Amazingly, the media collectively exerted such tremendous power, in nearly perfect coordination, without deliberate intention (conspiracies are generally much less necessary than believed). They genuinely thought, I think, that they were reporting the news rather than making it. Did it even occur to them that the entire business was self-referential? Did anyone write about that aspect? With a coordinated action, the media could have chosen any not-completely-pathetic candidate to report as the "front-runner", and their reporting would thereby have been correct.

The small biases of those in media seem very vulnerable to explode away from reality when there are no short term consequences keeping them there.

That's so utterly common sense that it is too easy to miss the horrifying possibilities of society wide (and perhaps in this globalized age humanity-wide) failure it opens.