Conducted by TNS UK research company November 3-7, 2016, the survey revealed that 80 percent of Americans believe that the media was biased toward a particular candidate, and 59 percent said that neither local nor national media was objective.
During the election cycle a constant repetition of certain ideas and themes among specific news networks led some to refer to the media as an "echo chamber." Georgetown journalism professor Christopher Chambers went even further, telling Sputnik in an email that US news was actually "victimized by its own craven business model."
He suggested that American media "embraced a superficial, carnival/horserace-like approach … they at once created Trump with absolutely free media and a lack of vetting, while coronating Hillary Clinton without regard to her negatives."
"That duality might seem schizophrenic," he said, "but it has one root and it's not agenda or ideology, even for Fox News: it's profit motive and lazy journalism and the mold was cast in the primaries and continued to until the conventions."
Radio Sputnik’s Unanimous Dissent spoke with Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald a month before the election, regarding the media’s Russophobic tone during the election, particularly when Sputnik was accused of feeding information to Donald Trump’s campaign after one of its writers coincidentally saw a tweet that Trump later posted.
Greenwald told Unanimous Dissent, "The fact that so many reasoned and smart and generally careful journalists and other commentators, think tank people, got so caught up so instantly in this crazed atmosphere, essentially spreading this idea that he had discovered some sort of nefarious Russian plot…that was what was really disturbing to me."
Greenwald believes that the coverage of some outlets was affected by their support of one of the candidates.
"I think one of the things that has happened is that so many reporters, especially now, are so devoted to one of the candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, that they’re not actually interested in any news stories that they perceive don’t directly help her to win."
He added that this behavior could have a negative impact on how Americans view foreign governments. "It’s very much this kind of hysterical, McCarthyite tactic that anybody you dislike in politics, anyone you regard as your domestic adversary, should just be accused of being a tool of the Kremlin…And on top of which, they’re depicting Moscow and Russia as this kind of grave, almost existential threat to the United States."
