When it comes to the media, we can expect them to cover the new and exciting much more than the old and familiar. I believe this is one of the reasons Donald Trump and Waldo succeeded. Donald Trump was the most talked about candidate for the 2016 election, and now that we know he won, we can speculate on if the media was part of the reason.
Though many of the Late Night shows took to mocking Trump, they did so three times more often than they mocked Clinton.
When his infamous 'pussy' video came out it was aired on every network for days. The coverage was constant on social media as well, with supporters calling for Trump's resignation, and GOP leaders like Paul Ryan and John McCain denouncing Trump and refusing to support his campaign. While newscasters and reporters remained amazed at his growing base, the chart below shows just how much more he was talked about during the primaries.
Everyone thought this was the end of his campaign, but clearly it was not. The coverage only helped make his name more common and in the end, his reasons and excuses for the tape were accepted by enough people to win him the presidency.
When Hillary Clinton's campaign faced scandal, the scandal was the same old emails. Therefore, it was covered for a shorter period of time, we had all heard about her server too much and it wasn't going to boost ratings. When the FBI once again cleared her, that also was a story we had already read.
The news covers what is new.
Donald Trump was the definition of new throughout his entire campaign. The first candidate with no experience in elected office or the military. The first candidate to interrupt so much during the debates. The first candidate to have been married three times. He was also the only candidate making statements like, 'mexicans are rapists' and proposing a ban on Muslims entering the US. Though much of the press Donald Trump received was negative, it was soon followed by another negative story to overshadow the first. While many of the things he said were prejudiced blanket statements they still only added to his "Donald Trump-says it like it is, not a politician" 2016 brand. While Trump was never a politician, he was a reality tv star, and clearly he knows how to work the media.
Though the media was critical of his comments, the electorate still admired his honesty. Then, right at the end he stopped the scandals. He stopped the late night tweets and the scandals just soon enough for the public to believe that he could.
Of course, for Hillary Clinton, she got the most numerous negative stories and the least amount of positive stories than any other candidate. However, nothing about Hillary was new, and her past continuously came up to haunt her. She blamed FBI director Comey and his letters for stopping her momentum, but the polls never were good at predicting just how successful Trump would be.
I think we can see a similar comparison is Waldo. He was loud and crude oftentimes, just like Trump, and his supporters still supported the honesty as compared to the establishment.
In the end, the media was not good at predicting Trump's success, in part because they did not understand how frustrated the public had become trying to decipher the truth and understand Washington.
There is no doubt the media played a huge role in this election, and Trump was given more airtime than anyone else, and in the end he won. I hope that he does not inspire a new brand of loud, unfiltered politicians because a leader needs to have self control.
Source: Media Tenor, June 16-December 31, 2015. Percentages based on ad-equivalent dollar exposure of each candidate for eight news outlets. |
2 comments:
Michelle, I totally understand your position and hadn't really noticed your points until now. Your take on how the media (news outlets) had a major role in the election is very eye-opening. Another good point in your post, is that you had references to articles from credible sources. Also your analysis is very in-depth and does a good job of relating Donald Trump to Waldo.
Hello Michelle, I agree with your points about Trump's capitalization of the media. Almost everyday there was a new controversial story out about Trump which attracted the attention of many people who may not of normally followed politics. Many of Trump's opponents were unrecognized and did not seem important because they had very little exposure. You would basically have to look up their names to know that they were running. Trump maintain to stay mainstream and relevant throughout the whole presidential campaign which played a major part in Trump's success. This instance narrowed down the campaign. Waldo went viral as well which allow more people to consider to vote for him or against him.
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