WaPo's Margaret Sullivan explains how, despite everything Trump put them through, the media 'still might have saved democracy'

Sarah D | 11:29 AM on November 09, 2020

It’s time for a little perspective from the Washington Post, you guys:

Perspective: The media never fully learned how to cover Trump. But they still might have saved democracy. https://t.co/ku2IJrEfjE

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 8, 2020

The media never fully learned how to cover Trump. But they still might have saved democracy. … My column on recent and not so recent events https://t.co/9aKb72UN8t

— Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) November 8, 2020

The illustrious Margaret Sullivan writes:

Over the past four or five years, I’ve been sharply critical of the media, including that subset I like to call the “reality-based press” — as distinguished from, say, the mendacious bilge spewed by the likes of Sean Hannity and Alex Jones. My continuing complaint has been that mainstream journalism never quite figured out how to cover President Trump, the master of distraction and insult who craved media attention and knew exactly how to get it, regardless of what it meant for the good of the nation.

…

The mainstream media, however flawed, has managed to tell us who Trump is. Even the worst of it — the way lie-filled briefings on the coronavirus, in which the president promoted untested cures and pure quackery, were broadcast live to the nation — had the benefit of showing people how unfit he was.

And the best of the Trump-era journalism has been crucial, true to its democratic mission of holding the powerful accountable.

Honestly, it was tough to pick out just three paragraphs, because the whole thing is just so impressive in its complete lack of self-awareness.