The Media's Role In The 2016 Circus

President Obama has called out the media in part, for the zoo of the 2016 election campaign. Is he right?

Has the media made this year’s presidential campaign cycle a zoo? A circus? President Obama seemed to say as much this week, calling out an obsession with “sideshows and carnival barkers.” Saying candidates aren’t being held accountable for unworkable plans. But did the media really make Donald Trump? Bury Bernie Sanders? Hold back Hillary? Crown Cruz? Unleash the craziness of name-calling and fisticuffs?  This hour On Point, the media and the like-no-other-we-can-remember 2016 campaign.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Hadas Gold, media reporter for POLITICO. (@Hadas_Gold)

Brian Stelter, senior media correspondent for CNN and host of CNN's "Reliable Sources." Author of the book, "Top of the Morning." (@brianstelter)

Jeff Greenfield, contributing correspondent for the PBS NewsHour and contributor to the Daily Beast, POLITICO and many others. Author of "If Kennedy Lived," among many others. (@greenfield64)

POLITICO: Media's Trump frenzy sparks questions — "It’s become a common theme throughout the campaign. Instead of debates about policy or even the horse race, the media narrative has become completely dominated by the latest Trump drama."

CNN Money: How the media missed Trump: 'No clue what regular folk feel' — "There's been some incisive, impressive coverage of the Trump phenomenon. But more than a few reporters and commentators have regrets, so this is a moment for self-reflection. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently wrote that media elites 'did not listen carefully enough.'"

New York Times: A Castro Met a Free Press, and the World Watched It Live — "You could write off the whole affair as bureaucratic bungling, if it did not fit a broader pattern during Mr. Obama’s two terms — the criminal investigations into government leakers and whistle-blowers by his Justice Department; related incidents of snooping into reporters’ phone records and emails; and a more general press strategy that frequently puts the president in front of opinion writers and non-journalist media personalities but rarely provides formal interviews to the reporters who cover him daily, many of whom work for traditional newspapers and wire services."