The media elevated Avenatti to stardom; his conviction reflects on them

But what do you expect from the same people who built up author Michael Wolff only to have him self-immolate with ludicrous claims about U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley that forced everyone to disown him? News anchors and commentators who had previously downplayed the factual errors in Wolff’s book with amended versions of “fake but accurate” were left with the embarrassment of trying to disown the very person they had turned into a national star.

This case is a lot like that one. If you have something salacious and negative to say about Trump, then all the standards go out the window. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC featured him for a combined 147 television interviews between March 7 and 15, 2018. That is an average of nearly four interviews on each network per day. This is to say nothing of Avenatti’s many other appearances at the height of his news media-promoted stardom, including at the 2018 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and the MTV Video Music Awards.