A few years ago, Saturday Night Live lampooned sports broadcasters for their transparent eagerness to emphasize the most violent aspects of the game. The skit showed a quarterback getting his legs broken in two and the announcers in the booth feigning concern while repeatedly showing replays of the tackle from a variety of angles.
I was reminded of that comedy sketch over the weekend when the cable news stations showed video clips repeatedly of the violence at Donald Trump rallies. One cable outlet put the infamous sucker punch at the North Carolina rally on a loop, replaying it over and over in 1-second intervals.
In response to the latest events, Marco Rubio said the other day that “when the person you’re supporting for president is going around and saying things like, ‘Go ahead and slap them around, I’ll pay your legal fees,’ what do you think’s going to happen next?
But the Florida senator, whose campaign probably suffered a fatal blow when he got down in the mud with Trump, also had some words for the media:
I hope the US media begins to examine the role they’ve played in all of this. Because I can tell you that for months I’ve been giving speeches on public policy, and nobody paid a lot of attention. And the minute that I mentioned anything personal about Donald Trump, every network cut in live to my speeches, hoping I would say more of it. So then they could go on the air and say, “Oh, this is so sad.” Subtitle: “We’re gonna keep giving it coverage because it’s good for our ratings.”
Ratings – that’s a word we’ve heard far more in this presidential campaign than those of the past. It’s used as an indictment of the superficial coverage by cable news, especially the juicy sound bites offered by Trump. But the print media is perhaps more of a guilty party regarding the failure to fully report on the tone of Trump rallies until now.
On Friday, the Daily Kos published a Facebook post written by a young man who attended a Trump rally to witness the spectacle. According to his description of the Fayateville, N.C., event, it turned into a frightening situation filled with angry and juvenile behavior by the warm-up speakers, the crowd and the candidate.
That’s the story that reporters should have been writing on a routine basis — before we reached the point of blood being spilled.