Fall and fall of the American media

I found colleagues in similar state of mourning over dead media credibility in the US elections, and journalistic ethics buried in a grave so deep there may be no resurrection.
“The complete collapse of American journalism as we know it,” wrote veteran reporter Michael Goodwin in the New York Post. “The frenzy to bury Donald Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House….The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America…
The New York Times now is so out of the closet as a Clinton shill that it is giving itself permission to violate any semblance of evenhandedness in its news pages as well as its opinion pages."
The American media betraying their people, country and profession is of proportions never before seen in a democracy – so grotesque it might even be refused entry into a Frank Kafka plotline.
“The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play,” said Goodwin, a former NYT reporter under Abe Rosenthal. “Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent. Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang suffers the daily beating that Trump does.”
Some Americans are angrily noticing this. The crowd at a Trump rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, yelled at media persons: “Tell the truth, tell the truth”. The situation has so deeply sunk to what we once called ‘yellow journalism’, that I no more read the New York Times, Washington Post, the Guardian, BBC and other once credible media names. I rely on news reports from AFP etc, and other alternative media choices the Internet gives. 
The media bias includes glaring double-standards. For instance, accusations of sexual misconduct from decades ago against Donald Trump are prominently covered, but the US media and Michella Obama being “shaken to the core” does not include Juanita Broaddrick who I heard say in a press conference on October 9: “Bill Clinton raped me, and Hillary Clinton attacked me.”
Ignoring a publicly-made rape charge against the former (twice) US president and his wife the current presidential candidate? Are we living in the same, sane world? Media corporations ignore or cursorily address other criminal charges against Hillary Clinton: treason, destruction of evidence (deleting 33,000 emails), their Clinton Foundation accepting millions of dollars from foreign governments hostile to the US, misusing billions of dollars of aid money for earthquake-hit Haiti, a laundry list of lies exposed through WikiLeaks, the Clintons’ conflicts of interest with lucrative ‘paid speech’ fees ($700,000 - $1.5 million) from US and foreign companies. 
But the media actually defends her as would her personal campaign managers and spokespersons! “By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media’s reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards,” said Goodwin. 
“No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion.” The media, ‘Fourth Estate’ of a democracy, serves as watchdog to guard freedom in a country. But when the watchdog becomes a lapdog of criminals, the house of democracy is no longer safe.
Far worse is the watchdog as enemy of the truth, betraying its people, as is happening in the US elections.
Swedish journalist and filmmaker Johannes Wahlström wrote in his article ‘An Obituary of the New York Times’ (Unz Review, Sept 14, 2016), recalling a visit to NYT headquarters for his 2013 documentary ‘Mediastan’: “The New York Times was a guiding star… my inspiration...
“Imagine my surprise when I saw that the very same paper had these special floors, off-limits to journalists, where the dodgiest deals with the dodgiest figures were being brokered, and that the heads of this newspaper were not even embarrassed about it. Rather, quite the contrary, they seemed to gloat.”
The aftermath of the US Presidential elections could lead to collapse of major media houses. People sick of corrupt, toxic, adulterated, poisonous journalism, will lose trust, boycott prominent news channels (already happening with CNN in the US) and major newspapers (now online).
Or a global catastrophe - only one presidential candidate, Trump, regularly mentions the $20 trillion US debt. If unchecked, a bankrupt US can be economic Armageddon. Countries like India have to be prepared.
We have to understand what is at stake, for the US and the world. In a campaign rally in Florida on October 13, Trump called this is not just another election, but a ‘movement’ to take back the government from vested interests and return it to the people. And the US media has declared open war against him. He calls them ‘dishonest’. The truth hurts to whomever it applies. They seem to hate him.
Unexpectedly perhaps, Trump has become a serious threat to vested interests – which is why no presidential candidate faced such calculated, calibrated multi-pronged ferocious assaults from the entire establishment forces, from outside US, from within his own political party, and from the media misleading themselves and the masses.
I first noticed the discordance in 2015 - when I saw a YouTube recording of one of Trump’s campaign speeches, then checked out his website - and found a completely different picture to what was being reported in the media. I wrote about it (‘Why the other Trump can surprise’, The Statesman, 22 December 2015) before he was elected nominee for President.
A systematic, sustained media disinformation campaign that distorts, demonizes and demeans someone can be propagated to such an extent that even those supporting the victim are ridiculed. 
Check for yourself. See original sources like unedited tapes of speeches, debates, press releases, to see the stark difference in US Election coverage. Media corporations twist meaning of Trump’s words, and give it a ‘racist’, ‘anti-minority’ slant, ignore anything positive he says, publish any negative news about him real or fake, while ignoring treason and criminal charges against his opponent, senator and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
See Trump’s and Clinton’s Twitter accounts. While the media hoots at Trump’s campaign being in ‘melt-down’, ‘disarray’, he tweets busy campaign schedules with photos of rallies attended by record crowds filling stadiums, as the 21,000 in his rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 14.
As of October 15, Hillary Clinton’s Twitter account carries no campaign schedule - maybe because of poor attendance at her rallies, sometimes with barely 50 people in a school gym (see on YouTube).
“This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not We The People reclaim control over our government,” Trump said at Palm Beach, Florida, on October 13.
I have this conviction, maybe a gut feeling from timeless lives. Sometimes, destiny picks the wrong man at the right time to do what is needed. Trump might be the world’s last chance to haul the US economy from the abyss. I repeat: ‘The other Trump might surprise’ – if the elections of November 8 are not rigged, and if he is left alive to serve as the 45th President of the United States.
The writer is a senior, Mumbai-based journalist.