With scores of media members following Donald Trump as he makes the rounds around the country as a Republican presidential candidate --- with the highest poll numbers --- wide editorializing prevails in stories, notes Grumpy Editor.
As an example, here’s how writers Steve Holland and Andy Sullivan describe Trump in a lengthy Reuters story in Saturday newspapers, following his visit to the U.S.-Mexico border:
“The mud-slinging mogul with a complicated hairdo”… (worked into the lead).
“Trump’s trash-talking ways and eye for the spotlight”…
“Trump’s headline-grabbing antics”…
"Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric”…(leaving out the word illegal preceding immigrant, as many others in broadcast/print media continue to do).
Reuters’ own tracking poll, updated on Thursday, shows Trump tied with Jeb Bush for the lead (with 16 percent of the vote) in the GOP presidential race.
(A CNN poll, released Sunday, showed Trump getting 18 percent support among Republicans, with Bush in second place with 15 percent.)
With Trump among the 10 top candidates at the first televised debate next week, the Reuters writers indicated concern, with Trump facing cameras, about the two-hour Fox News session degenerating “into a carnival-barking sideshow.”
Fretting in the third paragraph that Trump may dominate air time, the Reuters writers admitted deep in their story: “In past years front-runners have held a central position on stage and received a greater share of questions and speaking time.”
Yet none of this raised editors’ eyebrows.
Stay tuned.
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No interest in The Donald?
Donald Trump’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border near Laredo, Texas on Thursday attracted about 100 media folks who filled two press buses. At a news conference, about 15 microphones faced him.
IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE…
Among those accompanying President Barack Obama on Air Force One on his Africa visit were more than a dozen members of Congress from both parties and both houses…Unhappy with a Des Moines Register editorial calling for him to pull out of the GOP race, Donald Trump banned the paper from attending his Iowa campaign event on Saturday…Usually news on jobless claims reaching a 41-year low would give the stock market a boost. But Thursday’s Labor Department figures showing workers filing for jobless benefits in the week ended July 18 fell by 26,000 to a seasonally-adjusted 255,000 had little effect with the Dow Industrials losing 119.12 points to 17731.92 that day, then slumping another 163.39 points to 17568.53 on Friday…While it usually takes one or two years for U.S. agencies to compile wide-ranging, multi-source figures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in just three weeks from the end of June said global land and sea surface temperatures in this year’s first six months were 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average…Stars and Stripes reported a study found 271,000 Vietnam veterans suffer from PTSD, with symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares and startle reactions, with a third of them also suffering from depression or anxiety…NewsBusters pointed out “another example of bias by omission” by ABC, CBS and NBC television networks in not covering Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on sanctuary cities and murders committed by illegal immigrants who benefitted from the policy. It added, “Fox News Channel’s Special Report was there to pick up the pieces left by their network equivalents with a full segment”…With 122 prisoners remaining, the White House is in final stages to shutter the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba…Nikkei Inc., Japan’s largest media company, purchased Britain’s Financial Times (known for printing on tan newsprint) for about $1.3 billion…Final edition of San Diego’s The Daily Transcript, which began publishing in 1886, will be on Sept. 1…Fortune magazine’s Global 500 list, out this week, placed Walmart as the world's largest company by revenues, while the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was number one in profits.
Snail mail sidetracked.
A Philadelphia postal service carrier was accused of stashing 22,500 pieces of mail in his car and garbage bags in his garage over an eight-month period. But the undelivered pieces were finally on the way to intended recipients last week.
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