It's probably no surprise that Donald Trump has been the subject of over 2100 CNN reports
since he announced his candidacy for president on June 16.
uh, okay, maybe 2100 is a little bit surprising
But the basic calculus is something I think everyone cynically understands
Trump gets ratings, the news carries Trump.
A little less obvious is that Trump's high poll numbers
are actually a result of his outsize coverage in the media.
Political science professor John Sides has produced a number of handy graphs
that show the correlation between Trump's share of coverage versus his poll numbers
and it's pretty conclusive.
What's more, if you graph all of the GOP candidates' polling numbers versus their share of coverage
you get a correlation of 0.96
It's close to a straight line as I've ever seen.
Of course, you can say causation moves the other way here
that poll numbers drive coverage, and in some way they do
only news coverage usually comes first.
People hear a lot about the candidate, research that candidate,
identify in the same way that you do when you hear a pop song on the radio over and over and again.
I can't feel my face when I'm with you
And that exposure ultimately means they're more likely to give that name to pollsters.
The news then reports more on the top candidates which means even more coverage which means even higher polling
and it becomes a cycle that perpetuates itself.
Until the top dog makes an mistake
"It's 3 agencies a government when I get there they were gone,
commerce, education, and the um...
what's the third one there, let's see..."
Or a new fresh face steals some attention away
"I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said."
The problem is that Trump's mistakes are often so inflammatory
and news making that they work to his advantage
and new fresh faces are the ones that Trump attacks the hardest.
"If you listen to her for more than 5 minutes straight, you get a headache."
2100 news story later, and here we are.
We know why the news works like this:
Less ratings mean less ad revenue means less profit
means lower stock prices means fewer investors means layoffs.
"You're fired."
In America, indeed, in the global economy, everything always has to grow.
The news, especially cable news, has a vague interest in keeping its dependence on capitalist incentives under wraps
even though, everyone knows that ratings to a large part determine the news
news organizations have to tout their journalistic integrity even if it's only a formality.
And this
might just be the gift that Donald Trump is giving to all of us.
More than anything I can remember, the Trump phenomenon
strips away the false righteousness of the news media.
When Trump does something outrageous, CNN doesn't cover it by choice
but because they are forced to do so.
The Trump phenomenon strips away the false righteousness of politicians, too.
Trump has co-opted political language and employed it to such a ridiculous and shameless degree
that its emptiness is laid totally bare.
And lastly,
Trump strips away the false righteousness of us
the American public.
The second GOP debate was the highest rated program in the history of CNN.
CNN is forced to cover Trump because we forced them to.
"Why when we put on, you know, something with Jeb Bush talking about the economy
or Scott Walker talking about labor unions
why doesn't anybody watch that?"
It's in our nature to gravitate toward conformation bias and sensationalism.
It take a force of will to consume media that may be boring
but crucial for making intelligent political choices.
In a large part, it's a mental muscle that most of us
myself often included
don't want to exercise.
Donald Trump exists at the nexus of all these things
and his invocation of all three is, I think, an important lesson.
The news media, politicians and the general public are all responsible for the existence of Donald Trump.
And no one of these things is going to change drastically overnight.
But if all of them move just a little bit in the right direction toward integrity, honesty and engagement,
respectively, the difference could be substantial.
We know that the news media is biased and politicians talk bullshit.
And the news and the politicians know we know it.
Still, they go through the formalities. It is exactly formalities like this that can keep a system alive
longer than it needs to be.
So, maybe we need someone like Donald Trump to pull down that last layer of credibility.
"How are you going to create jobs in this country?"
"I'm just going to do it."
Hey everybody, thanks for watching. We are at about $950 on the Patreon, which is fifty dollars away
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But I like to hear what you would like of Nerdwriter swag and that universe, so let me know in the comments.
And we'll get some and we'll put them up. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you guys
next Wednesday.