Donald Trump's a conman, but at least he didn't kill 500,000 people

Trump is a buffoonish cartoon villain at whom it's easy to poke. It's the more polished deceivers, who aren't crazy but are dangerous, who we always fail to vigorously confront.

ABC, CBS, and NBC cut away from Trump's speech on Thursday night in which he declared that he was being cheated out of the election. They said his claims were baseless.

It's impossible to disagree because the US President produced no evidence to back up what he was saying, although it was a mistake by the TV networks not to let him be heard. Censorship is as wrong now in the US as it was during the Troubles here.

Challenge controversial or inaccurate political statements with passion, but let them be heard. Nothing, bar hate speech, should be beyond the pale.

There was no long queue of journalists to fact-check Bush and Blair back in 2003 because they weren't fashionably unpopular politicians.

One of those who did call out the then US President over Iraq paid the price for his principles. The brilliant Phil Donahue was fired by NBC in the run-up to the war for being too critical.

Major news outlets aided and abetted the Bush and Blair administrations' march to war on faulty premises. Fact-checking was notable by its absence.

When it was indisputably proven that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, most media outlets didn't even have the decency to acknowledge, never mind apologise, for the thrust of their narrative.

The New York Times alone issued a mea culpa for "a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been". Information was "insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged", it admitted. "Looking back we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged, or failed to emerge."

It wasn't just an American problem. In the UK there was no shortage of journalists willing to don flak jackets, hard hats and a compliant tone. It seemed like they were reporting from a bloodless sandpit.

Broadcasters talked of "surgical strikes", "precision bombing" and "shock and awe". They anaesthetised the war and turned it into a spectator sport for viewers to watch from the comfort of their armchairs.

One of the few who didn't was veteran foreign correspondent Robert Fisk, who died last week. Not for him cheerleading or breathless optimism on the toppling of Saddam's statute in Baghdad's Firdos Square. Instead, he told the story of the civilians in the city as bombs dropped down on them from the skies.

"The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage. The incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car," Fisk wrote.

"It's a dirt-poor neighbourhood, a place of overcrowded apartments and cheap cafes. Everyone I spoke to heard the plane. One man, so shocked by the headless corpses he had just seen, could say only two words: 'Roar, flash.'"

Fisk was the bane of Tony Blair's government during the war. He knew that terrorists can wear suits and ties and hold high office.

Some will argue that our media is fundamentally better now than it was back in 2003, that lessons have been learned. Personally, I doubt that's so. If there was another war, I fear history would be repeated.

Just two years ago, Tony Blair was invited to Queen's University to speak at an event marking the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Apart from the 500,000 dead, Blair's war resulted in four million refugees and endless suffering. He bombed an entire nation back into the stone age.

So, did many in the media challenge the fact that a leader of death and destruction was waxing lyrical at an event entitled Building Peace? Did Blair face a barrage of questions about why, five years after brokering a deal to end violence here, he blithely waged war in another country?

You already know the answer. Coverage was overwhelmingly polite and respectful. It's only a crude conman like Trump who feels our firepower.