en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

Just like within actual government there’s supposed to be balance of power between different branches or houses, there’s this idea that the role of the press is to hold governments accountable.

(More of an ELI12, but that’s the gist of the idea)

You know, I thought I could but on brief search it’s… complicated.

This is the best nugget from Wikipedia that sums up the general notion I’m trying to state that the media has been afforded a role in society - and that they aren’t acting as an independent class.

The modern term the fourth estate invokes medieval three-estate systems, and usually refers to some particular force outside that medieval power structure, most commonly the independent press or the mass media.[3][4]

Their whole framing of the story should acknowledge that he's an enemy of the United States. He got dozens of CIA assets killed, he supported our enemy in a shooting war that's still going on, and he tried to kill a bunch of politicians to seize power. Instead, they're treating him like a candidate for president. Every single newspaper should be running stories about what a catastrophe it would be if someone who's so clearly hostile to the United States managed to seize control of the United States government.

It's like those editors from World War 2 that wanted to tone down coverage of Hitler because he's a popular and successful leader. I mean, your statement's not fully objectively wrong. But also, objectively, you're missing the point.

I guess that you’re right they cant explictly say “Trump is a facist” because they will get sued but they hint at in and imply it in so many articles. Here’s a quick search which shows what I mean about journalists talking about this. You could find 10+ of these types of posts from each of the big news sites.

Opinion: Trump’s praise of dictators tells us all we need to know

‘It’s happening right here’: The authoritarian threat to American democracy

Why does Trump keep talking like a fascist? Because it works

Twelve signs Trump would try to run a fascist dictatorship in a second term

Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate

Let’s be honest here: how many people are really still getting their news from one of those formally mainstream outlets? Not a single news outlet is in the top 50 most visited websites. Cable and satellite subscriptions are at an all-time low and nobody even bothers hooking an antenna up to their TV anymore. We all just stream everything. And when’s the last time you’ve seen a newspaper on a driveway? I know I haven’t in over a decade.

What I’m saying is that what CNN, NBC, ABC, NYT, etc. don’t report on is irrelevant, because nobody gets their news from them anymore.

fucking Heritage Foundation, wow.

At this point they are just evil for the sake of being evil.

Pay both sides, so you always come out on top.

But the folks they support are inevitably the most conservative Democrats in the bluest states.

Have you been frozen since the 90s? All the proclamations that liberalism won and it was the end of history, and we’d just have technocratic tweaks to capitalism forever were wrong.

Hell this very post is about liberals being complicit with or facilitating the rise of fascism.

I just want to throw in here, that the ‘silent majority’ used to mean the dead.

* according to a comic I read on the internet, but meh, maybe I’ll look it up later