That changed as the terrorists became more sophisticated and began to use social media to promote their own propaganda. Journalists, now unnecessary, became the target to deadly effect.
Trump followed a similar trajectory, exulting in the warm bath of media attention. But as that exposure began to be accompanied with rare, but still occasional analysis, Trump bypassed conventional media.
He has given no full press conferences but, instead, uses Twitter to announce his cabinet choices. He tweeted threats to non-existent flag-burners to distract from the settlement of $25 million claims against the Trump "University".
"Give him a chance," cry the temporisers and right-wing adherents. He's already taking it and showing his true colours.
Of a piece with the flim-flam are the so-called "saving of jobs" he's touting and his cabinet selection and the opportunity its process gives him for acting out his worst desires - revenge.
The focus needs to be on Trump's actions. Like the stage magician, every skilled grifter knows that pulling off his con depends on distracting the mark from the real action.
In July, Trump pledged to save 1400 jobs then to be shipped to Mexico by the Carrier Corporation, and threatened a tariff of 35 per cent on goods manufactured by virtue of outsourcing those jobs. He claims he negotiated to save 1000 jobs (actually 800) but it was by means of a $7 million tax break to the company - money to be paid by the taxpayers. Those 800 workers are taxpayers, too, and soon to be subsidising their own jobs.
For distraction, Trump has been toying with Mitt Romney, the former presidential candidate, over the post of Secretary of State. Romney, who famously called Trump "fraud" and "phony" during the campaign, is being made to grovel in front of the world while Trump (as Lucy) is about to snatch the ball from Romney's Charlie Brown to exact his revenge.
Trump's cabinet choices provide another example of bait and switch. Promising to address the plight of the declining working and middle classes, his choices, instead, consist of millionaires and billionaires with agendas that are strikingly beneficial to the moneyed group bent on class and culture warfare.
The education appointee-billionaire is determined to promote religious private schools at the expense of public ones and the prospective attorney-general, the statutory guardian of civil rights law enforcement, had his own previous judicial appointment declined by the Senate when evidence of his overt racism was brought forward.
Trump may well be the Manchurian Candidate. And there's no time like the present to organise such dissent as is possible in what looks more and more like a crippled democracy.
American patriots need to reconstitute Committees of Correspondence, from the time of the real freedom seeking tea party, to keep people focused on the facts and the means of resistance. That's where social media can be put to good use. Tweet it on!
*Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable
