I am often critical of the bigfoot Washington press that covers our national elections, but I almost never have occasion to critique Dan Balz. He’s not perfect; no one is. But he’s the gold standard.
And he’s clearly had it with Trump. I’ve never seem him just lay waste to a presidential candidate the way he did this morning, and it’s richly deserved and totally justifiable.
He seems to have realized that there’s no profit in covering this election as a dispassionate observer. There have been too many transgressions against the unwritten rules and norms of politics, and Trump just don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt or some kind of unbiased reporting.
Yes, the media is completely hostile to his campaign and can be accused of bias, but there’s a reason that you can’t find a decent circulation metro paper in the entire country that’s willing to endorse Trump for president.
And it’s definitely about character more than policy. It’s true that Trump has treated the press badly and that he doesn’t respect or even understand the First Amendment. But that’s only a tiny fraction of the reason that reporters and editors refuse to support Trump or give him the kind of “objective” coverage they usually aspire to in their political analysis.
When Dan Balz is willing to abandon that with such force, it gives permission to every one in the same field to follow his lead.
What Trump has done is break the mold of political reporting. And he did it because he forced reporters to choose between values. The value of providing a nonpartisan and unbiased source of news reporting had to go toe to toe with the fact that Trump is so clearly unsuitable to be president that there’s an obligation to render that judgment to the public regardless of the cost.
