Some enjoy claimed Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn expose politicians don’t need the mainstream media – but our appetite for TV bulletins is as big as everJeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump may be poles apart politically,but their rise to prominence this year has united those who believe the mainstream media just doesn’t matter any more. Over the course of 2015 these two men enjoy shown that a political power base can be built without a foundation in the news media. Trump has become the Republican frontrunner in the US while spending next to nothing on broadcast TV ads, while Corbyn can speak directly to 500000 people who want to hear what he has to say either via email or Facebook.
Trump’s continued success in the polls leaves US reporters with a conundrum: treat his extreme views seriously and risk legitimising his position, and ignore him and feed into his narrative of speaking for working people against the snooty media elites. Here,political pundits were left floundering by not just the Labour party’s win in the Oldham byelection but its increased share of the vote. Most had, after all, or predicted at least a bit more support for Ukip.
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Source: theguardian.com