The mainstream media morass of profitability

President Trump’s end year remarks to the New York Times acerbically summed up his relationship with the media. “I’m going to win another four years… because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there.” The answering outburst of rage and contempt from the media burned all the hotter because the statement was not only intentionally provocative; it was also true.

The media has never been able to quit Trump. Its conviction that it can destroy him through coverage has repeatedly proven false. But that hasn’t stopped the media from throwing more coverage at him. And its motive for the non-stop coverage has always been the selfish pursuit of ratings, clicks and sales....

These days the media needs Trump more than ever. Its old purpose, reporting the news, is as dead as the telegraph. Reporting is expensive. It requires infrastructure and personnel. And it isn’t very profitable. In the age of the internet, few people will sit around and watch the pointless reporting from the scene of an event that was once the staple of local news and cable news....

The media has crossed the mirror’s edge where reality television, recreations of crimes and movies based on true stories once lived. It lives and dies by turning the news into a fictional narrative. And narratives are cheap....

And he knows that he doesn’t have to beat the media. He just has to let it beat itself.

The combination of political anger and personal greed that drives the media is destroying its credibility. The media was most effective when it was playing the detached narrator and the impartial referee. Trump’s greatest trick was forcing it to get in the ring with him....

Journalists are forever harping on Trump’s “lies.” But what really bothers them is his blunt truth-telling. His refusal to conform to their political correctness infuriates them.

Political correctness is just one big lie — a denial of reality in the name of this or that “sensitivity” or ideological demand of the moment. The media devotes almost all of its coverage to policing deviations from those lies. That is why Trump’s ruthlessly reality-based approach to politics is such a shock to its system. The media had grown used to skittish Republicans jumping to attention and discussing issues only within the parameters of decreed lies. A “responsible” Republican wasn’t supposed to notice the problems of illegal immigration from high-crime, high-poverty countries. He wasn’t supposed to notice the militancy of Islam. He wasn’t supposed to notice any number of problems. Rather, he was expected to second the lying sanctimony of the media. Trump came along and exposed that charade, and the media has never forgiven him since....

In politics, a confederacy of dunces and demagogues always forms against the rare politician who tells the truth. The Democrats, having become the foreigners first party, saw a chance to silence Trump by casting hearsay as evidence of racism. Their real objection is not to his crude word but to his clear thought, a truth they simply don’t want to hear: that high immigration from destitute and dysfunctional countries weakens America....

For Trump, an irrational immigration system is a problem. For the Democrats and the media, it is a solution. That is one of the principal reasons why Trump won....

The Democrats still don’t understand that appeal... The American people can forgive an obscenity from a president who is fighting battles others are too cowardly to confront. What they won’t forgive is a party that preened about “s***holes” while America turned into one.