Larry Flynt: Media ‘complacent’ in Trump’s election

Publisher Larry Flynt is slamming the media for helping to “create this monster we now call President-elect [Donald] Trump.”

“Never before in our history have you, the press, been so complacent in an election as you have this past one,” Flynt, the founder of Hustler magazine, writes in an open letter to the “mainstream press” published Tuesday as a paid ad in Variety.

“I have watched and listened to show hosts and moderators say that they have no obligation to fact-check. Are you kidding? This statement is the most absurd thing I have ever heard,” Flynt, a longtime free speech advocate, writes.

{mosads}

“You tend to forget that your audience is made up of a diverse group of individuals, and sadly not all are intellectuals,” Flynt said. “You are dealing with many low-information voters who don’t require hard facts in order to be led in one direction or the other. These are the people who are easily swayed.”

Flynt was a vocal critic of president-elect throughout the 2016 election and even said he sent a pornographic spoof of Trump to every Republican member of Congress last year. He also previously offered $1 million for any scandalous video or audio recordings of Trump.

But in the Tuesday letter, Flynt, 74, steers his fierce criticism towards the press, writing, “The only thing I saw from all of you this past election is an utter desperation to report on everything this man said, whether it is the truth or not.

“You want to sell a paper, bump up your ratings, drive more traffic to your websites; I get it. But you are not selling cookies to consumers. You are journalists — do your job!”

“One final thought: There are more accurate articles in Hustler than in most of the coverage I have seen this past election,” Flynt writes. “That says something now, doesn’t it?”