Once again, the news cycle is obsessing over Donald Trump. This time, the Republican made the mistake of responding to a question about his history of sexist treatment of women by aggressively attacking the female debate moderator with sexist comments. So, of course, that is all the media will talk about for the next week, regardless of what else is happening in the world.

Trump isn’t suitable to bring to a polite dinner party, let alone to represent America in our nation’s highest office. He may be leading in the Republican polls, but this is out of a field of 17 declared Republican candidates. His supporters are a tiny fraction of the people who identify as Republicans who are themselves a small fraction of the population of the United States. No serious commentator expects him to win the Republican nomination, and there is no chance that he will ever be president.

So why is the corporate media so obsessed with him? After all, Trump isn’t taken seriously by any major nation, and we are in the lead up to an election with dozens of candidates trying to reach Americans while Americans are trying to find out what the candidates represent. We are also in a very turbulent time, with important news happening every day that is getting ignored so that the media can devote air time and column inches to Donald Trump.

For example, this article in the Washington Post: Teacher: Why ‘I just can’t work in public education anymore’. This was the most shared article on the Washington Post’s website on August 12, proving that people are hungry for this kind of information. At other times, an article like this one – detailing the ways our education system is collapsing and failing an entire generation of American children – might start a national conversation. We would have people writing editorials debating the issue and panels on television talk shows arguing about it.

Instead, we have literally hundreds of articles being written about Donald Trump’s latest hijinks while news anchors list other times he has said offensive things to women, and so on. Why is this happening if nobody in the media takes him seriously? The cynical answer would be that they know he won’t be president and that all of this talk about him is wasted air, but they are devoting space to him because his antics increase ratings.

They don’t care that the voters need information about the real candidates so they can make an informed decision in the primaries and later in the voting booth in 2016. They don’t care that there are real issues affecting our country and the world that the public needs access to. What they care about is that the Donald Trump reality show gets ratings. Forget any of the civic-minded journalists of America’s past – today’s corporate media is only concerned with the side show, and if we forget about the more important issues in the meantime, all the better.

We can’t let this corporate agenda deter us from working to fix our country. Donald Trump is egotistical and money hungry, but the real problem is the media who keeps shoving him down our throats. There are many issues we need to talk about, and there is much work to do. In 2016, I will be running for president as someone who cares enough to work on the real issues – if you care about America, I urge you to join me by casting your write-in vote for Art Drew.