Aug 8, 2020

How Mainstream Media Helps The Republicans Lie To The People - Part 2

Related: How Mainstream Media Helps The Republicans Lie To The People - Part 1



Forty-three additional women, joining more than two dozen others, publicly detailed sexual assault or other sexual misconduct by President Donald Trump in the new book All the President’s Women: Donald Trump and the Making of a Predator. But you wouldn’t learn about it from mainstream media coverage -- weeks after an excerpt from the book was published and one week after it went on sale, the story has been virtually ignored by major American news outlets.

Several news websites reported on the actions described in the book after Esquire published an excerpt on October 9. The excerpt contained a story from Karen Johnson, who said Trump sexually assaulted her at a New Year’s Eve party she attended with her husband and another relative at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the early 2000s. She told the book’s authors, journalists Barry Levine and Monique El-Faizy, that she was particularly rattled by Trump’s later infamous comment that he could “grab them by the pussy” because that was just what he did to her.

Since then, some other outlets have published additional excerpts from the book and interviews with the authors. The Guardian published an excerpt containing stories from several women who said Trump ogled them and treated them like they were “just sexual objects” in settings that included fashion shows and a gathering at a Miami Beach-area mansion. An excerpt published by Cosmopolitan detailed reports of Trump repeatedly turning up backstage, where women were undressed, at a modeling contest and runway show featuring underage teenagers. And in a HuffPost interview, authors El-Faizy and Levine concluded that Trump should be considered a “predator” like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein and urged “investigative news organizations” to “take the time to pick up these allegations and dig deeper because there are still so many stories.”

So far, mainstream news organizations are mostly ignoring the new allegations. No major American newspapers covered the Esquire excerpt within a day of its publication. And now, almost a full week after the book’s October 22 release, a Nexis search shows American newspapers are still failing to cover these allegations in their news sections -- though The Washington Post covered them in an Outlook section review of the book, and also referenced it in another Outlook piece.

Television broadcast and cable news coverage of the new reporting has been similarly lacking. A search of transcripts in the SnapStream television database shows a single mention of the allegations on each PBS NewsHour and MSNBC’s First Look within a day of the first excerpt appearing on October 9. Since then, every cable news program, nightly broadcast news program, and Sunday political talk show has failed to mention the dozens of additional women who have come forward publicly to report sexual harassment or assault at the hands of Trump.

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