One of the comments I see often on Quora is, “Why isn’t the media doing a better job of exposing the corruption of Donald Trump?” I’m not a media expert. But I am a media consumer and it’s true: the US media has done a horrible job of reporting on the toxicity of Trump’s 40+ years of unscrupulous business dealings and his later corruption of a major political party and his attempt to overthrow the government.
I cut the cable back in 2016. I ditched cable news and cable everything. No CNN, no FoxNews, no MSNBC. Their respective coverage of Trump’s 2016 presidential aspirations was the last straw for me in what I saw was the dumbing-down of America to a lame media policy of trying to be “fair and balanced”, as if the difference between Jesus Christ and Jack the Ripper was a matter for healthy political debate.
As a long time New Yorker I knew all I needed to about Trump from watching him grow from a snotty, entitled, racist 20-something mismanaging his father’s Trump Village and being fined by Nixon’s DOJ under the Fair Housing Act (twice) to the wreckage of a business empire built on inherited wealth from incompetence, criminality and insatiable greed to his becoming a lapdog and a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin to the desperate and unhinged indicted criminal that he is today facing 88 felonies and potentially 717 years in prison.
After reading Trump’s “Art of the Deal” in 1988 I was stunned that this asshole wasn’t in jail then. My outrage was only barely in first gear. Trump was about to excavate sub-basements below “sleaziness”…
Sorry. Readers of this blog don’t need to see me flip out again on why Trump is the Worst BiPed in the World. Let’s get back to the point: media.
The way I see it, there are two medias. One is the mainstream, corporate media that operates on a priority of trying to attract mass viewership and advertisers by not pissing off the hands that feed it. Finding the truth there is somewhat like eating unshelled pistachio nuts or whole artichokes: a lot of work for a small reward. Then there’s the real media of honest, responsible independent journalism armed with facts, research and hard work which paints a story that usually has an obvious bias but where you at least have the facts to make your own judgement.
Not surprisingly, most of the real media isn’t owned and operated by American corporations. It comes from small independent journalists and from the foreign press which is largely immune to US government interference. This is my personal binge list of eye-opening journalism related to Donald J. Trump.
The first concerns Trump’s utter failure with the COVID pandemic. I apologize that it’s a pay-per-view but it’s the only one in the list and it’s only three bucks. However it’s an excellent piece of journalism from a director with a long history of great exposĂ©s. And the video editor is a friend of mine who won a Critic’s Choice award for this piece. I highly recommend this video if you want to learn why America’s bout with COVID was the worst in the world. There’s a reason for it.
Let’s move on to the Netherlands and a series of eye-opening documentaries done by Zembla. They’re all in English and tell the story about Trump’s friends and enablers.
From Europe, let’s move on to Australia and a press that doesn’t pull its punches even with local pols.
Dan Partland’s probing documentary about Trump’s fitness for office from the perspective of mental health professionals. A little preachy but there’s lots of good information here.
Finally, a recent 2+ hour documentary by PBS on the January 6th Select Committee. Powerful stuff.
