USAToday’s hypocritical coverage of shooter on Trump property

In Saturday’s edition, Gannett-owned USA Today devoted all of four sentences to its coverage of a man engaged in a shootout with police at a property owned by President Trump. The insert that was intended to plump up the anorexic Arizona Republic, is, itself anorexic — consisting of only three pages (the fourth is a full page ad).

Excluding the headline that repeated the gist of the compressed coverage, 101 words were devoted to this report:

Man injured in police shootout at Miami-area Trump resort

   Gunfire erupted early Friday at President Trump’s Miami-area golf resort, as a Florida man shouting anti-Trump rhetoric fired into the hotel lobby’s chandelier and waited for police to arrive for what one official called an “ambush-type attack,” police said.

   Five police officers from Miami-Dade County and the city of Doral exchanged gunfire with the man, injuring him, and quickly ending the threat at the Trump-owned Trump National Doral Golf Club, Miami-Dade Police Director Juan Perez said.

   Trump was not at the suburban golf resort at the time.

   Perez identified the suspect as 42-year-old Jonathan Oddi, who lives about a mile away.

That’s it, folks! End of story. There were only indents, no paragraph spacing (as shown here) in the terse report  Donald Trump is not worthy of anything other than derogatory coverage — certainly nothing that would express concern over the well-being of the President of the United States or any of his family members.

Imagine if an active shooter had arrived in the lobby of the Clinton Foundation shouting anti-Hillary Clinton invectives. Such an assault on the pay-to-play, money-laundering facility of the defeated 2016 Democrat presidential candidate would have been worthy of front and center coverage, including an oversized color photo of a distressed Hillary staring up at the shattered chandelier, with a contrived tear rolling down her puffy cheek.

USA Today editorially endorsed scandal-plagued Clinton’s failed presidential bid with this headline: Trump is ‘unfit for the presidency.’

In Dec. 2003, Gannett stock peaked at $51.14 per share. It closed on May 17, 2018 at $11.61. It’s been down as low as $2.21.

This is what happens when journalism takes a hike and is replaced by raw partisan gamesmanship.