DER SPIEGEL's Coverage of Donald Trump: We Have Failed to Tame the Media Monster

SPIEGEL Debatte asks media scientist Bernhard Poerksen to regularly write an essay criticizing DER SPIEGel.

He will address a significant issue in the news and analyze how we report on it on our website and in our magazine.

He has complete access to our archive and can speak to DERSPEGEL staff as he sees fit.

His essays will not be edited by us. Whatever he writes will be published just as written.

DER SPIEGEL has never been a particularly enthusiastic participant in the trivialization tendencies sometimes apparent in U.S. coverage ( Trump as a media clown). Even the term "clown" has rarely appeared in the magazine's coverage of Trump .

The media monster always wins because attention has become a value in and of itself, says Gergen .

Gergen : If it is true, after all, that Trump is a fascist entertainer who became powerful through media.

There is a forest-tree problem when it comes to reporting on Trump information overkill paired with a concurrent loss of the big picture.

Serious journalism is losing its interpretive power, says Frida Ghitis .

She says journalism produces a never-ending stream of hyperbole, discrediting itself with interpretive hysteria.