP surrogates.

They/you are still doing it. The primary is one thing, but your take on the general election is way off base. Republican voters are very reliable: they always vote, and always vote for the Republican candidate. Trump was elected because Democratic turnout was suppressed in a variety of ways. You played your part, all too well. You did a terrible job on policy - but even if it is mostly about trust as is claimed here, you failed miserably in that regard as well. "There's just something about her....I just don't trust her" doesn't come from thin air. It came from you. Some of us would appreciate an acknowledgement of the role you played in our current predicament.

Yesterday CNN had a split screen up that had the in studio reporter hashing out the days news while the other screen showed an empty podium for thirty minutes waiting for Kamala Harris to enter stage right and I thought "Here we go again".

The curse of both-sideism is leading to surreal episodes. One is occurring right now -- just this morning, in fact, a news host had to speculate about what future Democratic presidents might do if Pres. Trump declares a national emergency--because, well, if a Republican committed an abuse of power, a Democrat would too????

The bigger question: Is the Internet Research Agency ready to re-elect Trump?

Just as a reminder NYT, there’s a pretty good chance that Trump did not “win”. Any article discussing the 2016 elections should remind readers of that possibility.

The media needs to take far more accountability than it does of how it sways the American people. What particularly struck me was the paragraph about how NBC producers expected coverage of Trump's racist fueled rallies to turn off the public, rather than grab attention and resonance. It seems to me that the media forgets an important component to coverage. While viewership is a key factor, *perception* is even more important. A mob usually starts with a few intensely passionate people barking a rallying cry. If enough people start to join in, it makes it much easier for others to join in too. And suddenly, you have an enormous mob. Who knows how many people who flocked to Trump's rallies were there more for the spectacle of it, rather than believing it? But to the outsider, they see MANY people that APPEAR to subscribe to Trump... which gives him more credibility. So be careful this time around with how Trump is covered. Do not give him a free, unbridled pass at massive coverage like he got in 2016. Keep applying FACT comparisons to his claims, and do not hesitate. EVERYTHING is at stake here. We have a DUMB portion of the American people that need to be schooled... or they'll vote DUMB again.

America's greatest threat is our pervasive fealty to form over function. Think Billy Crystal's Fernando Lamas character touting that "it is better to look good than to feel good." It is a last place team's cheerleaders chanting " We're No. 1! " It is a calcified General Motors in the 1980's blithely advertising its traditional superiority as it was turning into a third rate auto maker. Flash forward to 2016 when the media focussed on the spectacle of Trump instead of Trump's depravity. Case in point: while Sanders spoke to a crowd of 20,000, CNN's cameras were instead trained on an empty stage for 30 minutes, awaiting Trump to spew nonsense to less than 200 people. There is absolutely no evidence that the media has changed its ways. In 2020, we won't be informed, we will be info-tained, shown the form but never the function.

Here's a phrase that needs to be retired: "is leading in the race by x number of points" when it's only in a poll. There's no lead in the race until votes are counted. NEVER use that phrase again for polling results. Just add "according to such-and-such poll (or survey of polls such as RCP), taken over this period of time with a margin of error of...." THEN you can say "is leading by 5 points."

When the news media broadcasts every Trump tweet as gospel - they don't understand that THEY have imprisoned the press under Trump's twittering thumbs! Case in point - the first part of today's Times headline is news: Howard Schultz Weighs 2020 Campaign, But the second part is not: Drawing Mockery from Trump Whether you are for or against Schultz entering the race, there are a lot of respected people talking about Howard Schultz and his intentions today, but Donald Trump is not one of them. Why? Trump will insult anyone who runs against him, works for him, or sleeps with him -not with any intelligence-just with his boring bullying - so the headline probably should have finished: Drawing Protests from Democratic Party Leadership. That all said: Mr Schultz, please pick a VP strong on climate change, gun control and civil rights early in the process and run as a DEMOCRAT.

News media is still way too interested in "gold leaf" than substance of policy. Much of the news coverage is on Trump's insults rather than the effects of the deeds of his self absorbed administration. We do not need to be entertained by the man with the nuclear codes. We need to be shown the lasting damage he is doing while we are watching the glitz.

"After the personality-driven race of 2016, there were calls for a renewed focus on policy. In this view, the news media should stop playing up the day-to-day gaffes and campaign tactics in favor of emphasizing serious issues..." The news media have been running this same post-mortem after every election since I started reading news in the 70s. Nothing has changed. Well, one thing has changed - they made an unbelievable amount of money by over-covering Trump by a factor of about 5 - and they're not going to give up that revenue stream.

As of today, the media has not changed at all so our hope of different election coverage is near zero. Example - wall or now wall was the entire debate. No discussion on what the democrats policy would be other than drones (really, 2000 miles of border covered by drones - same fantasy that a wall will work). As to the 2016 election, I believe it was much more of a case that the media never questioned the fact that Hillary could loose. And, they thought anyone that voted for Trump just does not get it. The media and democrats must come to terms with this: if they were so right, why were they so wrong about who won. Requires not only sole searching but a new approach.

Not a hint of self-reflection from the paper which completely and smugly dismissed and red-baited Bernie Sanders for a full year before he became a viable alternative to HRC in a competitive race. Fair, accurate and policy-driven coverage may not have changed the outcome, but there is a great possibility that it might have.

From the article: "It’s a noble goal, and news organizations in 2016 produced plenty of deeply reported work on such matters. " The above statement is a blatant lie and does not bode well for coverage of the 2020 election. If journalists don't have the insight to recognize that their coverage was manipulated by made up narratives put forth by opposition researchers, then it's very hard to be optimistic. Who can remember a concrete policy position taken by Hillary; the only thing that lingers in the collective consciousness is 'emails', a fake scandal in an election plagued by fake news.

If Mr. Feist's words are any indication of the future, this election cycle will be another media disaster. The only conclusion that follows from the first three letters of the word news being "new" is providing constant coverage to whoever says the most things the quickest. Great for making money. Terrible for informing the public. Until details get significantly more space and time than gamesmanship, the media will continue to contribute to the degradation of our national political discourse by providing minute-by-minute updates on fast nonsense—quips, tweets, gaffes, numbers, etc.—at the cost of analyzing real, but slow substance—backgrounds, policies, capabilities, etc.— and the media will continue to contribute to the erosion of our democracy by providing an advantage to the politicians who succeed in an arena that lacks depth and know how to game that mechanism on, say, Twitter, for example. Sounds like we can look forward to another infuriating election cycle where political discussion is an inch deep and three thousand miles wide thanks to new taking precedent to informative.

WE THE PEOPLE must be smart enough to sort through the media noise and not hire/elect people who get the most coverage. They are not always right for average Americans who want to wrest control from the 0.01% financial elite.

With respect to political coverage people now have about the right amount of trust in journalist. In this arena there is no objectivity, any particular fact can and will be ignored, emphasized, obfuscated or otherwise mangled in furtherance of an agenda. None directly lie too often but none of them give a story that resemble what a reasonable person would call the truth. Good luck everyone.

I no longer subscribe to cable and simply do not watch cable news, and I am better off as a result. Nevertheless, as I was doing my laundry on Sunday afternoon, I was forced to watch MSNBC talking heads discuss the 2020 race and was horrified by the juvenile and shallow level of discourse and analysis. It's obvious to me that the corporate media thrives by propping up the establishment of both parties, repeating empty talking points of the party elites, and selecting topics to cover that have nothing to do with what is going on in ordinary people's lives. It's not interested in investigating what people on the ground really want or need from their govt (what might otherwise be known as "journalism"). This is exactly why the media will inevitably get it wrong again in 2020.

Much more important, are voters going to be more savvy consumers of social media? I think the answer to that is clearly "no." I see the same people forwarding the same unsubstantiated claims. When half the population thinks the president's Twitter account is the only escape from "fake news," democracy is completely broken.

At a journalism conference prior to the last election, young reporters who were covering a national election for the first time asked for advice. They were told to "talk to those who have experience covering these elections, the old-timers and they'll help you." Turned out to be very bad advice. They were the very ones who never saw this coming, believed the polls, relied on the past. The irony is that younger, less experienced reporters were assigned to cover the Trump campaign because he wasn't expected to win. The "pros" wanted to cover Hillary. Today many of those same young reporters are now their network's White House correspondents or have their own shows on MSNBC because of their Trump coverage. They went in with no preconceptions and maybe that's the lesson for 2020.

One problem is that the punditocracy would rather talk than listen. All of the signs were there that Trump's message was resonating outside the District of Columbia, yet national political reporters weren't paying attention. More on-the-ground reporting and less "informed" commentary would be an improvement in 2020.

Doctors tell patients not to measure their blood pressure multiple times a day because it fluctuates and occasionally will give an alarming reading.Pollsters should take this advice and stop polling so frequently and getting readings that are aberrant.People tend not to believe polls unless they favor their candidate.The last election was Nov 2018 -People have election fatigue so the press should tread lightly and not try to develop scenarios or conflicts which will make news- people will tune them out.

A few thoughts: We all need to check our assumptions, constantly. The shorten news cycle pressures media to always have something 'new.' There is no time anymore for contemplation--or to check assumptions. This produces inaccurate reporting and corrections buried under the latest 'hot' topic. The media needs to find a way to break the cycle. Maybe by admitting that facts aren't known yet, but reporters are working to discover them. Maybe if the media treats readers as adults, we'll start acting like adults. We need to question also our reliance on polls, which often take precedence over all other news. What real value to they have for voters? Why should we care, especially early on? I believe polls are biased towards those who have the greatest name recognition, i.e. those who have gotten the most press coverage. Perhaps covering the lesser known would be of greater value. Finally, we readers need to stop wanting content free. We need to subscribe to news outlets of our choosing--not just NYT--and including our local papers.

One thing we learned from 2016 is, a successfull con artist plying his/her trade over more than 40 years has learned how to con the media, as well. Indeed, journalists and news directors are just as human as the rest of us. But if one is more data-driven than focusing on behavioral patterns, there can be a tendency to miss the disqualifying characteristics of a candidate. Trump has been a master con artist successfully playing 3-card monty with the media. In the 1968 campaign, Nixon followed the advice of Patrick Buchanan to paint Democrats as protectors of an intellectual "elite" despite the Democrats' history of protecting the middle class and unions (organized labor) from perpetual onslaughts from the Wall Stree 'elites.' At any rate, common sense suggests we pay a mere glance at these analyses of early candidates. And remember, the Democrats offered only three candidates in the 2016 primaries with an early presumption that HRC was the candidate of choice. And, indeed, while she won the popular vote by about 3 million votes, the Electoral College got gamed by years of pro-conservative gerrymandering and attacks on voting rights against presumed opposing voters. There is the likelihood that the Electoral College is here to stay. Which means, the Democrats must also take their message of inclusion and justice for all to the heartland where right-wing media owns the airwaves. Wait till the candidates hit the campaign trail before working the numbers just yet.

Not mentioned in the article as the major cause of the media's 2016 "shock" election result: The media's confirmation bias. MSNBC/CNN took it as fact that Hillary Clinton would be the next president. They also, early on, took it as fact that Donald Trump was not a political threat. That he was a stunt. We still remember vividly MSNBC's Chuck Todd - after an early Trump primary firebomb - declaring "Gee, this is going to be fun!" The media rode the Trump fun car to ratings records and never seriously challenged his background or record to be a candidate to run these United States. The Fourth Estate shares the blame. And we don't believe they will ever look in the cameras - facing America - and admit that fact.

Brace? It's TWO YEARS AWAY. We desperately need campaign reform in terms of finance and time. We elect officials to work for us, not spend literally half their time trying to raise money and get re-elected. Britain limits campaigns to THREE MONTHS. I think we would do more than well to seriously consider such a move. For everyone's sake.

Yes, the world's longest camp gain process does indeed make many of us "brace" for this dire operation. But the media seems blind to their part in all of this. By acting like they should be not just report on what happens or happened but what SHOULD happen or be - in their opinion, of course - the media plunges themselves right into the fray and adds to the massive disgust many Americans now hold for this process. They give pretense of "fairness" and "balance" but having the predictable, on call, talking heads argue (which is not the same as discuss) the points or merits of issues at hand. Insulated in their own elite and smug bubbles, most of the media has trouble grasping what "the other", i.e, those not part of the elite world, not "woke", living in those dreadful fly over hinterlands, actually think, want or need. Thus we get pronouncements about voters "going against their own best interest" - as divined by the media and their supposed experts. The media also needs to stop focusing so much on personality and gotcha rants, Tweets, gaffs, and so one, as if they prove much of anything. Polls are often wrong because people lie or the questions are too general or designed to solicit a particular response. They then go on for days on end about the same topics. Enough already! Not everyone wants 24/7 opinion masquerading as fact. Do your jobs and let the people decide, not the pundits!

The media still doesn't get that they shouldn't be in the business of determining election outcomes. They view 2016 as a failure to educate/or demean Trump supporters enough to enable Hillary to win. Their latest gambit is to engage in "fact checking" exercises on Trump, where facts are derided as "needing context". Similar fact checking into Democratic candidates seem nearly non-existent. Further, the media is actively seeking to cut back on Trump speeches and comments, in order to restrict his ability to communicate with the American people. They bemoan the lack of Press briefings, but quickly cut away from his speeches. If they don't want to hear from the President, why demand access to his proxies? Even as they seek to constrain his media exposure, they open the doors wide open for Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, with Town Halls and softball questions for days. It will be interesting to watch how extreme the double standard gets in coming months. Anyway, if you want liberal journalists picking your President, then I guess we're on the right track. If you think the American people should pick the President, we may have a problem.

This is an important issue. Thanks for raising it so soon. My question is whatever happened to the Fairness Doctrine or Equal Time Provisions of some years gone by? Too complicated to monitor? I don't know. But it seems to me that NO candidate should be able to interrupt another candidate's coverage as Trump did. He was effective and I believe got billions of free air time. The more important issue is accuracy in coverage. For example, during the governor's race in Florida, cable news kept referring to Gillum as mayor of Tallahassee, not Jacksonville. And they did it repeatedly. They are also afraid, I believe that is the right word, to follow up and challenge the candidate's facts and assertions. My observation is the first job of a reporter is to be liked and get another interview. It would be great to see a school of journalism, say Columbia, issue a weekly accuracy report beginning with the scheduled debates this summer. If we can have simultaneous translations of multiple languages at the United Nations, why can't we have simultaneous fact checking? That would go a long way to keep the gatekeepers vigilant.

Two forces that do not bode well: the contemporary definition of objectivity as giving equal air time to opposing sides—and—running news divisions according to ratings. Trump knows how to harness both forces. These forces are undermining the fourth estate in the country.