Cynthia M. Allen: The only thing bigger in this election than Trump's comeback is the media's self-own

Everyone loves a comeback story.

Maybe that’s all there is to Donald Trump’s otherwise unbelievable victory over Vice President Kamala Harris and the most well-financed campaign in U.S. history.

Or maybe it’s nothing more complicated than election fundamentals: Too many Americans think the nation is on the wrong-track. It’s the economy, stupid.

In the coming days and weeks, there will be no shortage of analysis about how and why the Harris campaign collapsed in its final days while Trump was ascendant — to a degree most of us could not even imagine.

Any assessment that doesn’t include a serious and sober look at the media’s role in Trump’s victory should be disregarded outright. Because there is no doubt that the fourth estate contributed mightily to Trump’s rise and tremendous comeback, very much in spite of itself.

It feels like forever ago that someone (maybe Sarah Palin?) began using the phrase “lamestream media” in reference to legacy national media organizations. It was kind of a joke at the time, something a sore loser or ungracious winner might say in response to unfavorable coverage.

There were certainly instances of prejudicial reporting, but a critical mass of large newsrooms still operated with integrity, even if some reporters and commentators within them did not.

At some point, though, the meme became self-evident. Legacy media organizations (you know those to which I am referring) had become weak, impaired, unabashedly biased and wholly unable to fulfill their critical duty to simply report what happens.

News reporters, through both selective omissions and completely biased reporting, began picking and choosing political winners and losers with relative impunity. Hence the rise of Fox News in response.

One need only look to the presidency of George W. Bush or the campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney to see how they endured far more scrutiny and outright mockery than their political opponents.

But it was the ascendance of Trump that sent them over the edge, totally eliminating even the specter of objectivity in reporting.

Members of the media — particularly those on television networks but also national print publications — were so fueled with hatred for Trump (not always for the wrong reasons) that reporting with prejudice became, it appeared, a feature and not a bug of their job.

They filled the airwaves and flooded front pages with false narratives about what they perceived the average American to care about (a joke at the expense of Puerto Rico, an idiotic comment about immigrants eating pets), but forgot about the fundamental struggles facing people every day.

They suppressed stories that did matter — inflation, millions of unauthorized immigrants putting economic pressure on American cities, antisemitism on college campuses and American streets — and demonized those who tried to tell them.

They repeatedly took Trump’s statements out of context so as to be reported in the worst possible light. (No, he did not say that his critic Liz Cheney should be executed by firing squad.)

Trump has never needed any help at sounding crazy. He has said enough ridiculous, outlandish and cringe-worthy things over the course of his political life to warrant outrage and disgust on their own merit. Why offer him help?

Meanwhile, Harris enjoyed some of the most favorable reporting imaginable.

Her “joy-filled” campaign received every grace the media could bestow, from softball questions to favorable editing that made her inchoate responses to simple questions seem reasonable and concise.

She was protected and coddled and excused in ways that the women who claim to be feminists should have found insulting and belittling.

Social media and the internet have made it easier to create and spread false or misleading information and narratives, indeed, but they have had the opposite effect, too.

These sources provide everyone with access and opportunity to see the full context of remarks and the entire interview instead of just the tightly edited version, allowing viewers to make up their own minds about what was and wasn’t said and if it mattered at all.

As it turns out, people like being lied and told what to think even less than they like Trump’s malarkey, so to speak.

Who’d have thunk?

Self-evaluation is always difficult, especially when emotions are running high.

But the national media’s devolution during the Trump years has to be part of any post-mortem by the Harris campaign. And if Democrats want to win in the future, they better look for ways to address it.

Because they just couldn’t help themselves. Instead, they helped Trump in what may be the greatest self-own anyone could have imagined.

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