On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks defended giving 2024 presidential candidate former President Donald Trump a live platform — like CNN did in a town hall earlier this week — by arguing that the media’s job is covering major figures and people have chosen to make Trump a prominent figure by expressing support for him in polls and it would be “arrogant” and “disastrous if we appointed ourselves the censors or the determiners of who gets covered in this country.”
Co-host Amna Nawaz asked, “Is granting him a live platform a mistake or a bad idea?”
Brooks answered, “No, I don’t think so. He’s — in The Washington Post poll, he has a healthy lead on Joe Biden. By a huge margin, people prefer his economic policies to Joe Biden’s. He is the number one or two most important political figure in the country right now. We in the media don’t get to decide who we cover. Basically, the American people get to decide, and they did get to decide by their votes and their preferences in polling. And so, we cover major figures. Now, there [are] ways to cover and ways not to cover, but, in my view, it would be disastrous if we appointed ourselves the censors or the determiners of who gets covered in this country. And one of the reasons Donald Trump is popular is because people think people in our business are arrogant. And, to me, that would be an arrogant move to say, no, we’re just not going to cover that guy.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.