Donald Trump Explains To Cable News How Their Relationship Works...

...in words so simple that even Don Lemon can understand them

And now they're all pissy about how rudely --

-- their meth dealer has treated them.

From the very capable Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post:

It’s time for TV news to stop playing the stooge for Donald Trump

By Margaret Sullivan Media Columnist

September 16 at 1:47 PM

Donald Trump said “Jump,” and TV news said “How high?”

It happened again Friday morning when the Republican presidential candidate held the media hostage for nearly an hour after promising a major news announcement.

“Breaking News: Trump To Make ‘Big Announcement’ on Birther Issue,” said the banner on MSNBC.

“Soon: Trump To Address Birther Issue,” said CNN’s banner. Fox News was, of course, along for the ride.

While they waited, and waited, Trump provided what amounted to a campaign infomercial and shamelessly promoted his new Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington.

When it was over, and he had said the absurdly obvious — that he now accepts that President Obama was born in the United States — there was, at least, some long overdue indignation.

“We got played again,” CNN’s John King said on the air. And that was as obvious as the announcement itself.

...

Dan Gillmor, a media scholar at Arizona State University, on Twitter called this episode “universal sewer dwelling” for cable news. By phone afterward, he said that “no journalist with a shred of integrity would have covered it.”

Saying the press got played, he said, is an understatement.

“This is a campaign and a candidate that completely understands how the press works — or doesn’t work — and exploits the blatant weaknesses of political journalism.”

...

Ms. Sullivan ends with something between a prayer and a demand that this must stop:

With public trust in the media at an abysmal low, it’s time — long past time — for TV news outlets to stop playing the stooge for Trump. The paradox, of course, is that Trump expresses nothing but contempt for the very people in the media who have made his candidacy viable.

Even if the turning point comes far too late, when billions of dollars of free media have promoted a candidacy like never before, it must come now.

Indignation in the immediate moment should turn to soul-searching in the boardroom and the newsroom.

This can’t happen again.

Sure it can happen again.  

In fact as anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the political media over the last 20 years will tell you, it will definitely happen again...and again...and again...until the reward structure of cable news changes from the top down.  Until pandering to bigots and Both Sidering every Republican atrocity into fog and ash stops being their fucking business model.  

And that will not happen until an unholy amount of professional pain is inflicted on the perpetrators, which means firing a lot of media hacks and liars and quislings, from the top down.