Bit players in a media-driven reality show

Rich Lowry, writing at the New York Post, wishes the media would stop insisting the other candidates talk about nothing but Trump.

CNN gathered together all of the Republican presidential candidates at the Reagan Library for a highly touted debate — and could hardly think to ask them about anything except Donald Trump.

By one count, 44 percent of the questions touched on Trump. Why even pretend it’s going to be a debate? Just bill it as a seminar on the worldview and foibles of Donald Trump, with occasional diversions into matters of greater public import.

The CNN event was typical of a press that has lost its mind, not to mention its dignity, over Donald Trump. The media follows him with the obsessive interest of a wide-eyed fangirl who’s fallen for the latest boy band.

...There’s no doubt that Trump deserves serious coverage. He’s at the top of the polls. He’s entertaining. He represents an intriguingly populist, heterodox element within the GOP. But none of this explains or justifies him becoming the missing Malaysian plane of American politics.

A couple of weeks after the first debate in August, a CNN analysis found that Trump got more coverage on the nightly news than all of his competitors combined. The Donald got 36 minutes and 30 second on the broadcasts. Ben Carson, who would get the biggest poll boost from the first debate, got all of 11 seconds.

CNN itself has been a prime offender. According to a Wall Street Journal report, between his announcement in June and mid-September, Trump had been the subject of more than 2,100 CNN reports, roughly twice as many stories as about the next most reported-on candidate, Jeb Bush.

...The cable networks treat Trump campaign rallies like a car chase. They go to them live and follow them to the end. The rallies are considered theoretically newsworthy, although they are always the same — Trump talks about his poll numbers, about building a wall and Jeb Bush’s low energy, over and over again.

Ben Carson should consider suing for equal time. He, too, is an outsider who has struck a nerve and rocketed up in the polls, but gets a fraction of the coverage that Trump gets. No one consistently broadcasts his events live. No one badgers all the other candidates to address every little thing he says.

...If it’s too much to expect the media to give up its Trump obsession, it can at least vow never again to ask a candidate not named Donald Trump about Donald Trump. The other contenders don’t deserve to be made bit players in a media-driven reality show.

Read more here.