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Dear Media:
Congratulations on electing President Trump!
I know this wasn’t your endgame. The master plan was to elevate the carnival barker to the GOP nomination, in the hopes of helping Hillary Clinton limp across the finish line in a tough election year for Democrats.
But alas, you forgot why it’s unwise to keep a scorpion for a pet. It always ends up stinging you.
You tried to beat a man who has endured scandal and bankruptcy for decades at his own game, and it backfired on you bigly. And now to your sheer horror, President Trump is largely a concoction of your own making. Doesn’t Dr. Frankenstein always end up hating the monster he created?
But that’s not all. Your mouth-breathing Trump coverage was so hysterical you may have inoculated Trump against any legit muckraking you do during his presidency. Sort of like what conservatives did in the 1990s, when years of accusations against Bill Clinton ultimately led to the public dismissing us when we finally caught a president lying under oath to a federal grand jury.
Let’s face it, it’s not like President Trump and all his various global business entanglements couldn’t weave a tangled web in the next four years. But who’s gonna bust him for it? You?
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The truth is you and Trump are in a symbiotic relationship. You can’t have one without the other. You feed off each other, the way a parasite feeds off a host. And your parts are interchangeable. Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. Either way, you end up smeared just the same.
If the American people didn’t have the same disdain for you they have for genital warts, Trump would’ve never escaped, let alone won. Even a marginally credible media would’ve taken Trump out before the Iowa Caucuses, with Pulitzers rewarded by Super Tuesday. Instead, an election that should’ve provided your next Woodward and Bernstein ended with Trump making a congratulatory phone call to discredited conspiracy hack Alex Jones.
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But you look around your newsrooms and count diversity solely by those external identities that so much of America isn’t fixated on.
Of course, you could make the argument that’s their “white privilege” talking. But even if that’s true, it’s irrelevant. Just as Republicans can’t get black folks to forget they’re black and vote GOP by saying “Lincoln freed the slaves,” neither can you get white values voters to check a privilege they don’t believe they have.
That’s why you need real diversity that isn’t just skin deep. How many people in your newsrooms attend an orthodox/traditional church service on a regular basis? How many people in your newsrooms are pro-life? How many of them voted for Trump? In other words, how much of America is really in your newsrooms?
That’s real diversity, and it’s simple to obtain. All you have to do is earnestly seek to tell the American story as it’s unfolding in real time, rather than advancing your preferred narrative to tell people what they’re witnessing instead.
Not easy, I know, when you believe your narrative is the story. But remember, simple doesn’t always mean easy. Oh, but it could mean you help re-elect President Trump in 2020 if you don’t.
- Discussion
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The conclusion to my post-election series for @CR looks at why the media must broaden its definition of diversity.https://t.co/0SBnv52ptE
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) November 21, 2016
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