The Media's Love Affair with Shooting Itself in the Foot

So the Covington mess happened a year ago. Robby Soave has a really good summary.

Media trust is at an all time low, but only among Republicans. The portion that have a good or fair amount of trust in the media is 15%, compared to 70% for Democrats.

I am old enough to remember how the media treated the nascent Tea Party movement. I was flabbergasted when I saw a CNN correspondent lecture a bailout protestor for not being sufficiently appreciative of the $400 rebate he would receive through the bailout. Around the same time, a well-dressed black guy attended an Obama rally while open carrying an AR-15. This was noteworthy for some for the gun alone, but MSNBC had a thoroughly absurd reaction. They bent over backwards by cropping the video footage to make sure that no one could ascertain his race, because they followed up the cropped footage with commentary about whether this had "racial overtones" because "white people showing up with guns". It was so fucking blatant.

There's probably something along the lines of the iron law of institutions at play. The short-term benefit is to cater to your partisan audience at the expense of long-term credibility. I think we're already seeing the erosion taking hold and there does not appear to be any real incentive to jerk the wheel back.