In his 1992 hit song, one of America’s most famous musicians, Bruce Springsteen, complained that every time he turned on cable TV, there were “57 channels and nothing on.” In 2016 the average US household had access to an average of almost 200 TV channels, but it seems that now there was nothing on aside from the televised battle for the White House.
It seemed at first that the press was tough on both candidates. For Clinton, the uncomfortable questions were mainly about the e-mail scandal; evidently she didn’t appreciate the media’s attention:
Hillary Clinton [walking away from the cameras, addressing reporters]: “Nobody talked to me about that… other than you guys”
However, as it turns out, Hillary's mild media harassment over emails was nothing compared to the gauntlet the other presidential candidate had to walk. From the very beginning of the campaign, Donald Trump was accused of having ties to Russia (which almost translates as "treason" in the US mainstream media's dictionary), for his sexist comments, for islamophobia, racism, and a number of other things.
Rush Limbaugh – a conservative radio talk show host, quipped that if bashing Donald Trump had been an Olympic event, the news media would be winning every medal.
“I know we say this every 4 years, but this is the worst that I have ever seen… It’s so bad that the New York Times has written a piece justifying it…What this piece is about… is how media has to abandon all of its known norms, the media has to abandon all of its objectivity, all of its impartiality, because Trump is so bad, that the media has nothing else to do, they have no choice but to try to destroy him.”
In summer and fall of 2016 the Virginia-based Media Research Center studied 588 evening news stories about the US presidential campaign. According to the study, during ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts, Donald Trump received significantly more coverage than his rival Hillary Clinton, but almost all of it — 91% — was hostile. The same MRC study also found that the networks spent a total of 440 minutes covering controversies involving Trump, while Clinton’s “sore spots” were brought up in less than half of all news stories, running for just 185 minutes in total.
Apparently the pressure was so high, that Trump announced a crusade against the “crooked media”:
“I’m not running against Crooked Hillary Clinton. I’m running against the crooked media – that’s what I’m running against.”
The reasons for this media bias can be explained by several factors. For one thing, the US has almost no existing regulations to mandate editorial fairness. There’s also no strong public broadcaster in the country, so the viewers rely mostly on what they are getting from major corporate media outlets.
Media unfair coverage of #Election2016. Oct. 14 Piling on #Trump Ignoring #wikileaks #Clinton. @TuckerCarlson pic.twitter.com/rxAVeAR5qc
— Michael Harris (@michaelharrisdr) 15 октября 2016 г.
Most large US networks are privately owned, which means they often reflect the views of their owners, as well as depend on commercial ratings. So it’s likely that the 2016 Presidential campaign will be remembered for corporate media picking its own candidate, and protecting its political agenda, rather than reflecting the views of the country’s voters.
We'd love to get your feedback at radio@sputniknews.com
