Why the News Media Normalizes Trump

The answer to the question posed here hasn’t changed since the president of one of the major news networks commented on Donald Trump shortly after the future president came onto the American political scene in 2015: “I know he’s terrible for the United States, but, given our ratings and profits, he’s terrific for us!”

If the mainstream news were non-profit, it would report on Trump the same way organizations like “Democracy Now” do, and he would have been laughed off the stage immediately.  But that would have come at an unacceptable cost: no spectacle, few viewers, no extreme profits.