{"id":299401,"date":"2017-03-17T02:37:09","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T01:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumping-trump-and-howling-at-the-moonves\/"},"modified":"2017-03-17T02:37:09","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T01:37:09","slug":"trumping-trump-and-howling-at-the-moonves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumping-trump-and-howling-at-the-moonves\/","title":{"rendered":"Trumping Trump and Howling at the Moonves"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Donald Trump and the U.S. news media have an incestuous but symbiotic love-hate relationship. Trump rails against the media and the media rails against Trump, while both sides profit, says JP Sottile.<\/p>\n<p>By JP Sottile<\/p>\n<p>Les Moonves cannot lose \u2026 and he knows it. The all-too-well compensated CEO of CBS said as much back in late February of 2016. The Bataan Death March of presidential campaigns had finally kicked into high gear and a month-long barrage of primaries, caucuses and televised debates portended just the sort of never-ending story-line that makes a media mogul\u2019s dreams come true.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_16703\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Les-Moonves-300x200.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16703\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Les-Moonves-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves-560x373.jpg 560w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves-260x173.jpg 260w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves-160x107.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves.jpg 618w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-16703\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Les-Moonves-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Les-Moonves-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves-560x373.jpg 560w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves-260x173.jpg 260w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves-160x107.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Les-Moonves.jpg 618w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">CBS Chief Executive Officer Les Moonves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The man at the center of that long, pitched battle for the hearts and mindlessness of the American people was none other than future Reality-Star-in-Chief and all-around good for business-man President Donald J. Trump. His starring role in the daily melodrama also known as \u201cThe race for the White House\u201d had Les leaping over the moon with financial excitement.<\/p>\n<p>Moonves was so effusive that, in a fit of gleeful honesty, the titular head of America\u2019s number one network <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/blogs\/on-media\/2016\/02\/les-moonves-trump-cbs-220001\">told<\/a> the denizens of a Morgan Stanley Technology, Media &amp; Telecom Conference in San Francisco that Trump\u2019s candidacy \u201cmay not be good for America, but it\u2019s damn good for CBS.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the time, Moonves was just pondering all the advertising dollars that would inevitably pile up on the way to a profitable political train-wreck. And Les was right. Train-wrecks may make for bad politics and even worse policy, but boy-oh-boy \u2026 do they ever make for great television!<\/p>\n<p>In fact, televising train-wrecks, car crashes or any kind of contentious conflict is a sure-fire way to goad world-weary audiences into rubbernecking. In this age of low-overhead\/high-drama reality programming, it\u2019s also the cheapest and easiest way to pile up cash on a corporate media balance sheet.<\/p>\n<p>And no doubt, Moonves could see early on that Trump would pile it higher and deeper than anyone who\u2019d come before him. As the Hollywood Reporter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/leslie-moonves-donald-trump-may-871464\">detailed<\/a>, Les\u00a0wanted a lot more. He hoped the \u201ccircus\u201d full of \u201cbomb throwing\u201d would continue all the way through the campaign. And why not?<\/p>\n<p>In&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/03\/16\/trumping-trump-and-howling-at-the-moonves\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump and the U.S. news media have an incestuous but symbiotic love-hate relationship. Trump rails against the media and the media rails against Trump, while both sides profit, says JP Sottile. By JP Sottile Les Moonves cannot lose \u2026 and he knows it. The all-too-well compensated CEO of CBS said as much back in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-299401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}