The difference is that journalism comes with responsibilities, that are largely getting ignored. This article was supposedly exempted from political penalties because it&#x27;s &quot;so interesting&quot;. But if you look at it, it starts with the assertion<p>&quot;Trump’s campaign has stirred bigoted feelings in the electorate and played to voters’ worst fears and prejudices&quot;<p>has the first interview response say<p>&quot;he’s totally foreign to any of the skills that are wanted in a president of the United States&quot;<p>and then hopes you&#x27;ll consider the rest of the article middle-of-the-road political analysis. Well, maybe if you&#x27;re inclined to the &quot;anyone who supports the candidate I don&#x27;t like must be evil or stupid&quot; line of thinking, you&#x27;ll go for that notion. And you&#x27;ll keep being befuddled by how more and more of the population seems to have gone mad...<p>Now, here&#x27;s where I&#x27;ll stick in the caveat: I&#x27;m not American, I don&#x27;t really care who America elects (it&#x27;s not up to me), but the problems with journalism in your country are the same elsewhere.<p>It is not politics that is broken; it is journalism, and the public knows it. People do not blame politicians for the 15-second sound bite or for spin, they blame the journalists because they know dang well that the politicians do soundbites because if they did long reasoned speeches the journalists would just cherry-pick whatever bits they liked to paint whatever narrative they liked. In the last few years, journalism has gone over the tipping point -- journalists are all over Twitter as the voice of the public, and Twitter re-tweets the journalists. It all becomes very circular, and quickly spirals away from any reality -- media and social media both get targeted by activism campaigns. Twitterstorms have too often become media headlines in themselves, and it has killed media credibility. Today the narratives all reek of being inventions.<p>&quot;Trump is a clown&quot;, &quot;Trump is bigoted&quot;, &quot;Is Trump a fascist&quot; and yet his numbers keep going up -- it&#x27;s nothing about anger or a more prejudiced population (nobody&#x27;s replaced the US population between 2012 and 2016...) It pushes votes to Trump because media narratives are now <i>actively unbelieved</i>.<p>Sanders and Trump sound extreme? The electorate doesn&#x27;t care (why should they -- the &quot;establishment&quot; in congress and the courts will stop all the extreme ideas anyway). But it&#x27;s a marker that they&#x27;re not saying just what you&#x27;re allowed to say. Jeb&#x27;s biggest gaffe was when he commented &quot;you can&#x27;t say that&quot; about Trump. Do you reckon the US public wants to elect a president who would shirk from expressing their opinion for fear of a Twitterstorm?<p>Sanders is perhaps a genuine socialist campaigner. Trump is essentially a smart operator who was the first to realise that this year you can essentially ride &quot;F you, Twitter&quot; all the way to the bank.