Another criticism of the MSM reporting on DJT

LGBQT Nation published an opinion blasting the MSM, especially the NYT for failing to properly report about DJT by normalizing him:

The mainstream media has totally failed to live up to 

the challenge of covering Donald Trump

The media, led by The New York Times, keeps downplaying Trump's scandals and lies, making him look normal

Ever since Donald Trump appeared on the scene, the mainstream media has struggled with how to deal with him as a candidate. At first, they were enchanted by his sheer weirdness, which made for great copy and footage. But when Trump flooded the field with lies, they couldn’t bring themselves to use the term. They used “falsehoods” or “claims without evidence.” Most of all, they treated Trump as if he were just like any other candidate, even when he was anything but.

You would think that by the third time around, the media would have learned its lesson. If anything, the media has gotten worse. This election cycle, reporters at major outlets seem to be going out of their way to treat Trump ever-so-gently, normalizing his most dangerous behavior.

Perhaps the worst offender is the self-appointed paper of record, The New York Times. When the scandal broke about Trump illegally filming for a campaign ad at Arlington National Cemetery last week – while his aides physically assaulted a worker – the Times reported that the “campaign clashed with an official” at the cemetery, which downplayed just how brazen Trump’s actions were. The paper then followed up with another story about how Trump “returns to the politics of forever wars,” as if that was the story instead of how the Trump campaign broke the law prohibiting using the hallowed ground for political purposes.

In short, the politics became the story, not the scandal.

Or look at the paper’s coverage of Trump’s cognitive decline.

Oh, wait. That was just reserved for Joe Biden.

Instead, the Times decided to run a story about Trump’s truly bizarre rantings at his rallies. They didn’t question the stability of someone who worries about being eaten by sharks or praises Hannibal Lecter. Rather, they came up with this humdinger of an appraisal: “It is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills, and Rosie O’Donnell.”

Who are we kidding here? Trump’s inability to think linearly hints at cognitive issues. He is now the oldest candidate to run for president. Instead of a serious look at whether he’s displaying exactly the kind of problems that the Times took Biden to task for, the paper came up with a cutesy little piece that quotes English professors instead of geriatricians.

Reporters think that criticism is a sign that they are doing their job. They have the same sense of infallibility as the pope does.

But the fact is that the press has spent the past nine years normalizing a man who is not normal. They treat him like any other candidate – indeed, better than any other candidate. If Kamala Harris did a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery, the press would be all over her. Never mind a credible story about a $10 million cash bribe from Egypt. You probably haven’t heard about that one, but that’s another Trump story that has come and gone over the past few weeks.

The scandals, the increasingly bizarre behavior, the felonies, the insurrection – it’s all too much to fit into that template. So it falls by the wayside. When it comes to the task of telling the truth, too much of the mainstream media isn’t up to the job.

That speaks for itself. Disappointingly, the opinion did not mention DJT's kleptocratic authoritarianism. He is not just abnormal. He is far worse than merely abnormal. In my opinion, commentary like this is significantly deficient if those two aspects of his character is not at least mentioned when it is appropriate to a piece of reporting or commentary. 

I give this criticism a rating of semi-woke but acceptable.