The Washington Post's Dana Milbank deserves some credit for writing this about all of the awful things about the White House Correspondents' Dinner:

The fun begins, appropriately enough, at the offices of the American Gas Association, where White House reporters are feted by the lobbyists of the Quinn Gillespie firm. More lobbyist-sponsored entertainment comes from the Motion Picture Association. Along the way, journalists wind up serving as pimps: We recruit Hollywood stars to entertain the politicians, and we recruit powerful political figures to entertain the stars. Corporate bosses bring in advertisers to gawk at the display, and journalists lucky enough to score invitations fancy themselves celebrities.

Milbank points out that his own paper invited Donald Trump as one of its guests (which is reason enough to write such a column, and skip the event altogether, as Milbank did).

He adds that the parties, after-parties and celebrity-studded receptions add up, and that:

the cumulative effect is icky. With the proliferation of A-list parties and the infusion of corporate and lobbyist cash, Washington journalists give Americans the impression we have shed our professional detachment and are aspiring to be like the celebrities and power players we cover.

I think Americans long ago rendered a verdict on the "professional detachment" of Beltway media elite. He closed with this:

My late colleague David Broder once recalled how, when he began newspapering in mid-century, journalists embraced the credo that "the only way a reporter should ever look at a politician is down." He said they "prided themselves on their independence, their skepticism, and they relished their role in exposing the follies and the larceny of public officials."

That's an odd sentiment to associate with Broder, who rarely expressed that kind of critical attitude towards politicians. The most notable exception might have been Broder's hostility towards Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair.

MSNBC host has been receiving praise for going after his NBC bosses--as the L.A. Times noted today (4/29/11):

MSNBC commentator Lawrence O'Donnell escalated attacks on NBC executives this week. On his MSNBC show the Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell Wednesday night, he accused NBC (another division of his own company) of allowing the Celebrity Apprentice host Donald Trump to spread "racist" lies against President Obama in demanding that Obama produce his long-form birth certificate....

"NBC has created a monster who is using his NBC fame to spew hatred reeking with racist overtones and undertones," O'Donnell said on his show.

This isn't the first time O'Donnell has done something like this--remember that when the news surfaced about GE's tax avoidance, O'Donnell slammed the company--which still owns a hefty chunk of NBC.

O'Donnell recently did an interview with Howard Kurtz of the Daily Beast, where he expressed frustration with the cable television game and said, "I can't look up and imagine myself doing this for three years."

At this rate, he might not have to worry about hanging around that long.

Some mystical power forces the corporate media to cover Donald Trump.

In the New York Times today:

But White House officials concluded about a month ago that the falsehoods had moved from "the nether regions of the Internet" into the mainstream political arena, thanks in large part to the efforts of Mr. Trump, the real estate developer and reality television host who has used the issue as a media magnet.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post elaborated on the PBS NewsHour:

I mean, I think that the press probably does bear some responsibility for this but there's no question that what Donald Trump had done over the last month, in bringing this issue back to the forefront, at a time when I think most people thought it had been pretty well settled politically, not that--not that there wasn't still some controversy, but that, for the most part, this wasn't a live issue.

But Donald Trump helped to make it a live issue. And all the press coverage attendant to that, some of it aimed at debunking what Donald Trump was saying, nonetheless contributed to this atmosphere.

"Issues" are not brought "to the forefront" and made a "live issue" by some series of accidents, or the physical properties of magnets. Media outlets make decisions about what to cover.  In Balz's world, Trump started talking and the press simply had to cover it. Trump didn't make anything a "live issue"--people who have television stations and newspapers decided to treat him as if he is a serious person.

Today the Drudge Report (4/26/11) screams:

SHOCK POLL: ONLY 38% SAY OBAMA 'DEFINITELY' BORN IN USA

The all-caps headline links to a USA Today story that quotes that 38 percent figure, courtesy of a new Gallup poll.

For the record, the poll also asked respondents the same question about Donald Trump. Forty-three percent say they are definitely sure he was born in the United States.

The first role of the corporate press in an election cycle is to weed out candidates who they deem nonviable. This usually means choosing not to cover candidates whose ideas that fall outside the Beltway conventional wisdom (e.g., Dennis Kucinich), or those who reporters decide  have no real chance of winning the nomination.

The speculation that reality TV star/mogul Donald Trump might run in 2012 flips the narrative around--and demonstrates the fact that the media can change the "rules" whenever they want. Trump is extremely unlikely to actually run, and his "ideas" mostly revolve around a long-debunked conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born where he was born. So by any normal standard he would get no coverage. But he's perhaps the dominant feature of the early campaign coverage, making a string of television appearances that a supposedly marginal candidate would never enjoy.

What gives? Some reporters have tried to find ways to explain why this is so, or at least justify the attention. Take Dan Balz in the Washington Post (4/24/11):

The New York businessman has grabbed headlines with his provocative remarks on President Obama's birthplace. He continues to question whether the president was born in Hawaii, despite ample evidence that he was. But what he has had to say about real issues deserves as much attention as his "birther" comments.

I wish he were saying that since Trump's birtherism deserves no coverage,  his thoughts about "real issues" deserve the same.

But Balz seems to be arguing that since Trump's nutty conspiracy-mongering  makes news, his other ideas deserve to make news too.  All this coming from a guy no one seems to think has any intention of actually mounting a serious campaign. This is an extremely odd justification, at odds with the normal rules of Beltway journalism.

Amidst this backdrop, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will apparently announce his intention today to run in 2012. He was a candidate in 2008 that media mostly left out of their campaign coverage, despite the fact that he had a core of dedicated volunteers and an impressive ability to raise money (one of the things that media normally treat as very important).

Ron Paul is, in other words, was an actual candidate, and is likely to be one again. But will he enjoy even a tiny fraction of the coverage given to Donald Trump? Don't bet on it.