Trump staged an extended infomercial about his new hotel masquerading as a press conference. The media coverage was quite negative about it. Looks like he will not be putting an end to his long time lie as quickly as he hoped.
I see many diaries and comments here about journalism happening. Hoping the trend continues. Some even talked about the media shifting, narrative changing, a new dynamic emerging. I would say, let us not celebrate it prematurely. The media is likely to regress to its mean, deplorable, status-quo-ante.
Though the birther flip-flop is what they are reporting on, what tipped them is obvious. They were forced to wait for a long time for His Orangeness to appear. They were forced to sit through the long infomercial on his new hotel. They were not allowed to ask questions, but the cameras were allowed to show off his new hotel. They were abused, and so they covered the event negatively.
But being disrespected and abused by Trump is not new to them, why would they change permanently because of it?
Trumpsters have Morning Joe in MSNBC and Lendowsky in CNN and enough shills in newspapers. They have Roger Ailes who knows personal ambitions of the news reporters. I would not be surprised if he has accumulated a dossier on all the journalists and knows who can be bought, who can be intimidated and who could be blackmailed.
So he will start throwing scraps at them. Some selected ones will get some sort of exclusive, one-on-one interview or some kind of special event pass at Mar-a-lago. And one by one they will straggle in and do what they are told, to create some sort of noise against HRC.
So all this could simply be a negotiating tactic. Collectively show a little spine and demonstrate what damage they could do, so that he can give them what they want. Click bait worthy headlines, ratings, traffic, sensation, more sales….
I am still skeptical the press and the media has suddenly become journalists again.