Media scholar on Trump TV: “This is Orwellian, and it’s happening right now, right here”

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A Q&A with Tom Rosenstiel, an author, researcher, media critic, and the current executive director of the American Press Institute.

“What makes Trump different,” Rosenstiel said, “is that he’s systematically trying to delegitimize the news as an institution because they won’t cover him the way he wants to be covered. That’s what’s different here.”

Asked, "Is this the future of political media in this country? Where candidates circumnavigate the press and peddle their own propaganda via social media?" Rosenstiel said, "I hope not. The current pattern is more media. There are more and more channels, more and more sites, more and more voices; we're more segmented than ever. The traditional press has not disappeared, but it's competing with more and more alternatives. I think the risk here is that everyone is in their own narrow reality and we don't have a common set of facts and a common ground on which to govern — to the degree that an independent press that is committed to facts and verification diminishes, that encourages this pseudo-reality in which everyone is operating with a set of facts that are self-serving and self-fulfilling but completely unreal. So the risk of losing an independent press, even if that press is very heterogeneous, is that you lose an institution that is dedicated to getting the facts right. Whether they're partisan or not, they're at least dedicated to getting the facts right. If we lose that, we're in a very dangerous place."


Media scholar on Trump TV: “This is Orwellian, and it’s happening right now, right here”