Nicholas Kristof has a New York Times column about the responsibility of the press in this presidential campaign, writing, "I wonder if journalistic efforts at fairness don't risk normalizing Trump, without fully acknowledging what an abnormal candidate he is."
It's tentatively phrased, but it also dodges what in my mind are some key questions. If the press is going to stop trying to be fair, at what point in the campaign should that happen? Is an initial fairness phase required to determine objectively whether a candidate is worthy of fairness, after which, if the candidate is not deemed deserving of fair treatment, fairness (or "efforts at fairness") is then officially suspended? At what point in the game are readers let in on the news that a publication has suspended its efforts at fairness? Is a candidate able to petition to resume receiving fair treatment from journalists at any point? Or is it, once the press judges you "abnormal," no fairness, ever?
Relatedly, under the attention-grabbing headline "Mexican billionaires lose $1.4 billion thanks to Trump," Bloomberg News notices that the Peso is trading in a way that tracks Trump's presidential chances. That's a pretty interesting trade. The Bloomberg article doesn't mention Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim or his company Inmobiliaria Carso SA, which Yahoo! Finance lists as a major holder of New York Times Company stock. The Times has no shortage of reasons to oppose Mr. Trump, but it's noteworthy, given all the attention the Times and other press organizations have given to the supposed risk of Russian interference in the American political process, how absent the attention has been to the concept of a part-Mexican-owned newspaper openly pondering the suspension of fairness in the middle of covering a political campaign.
