Once journalists come to know what works, which stories yield traffic, they will pursue what works. This is the definition of pandering and it has horrific consequences. Donald Trump is the culmination of the era. He understood how, more than at any moment in recent history, media need to give the public what it wants, a circus that exploits subconscious tendencies and biases. Even if media disdained Trump’s outrages, they built him up as a character and a plausible candidate. For years, media pumped Trump’s theories about President Obama’s foreign birth into circulation, even though they were
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