By Martin Kaufmann via Issues & Insights | October 25, 2024
This is an actual headline that appeared in a “journalism” newsletter 13 days before the election: “How much coverage of Donald Trump is too much?”
The column is from Tom Jones, senior media writer at the Poynter Institute and, you’ll not be surprised to learn, a man consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome. I’ve said in the past that Jones’ daily “Poynter Report” column would be more accurately titled, “Why I Hate Donald Trump and Fox News.” (For what it’s worth, Jones would dispute this. In 2020, I sent him an email pointing out glaring biases evident in his commentary. He responded, among other things, by writing, “I can promise you that I don’t have an agenda other than to point out really good journalism and call out shoddy journalism.” Self-awareness apparently isn’t his strong suit.)
These days I only occasionally read Jones’ tedious, predictable commentaries, and only then for the same reason that a child pinches himself: to see how much pain I can endure.
In this instance, Jones claims to be upset that the legacy media has devoted so much time to Trump trolling Kamala Harris in a McDonald’s photo op and his outrageous asides, most notably ruminating on the late Arnold Palmer’s junk.
Jones also displays the blind spots of someone immersed in the leftist bubble: “Just as disturbing, (Trump) keeps talking about the enemy within this country — his political opponents whom he has seemingly threatened with punishment if he becomes elected. And he repeatedly doubts that he’ll accept the result of the election if he loses.”
There is no shortage of video of Democrats denying election results, with no end in sight. Just two weeks ago, Axios reported that Democrats would not commit to certifying Trump if he wins. That sounds kind of insurrection-y.
As for the “enemy within” theme, well, can you blame Trump? Just this year, he’s been the target of an orchestrated lawfare campaign in New York, Florida, Georgia and the District of Columbia. He routinely is compared to Hitler (even Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin in the same column by one recent critic), and has survived two assassination attempts by nutjobs who clearly were motivated by the overheated rhetoric of the Harris campaign and the media, who have done their damnedest to memory-hole those attacks.
The reality, which eludes Jones, is that the legacy media, for which he runs cover, focuses on these peripheral matters to avoid talking about what voters say are the election’s most important issues – the economy, inflation, border security and crime. On those issues, voters favor Trump.
Jones tries to draw a dichotomy between the supposedly frivolous Trump and Harris, who he says is (caution: cliché approaching) “laser-focused on speeches, interviews and the traditional things candidates do in the final sprint to the finish line of a race.”
Jones’ timing was odd. It came after Harris had taken most of the previous day off, aside from a friendly sit-down with NBC in which she insisted, without evidence, that she had no idea about President Joe Biden’s mental decline, which has been obvious for years.
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