The way political journalism worked before Donald Trump seems quaint in retrospect. If it was a presidential election year, a reporter was assigned a candidate to cover. The first thing task was to contact the campaign and notify them of the assignment. If the campaign was serious, press credentials were issued to allow access to the campaign headquarters and into his — it was always a “he” — rallies. In the old days, if the paper or network you worked for was important enough, your pass would get you onto the “press plane” and the bus populated by the “Boys on the Bus,” in the words of the title of Timothy Crouse’s best-selling book on the way the press covered the 1972 presidential campaign. The “boys” were the other political journalists following the campaign, because with perhaps one or two exceptions, there were no female political reporters. 

You didn’t have to cover American politics very long to realize that politicians lied, prevaricated and said things that were demonstrably untrue all the time. It didn’t take much longer to learn that you weren’t there to report their lies. You were there to report what politicians said. You were, in effect, a stenographer. Lies, if they were remarked upon at all, were the domain of pundits.

Lucian K. Truscott IV in Salon.com