[williamgb]

One could ask a similar question about most media vendors, replacing Trump with Clinton. WikiLeaks, whether deliberately or not, is simply doing its part to redress the balance in negative and scandalising news coverage.

It should be made clear that I am neither a US citizen nor a Trump supporter. Huge emphasis on the latter!

[matt4077]

That's based on a flawed notion of balance, the idea that news media should publish equal amounts of "negative and scandalizing news".

It's flawed in that it assumes that equal amounts of such information exist. When Trump shoots some grandmother in the face, people expect equal prominence for "Hillary came to my house and left the bathroom light on".

Parts of the news media have been bending over backwards to avoid the appearance of partisanship, which gave us the endless faux-scandal regarding her mailserver.

The same principle leads to news media sometimes creating the impression that global warming is some sort of scientific debate, because they feel the need to give equal billing to the doubters while reality is 99-1 lopsided.

Trump may actually have a positive impact in the end, in that he may stretch the concept until it breaks. Indeed we can see it breaking down in the last few weeks with, for example, newspapers publishing harsh editorials and endorsements against him whereas they remained quite in previous elections.

If the current trend could continue for another six months, we'd see every article in every newspaper end with "cetero censeo Trump delende est"

[gotofritz]

You are joking, right?

[iamjeff]

There may be some truth to your assertion that recent Trump coverage has become more negative. This is primarily for two reasons.

Admittedly, coverage during the primaries hailed Trump as the anti-establishment political maverick that would redefine the GOP. At the time, the coverage was nauseatingly positive and, at the very worst, ambivalent. The media coverage on Clinton, on the other hand, was clearly confrontational (perhaps because she was the "incumbent" candidate). This sort of coverage has elicited some soul-searching among journalists and mass media based on the logic that the media infatuated with The Donald and gleefully collaborated in his political ascendance (yes, Trump is a colorful man, but, truth be told, he is far worse things as a person, a subject that has been prominently covered).

And this brings me to the second point. The recent turn in Trump's media coverage (in terms of tone at least) is also fueled by his numerous scandals, mistakes, and missteps. It is beyond me when the tone really became adversarial (perhaps after the nomination when the attention shifted to him and there was a long overdue re-calibration in how the media engages with his campaign). In truth, this is a referendum for or against Trump and this argument is further compounded by the fact that staunch and prominent Republicans are abandoning their party's flag bearer in support (more or less) of Clinton (this is unprecedented considering the vitriolic opposition that the party and its supporters have for the Clintons.

While it can be argued that media coverage has shifted in Clinton's favor (mostly due to Trump's own fault as an individual and presidential candidate), the same cannot be said of Wikileaks whose agenda from the very beginning has been admittedly pro-Trump. Wikileaks is partisan and this, while not a disqualifier in of itself, says a lot about its motivations in releasing leaks that paint a non-flattering picture of the Clinton campaign.

That said, these transcripts do not reveal a lot that is new about Clinton as has been noted by other commenters here (except, perhaps, for the fact that she says political leaders need to have private and public positions on policy matters) and her campaign has already been vindicated by the administration's admission that there is a political motive behind the leaks. The political ramifications of these leaks may not be as dramatic (the fodder that they afford her opponents has been unsuccessfully utilized by her foe-turned-apologist Sanders) as Trump's recent bombshell video leak of supposed "locker room banter."

1. News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Primaries: Horse Race Reporting Has Consequences (http://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-presidential...)

2. A deep dive into the news media’s role in the rise of Donald J. Trump (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/06/2...)