Did you know that the mainstream media has given Trump a free pass? Neither did I.

 Really rather astonishing.  I enjoyed James Fallows's work in his early years as a reporter.  Interesting stories and interesting insights.  Once he came back from overseas and settled into the DC swamp, originality and insight dwindled away.  He is comes across as a Mandarin Class lackey, defending the status quo where old interests are protected and citizens merely pay taxes and serve their country while the Mandarin Class waltz around and Marie Antoinette like, cannot fathom why the other 90% are frustrated and angry.

But this piece rather takes the cake.  Fallows's argument is that the press did not learn their lesson last time around.  

In the first quarter of 2017, when the immensity of the disconnect between the media and the public was finally becoming obvious, many media insiders were insisting that they needed to get outside of their cocoon and get to know ordinary Americans.  Editors dispatched emissaries from New York and Washington to discover exactly what sort of fever it was that had caused Americans to choose a different direction than another old establishment pol.

It didn't last long.  The few who ventured out returned to the Borg and were reintegrated.  

And here is The Media Learned Nothing From 2016 by James Fallows.  In December 2016, the mainstream media was vowing to learn their lesson and not focus on the intramural sparring of Washington but to instead finally report on reality.  It was a thought which did not last long but it seemed a genuine thought at the time.

Fallows seems not to have noticed.  For him, the lesson not learned was not that the mainstream media was not well enough connected to understand Americans.  For Fallows, the lesson not learned from 2016 is that they really need to double down on the status quo and that the press should have been more fierce a critic of Trump than the easy ride they have since then given him.

No, seriously.  That is the argument.  Out of respect for Fallows and his early work, I read the article.  But there is nothing there that could not have been written by a 27 year Bernie bro Ben Rhodes journalist at Vox.  He really thinks that the mainstream media has given Trump a pass and not held him accountable to the degree he should have been.