MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough insists TV news can’t get enough of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump because he’s a huge story, not just a ratings draw. In production meetings, Scarborough tells the Associated Press‘ David Bauder, “nobody ever says, ‘OK, Donald Trump is great for ratings.’ What we say is, ‘what the hell is going on? Can you believe this? What is happening?’ He is a very real story, and the longer he stays in front, the more of a story he’s going to be.”
Thomas Patterson, acting director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government put it bluntly for the other candidates: “It’s kind of a ‘no time for losers’ policy in the newsroom.”
“He’s getting a lot of attention that he should get because he’s doing so well in the polls and he’s getting a lot of attention because he’s Donald Trump, and you never know what he’s going to say,” said David Bohrman, a television consultant and former CNN Washington bureau chief.
Advertisement“It’s not negligence to cover him,” he said.