As Slavoj Zizek observed: 'The real catastrophe is the status quo.' When liberal journalism slams the door on reasoned arguments and authentic compassion, other doors swing wide for the likes of Trump.
The default corporate media excuse for ignoring 'our' crimes is that elected politicians have been chosen to serve by the people, and it is the task of journalism to support, not subvert, democracy. But of course democracy is profoundly subverted by a lack of honest media scrutiny. Structural media distortion is so extreme that, despite bombing seven countries, Barack Obama continues to be depicted and perceived as an almost saintly figure.
'Mainstream' media did not merely support Clinton, they declared propaganda war on Trump. As we have seen in this brief sample, even BBC journalists thought nothing of ridiculing Trump's 'narcissistic personality disorder' – unthinkable language from a BBC reporter describing an Obama, a Cameron, or indeed a Clinton.
The intensity of establishment support for Clinton meant that journalistic performance was filtered by host media and self-censorship. As the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told us in an interview:
'[T]he whole thing works by a kind of osmosis. If you ask anybody who works in newspapers, they will quite rightly say, "Rupert Murdoch," or whoever, "never tells me what to write", which is beside the point: they don't have to be told what to write. It's understood.'
The moment the vote was cast, pressures filtering out criticisms of Clinton and less hysterical coverage of Trump were lifted. The result is a semblance of balance that allows stunningly extreme 'mainstream' media to enhance their ill-deserved reputation for 'fairness' and 'impartiality'.