![\"Republican](\"http:\/\/nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/08\/gettyimages-518052568.jpg?quality=80&w=635\" "\\"Mainstream")
<\/div>\nRepublican presidential candidate Donald Trump enters the stage as he takes part in a town hall event moderated by Anderson Cooper March 29, 2016 in Milwaukee, Wisc. (Photo: Darren Hauck\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n It is no secret that the mainstream media has decided that the threat presented by a possible Donald Trump presidency is so grave that it has suspended even the illusion of objectivity. Writing in The New York Times<\/em>, media columnist Jim Rutenberggranted permission<\/a> to his fellow journalists \u201cto throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century, if not longer, and approach it in a way you\u2019ve never approached anything in your career.\u201d<\/p>\n The Observer and others have detailed the ways in which traditional media companies and even\u00a0tech companies have colluded<\/a> to maximize negative coverage of Trump and minimize negative coverage<\/a> of his opponent, Hillary Clinton. But it doesn\u2019t end there. As Rutenberg described, many journalists feel the need to \u201cmove closer than you\u2019ve ever been to being oppositional.\u201d<\/p>\n That opposition has extended into new and uncharted territory. In the coordinated effort to stop a dangerous candidate from obtaining, to use Rutenberg\u2019s breathless description of the stakes, \u201ccontrol of the United States nuclear codes,\u201d the mainstream media has taken not just to bashing Trump but to extracting a price even from those who support him.<\/p>\n There are a hundred examples, but here are just a few headlines that tell the story:<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at each of these. While I don\u2019t doubt that self-identified right-wing sites would look into the record of Hillary Clinton\u2019s doctors, it\u2019s much harder to imagine a site like Daily Beast, which fancies itself a centrist outlet (and is even edited by my old Rudy Giuliani speechwriting buddy, John Avlon), expending that kind of investigative energy on Hillary\u2019s non-political professionals. The message is clear: If you associate with Trump, we will rummage through your past.<\/p>\n The attacks on Trump supporters extend even beyond Trump relatives to include, bizarrely, the relatives of supporters.<\/p>\n As for The Washington Post<\/em> story, the message was equally clear. While children of presidential candidates have long been considered off limits by the mainstream media, the Post<\/em> clearly smelled danger in the crossover appeal of a\u00a0successful, presentable working mother. Ivanka\u00a0Trump (who, for the thousandth time, is married to the Observer\u2019s publisher) runs a company that is not only among the 10\u00a0percent\u00a0to provide paid maternity leave, but also offers unlimited vacation and sick days and flexible work schedules. So the Post<\/em> attacked a company that Ivanka\u2019s company does business with, only they implied that Ivanka was responsible for that company\u2019s business practices. The Post<\/em> later attached an editor\u2019s note and clarified the story to \u201cindicate that Ivanka Trump has no direct managerial role in G-III Apparel Group,\u201d but the damage had been done and the misleading headline remains to this day. Plus, there\u2019s the original URL of the story\u2014which is important in search engine optimization. It has not been corrected and still gives the false implication that Ivanka herself is not providing paid maternity leave.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the Peter Thiel story. His actions in supporting Trump supposedly have his industry peers \u201csquirming,\u201d according to The New York Times<\/em>. Yet Clinton supporters who represent industries in which she is unpopular are portrayed as principled and loyal Democrats. Consider that Politico reported<\/a>\u00a0\u201cClinton haunted by coal country comment<\/a>.\u201d Clinton said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.\u201d\u00a0Local officials sent a letter to Sen. Joe Manchin saying, \u201cBill and Hillary Clinton are simply not welcome in our town.\u201d So how come not a single supporter of hers, including\u00a0Sen. Manchin and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, is said to be making West Virginia \u201csquirm\u201d?<\/p>\n Where are the mainstream investigations of Hillary\u2019s doctors? Or the business practices of Chelsea Clinton? How is it that none of Hillary\u2019s supporters has any industry \u201csquirming\u201d?<\/p>\n The attacks on Trump supporters extend even beyond Trump relatives to include, bizarrely, the relatives of supporters. Buzzfeed did a whole story<\/a> on whether Josh Kushner\u2019s business would be hurt by the fact that\u2014can you follow this?\u2014his brother\u2019s wife\u2019s father is the presidential candidate. Is that the standard? Has there been a single article anywhere about the business prospects of Marc Mezvinsky\u2019s siblings? The writer of the Buzzfeed story\u2014the talented reporter Nitasha Tiku, who worked at the Observer and was happy to cash checks signed by Jared Kushner when she did\u2014contacted several colleagues of Josh Kushner to determine whether they\u2019d still be comfortable doing business with Kushner\u2019s investment firm, Thrive Capital. The Trump-opposing tech investor Chris Sacca is characterized by Tiku as saying, \u201cThe Trump connection might have affected Thrive directly.\u201d The message from the MSM is clear: Support Donald Trump, and you\u2014and maybe even your family\u2014will be ridiculed, investigated and ignored.<\/p>\n The Observer itself provides another good example. Our traffic and users have grown more than\u00a0five\u00a0times\u00a0since January 2013, from 1.3 million unique users reading 3 million pages a month to 6 million unique users reading 17 million pages a month. This information is easily available. And yet, from the time this contentious, ornery campaign took shape, our documented-to-death Trump connection has been revealed in the way the Observer itself has been covered.<\/p>\n Politico wrote about us, \u201cThe paper\u2019s editorials, which had largely ceased having influence\u2026\u201d I showed the reporter data proving that many more people read our editorials today than read them five years ago and I asked him to explain how he reached the conclusion that they had \u201clargely ceased having influence.\u201d He told me, \u201cMy editor wrote that line.\u201d He said he\u2019d get back to me if he got an answer. He never did. Esquire<\/em>\u2018s hit piece<\/a> on Jared Kushner called the Observer \u201ca once venerable newspaper\u201d without even pretending to offer an explanation of what made it venerable in the past or why it\u2019s no longer so, despite the increased revenue, readership, staff, investment in journalism, or other facts I would have been happy to provide had anyone asked.<\/p>\n The Daily Beast wrote that<\/a>, \u201cKushner and the paper\u2019s editor in chief, Ken Kurson, were the object of controversy and staff protests and resignations.\u201d Got that? Staff resignations with an s, as in plural. Actually it\u2019s been one staff resignation, a writer who was not the \u201ctop reporter\u201d (he was No. 2 on a three-person team) that CNN crowed about in its headline<\/a>. Given the constant turnover throughout the Observer\u2019s history, long before Trump ran for president, it\u2019s striking\u00a0that CNN would devote a headline to this boring-as-hell non-event.<\/p>\n There\u2019s another tactic employed by the mainstream media that\u2019s inversely related to punishing Trump supporters\u2014rewarding Hillary supporters.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s just the general anti-Observer snark. It\u2019s been a fact of life, especially since our beloved longtime editor Peter Kaplan left the paper in 2009, but has been dialed to 11 since Trump began his unlikely ascent in American politics. A telling\u00a0example involves a trifling story<\/a> we ran, in which New York Times<\/em>\u00a0editor-in-chief Dean Baquet said \u201cFuck You\u201d to a reporter he thought had used racist language. To me, it was the exact kind of funny and revealing little insider story that Kaplan would have loved (and I don\u2019t claim to speak for him, despite the generous way he fed me advice even though I didn\u2019t start here till four years after he left). Nonetheless, some media types, eager for any opportunity to celebrate the Observer\u2019s demise, pounced. The Times<\/em>\u2018 own Willy Staley, for example, tweeted<\/a> out the story and insightfully commented, \u201cThe Observer has become so fucking weird!\u201d Staley did not know at the time that Baquet himself praised the story, calling it \u201cPerfectly fair.\u201d It has been fun to watch the media simultaneously declare the Observer totally irrelevant but also responsible for electing the president of the United States.<\/p>\n At least Gawker, z\u2019l, was less circumspect in its disapproval of what takes place here. In lambasting<\/a> our paper\u2019s endorsement of Trump in the Republican primary (we also endorsed<\/a> Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, which understandably generated far less coverage), Hamilton Nolan wrote \u201cThe New York Observer<\/em>, <\/em>which was once a good newspaper, is endorsing the owner\u2019s wife\u2019s dad for president.\u201d That\u2019s at least funny, and it acknowledges by stating as a fact that the Observer was once good that the idea that Observer is no longer a \u201cgood newspaper\u201d is Nolan\u2019s opinion, rather than trying to hide behind fact-ish-sounding writing like \u201conce venerable\u201d or \u201clargely ceased having influence.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s another tactic employed by the mainstream media that\u2019s inversely related to punishing Trump supporters\u2014rewarding Hillary supporters. Not just any Hillary supporters, but those brave Republicans who are putting country ahead of party by supporting Clinton.<\/p>\n Search for\u00a0\u201cRepublicans back Hillary\u201d in Google and you get \u201cThere are now dozens of big-name Republicans supporting Hillary\u201d<\/a> (Washington Post<\/em>), \u201c<\/a>The Republicans Who Support Hillary Clinton Over Donald Trump<\/a>\u201d (The Atlantic), \u201cWhich Republicans Are Against Donald Trump? A Cheat Sheet (<\/a>also The Atlantic), \u201cAt Least 110 Republican Leaders Won\u2019t Vote for Donald Trump. Here\u2019s When They Reached Their Breaking Point<\/a>.\u201d (New York Times<\/em>), \u201cHere are the Republicans Voting for Hillary Clinton Over Donald<\/a>\u201d (Time<\/em>), and \u201c<\/a>The Biggest GOP Names Backing Hillary Clinton\u2014So Far<\/a> (The Daily Beast).<\/p>\n Enter \u201cDemocrats back Trump\u201d and you get a story from The Hill from January and a Toledo Blade<\/em> story.<\/p>\n The simple explanation would be that tons of Republicans back Hillary while few Democrats back Trump. But that narrative defies the reality of a Republican primary that drew record numbers<\/a> of new GOP registrants and set a new record<\/a> for votes cast, unlike the Democratic contest. And with the candidates roughly tied in the polls (the LA Times<\/em>, for example, has Trump up by three\u00a0points<\/a>), there\u2019s no way a \u201cwave\u201d of Republican Trump rejecters cannot be equaled by roughly the same number of Democratic Hillary rejecters. Unless the polling is drastically undercounting Hillary supporters (most think it\u2019s more likely to be undercounting Trump voters, who have been shamed out of telling a pollster they support such a \u201cdangerous\u201d candidate), there have to be at least as many Trump Democrats as there are Hillary Republicans. But the media isn\u2019t interested in finding them.<\/p>\n What\u2019s even more surprising than the media suddenly cheering someone like former Bush aide Paul Wolfowitz, who was universally loathed by the MSM\u00a0up until the moment he announced his support<\/a> for Hillary, has been the way the press issues valentines to Republicans no one has never heard of. How did Maria Comella, a press aide to Chris Christie, merit 1,200 words and a \u201cFirst on CNN\u201d feature<\/a> on air simply by declaring her support for Hillary?<\/p>\n Republican candidates have long complained about the bias in American media. Most of the time it\u2019s nonsense. John McCain courted the favorable opinion of The New York Times<\/em> so aggressively and for so long that it was almost fun to see him crying about how tough it was to run against a media darling like Barack Obama in 2008. Mitt Romney, who really did suffer from poor coverage, mostly had himself to blame\u2014secret tapes about 47\u00a0percent\u00a0freeloaders may have been reported by Mother Jones, but they weren\u2019t manufactured by Mother Jones. And the alleged bias can sometimes work to a Republican\u2019s advantage. When George W. Bush called New York Times<\/em> reporter Adam Clymer a \u201cmajor league asshole,\u201d probably as many people admired the future president\u2019s authenticity as chastised him for his uncouth remarks.<\/p>\n What\u2019s different here is the dropping of even the pretense of objectivity. In unilaterally determining that Donald Trump is unfit even to be covered objectively\u2014to the point that he must be disqualified by any means necessary\u2014the mainstream media has set a dangerous precedent.<\/p>\n\n