Liberals often allege that the media are too tough on Hillary Clinton and not tough enough on Donald Trump. One left-of-center, anti-Trump journalist, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, thinks the quantity and quality of those complaints are “getting ridiculous,” and that the main problem isn’t bad campaign coverage -- it’s dopey voters.
“We are less than two months from the possibility of one of the dumbest people on the planet winning the White House,” wrote Taibbi in a Friday piece, “and it seems that all anyone's talked about this week…is the lung capacity of Hillary Clinton…That sucks. But it's not all the media's fault.”
Taibbi argued that “one of the main reasons the news media has been dumbed down over the years is [that] audiences have consistently rejected smart, responsible journalism in favor of clickbait stupidities like ‘Five Things You Didn't Know About John McCain's Penis’ and ‘Woman Strips Naked in Front of Police Officers. You Won't Believe What Happened Next.’ The Bachelor and Toddlers and Tiaras crush Frontline. And people wonder why Donald Trump gets a lot of coverage?”
In spite of all that junky content, Taibbi contended, there’s been plenty of solid reporting on Trump’s “insanity” and “unfitness for office,” but “it's just not having the predicted effect” (bolding added):
I'm as worried as anyone else about the possibility of Trump getting elected. But if it happens, it's not going to be because The New York Times allowed a few reporters to investigate the Clinton Foundation. It'll be because we're a nation of idiots, who vote the same way we choose channels: without thinking.
