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Assessing a Clinton argument that the media helped to elect Trump
By Philip Bump September 12 at 10:34 AM
A presidential election settled by 0.057 percent of the national vote in three states — as the 2016 election was — will necessarily lend itself to quite a bit of finger-pointing. Swinging 77,744 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin means changing the minds of 38,872 people, 0.01 percent of the American population. If Hillary Clinton’s campaign had changed those 40,000-odd minds, she’d be president today. But she didn’t.
Many of her supporters identify one culprit more than others in that outcome: the media. Clinton herself points a finger in that direction in her new book, “What Happened,” according to an excerpt published at the Hill.
“Many in the political media don’t want to hear about how these things happened and how these things tipped the election in the final days,” Clinton writes. “They say their beef is that I’m not taking responsibility for my mistakes — but I have and I do again throughout this book. Their real problem is they can’t bear to face their own role in helping elect Trump, from providing him free airtime to giving my emails three times more coverage than all the issues affecting people’s lives combined.”
The first point there is fair. By the end of the campaign, Donald Trump had been the beneficiary of the equivalent of some $5 billion in free advertising, according to the media tracking firm mediaQuant. Some of that was a function of the live coverage of Trump’s rallies, which often ran without interruption on cable news, particularly in the early days of the campaign.
The key chart:
FULL story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/09/12/assessing-a-clinton-argument-that-the-media-helped-to-elect-trump/?utm_term=.888f5b36984f
HELL YES they handed the POTUS to tRump! I hope they are happy!!!
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Hoyt
(54,770 posts)because they supported him.
Decent people saw him as a racist buffoon. Deplorables voted for him for much the same reason.
Trump's exposure should have deterred people from voting for him, except enough liked what they saw.
I think it is time we quit looking for some excuse for losing, and accept the truth.
Girard442
(6,067 posts)
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)so we better learn how to deal with it.
maddiemom
(5,106 posts)Added a new term to our vocabularies, but Democrats never seem to learn. Then they're caught flat-footed when Republicans come up with the NEXT thing to denigrate their candidate (s).
dawg
(10,622 posts)None of this is new, and we still never seem to learn.
maddiemom
(5,106 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)We have to have an answer when the swiftboat us.
Truthfully, the more I think about it, I wish Clinton had turned to Trump when he was stalking her around the stage and cursed him out, or even kicked him in the groin. That's what we have to do with these white wingers.
unblock
(52,181 posts)I'm quite sick of the media excuse that whatever they ever do, hey, their viewers wanted it, therefore nothing is ever the media's fault.
would they really have lost viewers if they had run more stories of just how terrible a president Donnie would be? How ill-equipped he was? How much like a kkk member he was? How inept he was?
Did they really have to cover his empty podium and say gosh we can't wait to hear what he has to say? How exciting it is to hear his outrageous insults?
Come on. They could have covered it responsibly. They didn't have to promote him the way they promoted Howard stern's career. They could have reminded people with every story what a dangerous person this would be if he actually won.
But they didn't. They didn't just give people what they want, they promoted it as something we all need to be excited to see.
Biased. Incredibly biased.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)from listening to him. Fact is, we have a lot of white wing racists in this country.
Blaming it on the media, dirty tricks, Ruskies, or whatever, ain't gonna solve our problem.
unblock
(52,181 posts)If you lose a sports game after the officials make biased call after biased call, who the hell kicks themselves and says I should have just played better?
What good is a better slogan and more stirring speech if the media isn't covering you and when they do cover you, it's all emails all the time?
Give me a fair media, then we can talk about running a better campaign.
The media just proved that they can get a completely inept jerk elected if they're allowed to be this biased. Unless and until we counter that, none of this matters. Youre dangerously wrong if you think a slightly more inspiring candidate will change things.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Last edited Tue Sep 12, 2017, 05:08 PM - Edit history (1)
were we in a position where one official's call beat us.
We have to be prepared for anything -- a hack, gerrymandering, lies, whatever -- if we are going to win. There are always going to be Ruskies, Facebook fake news, etc.
We need to prepare for whatever comes at us, not plan on grousing about it when we lose. We weren't prepared this last election. Admittedly, a lot was thrown at us, but there is no excuse for Russia or anyone else gaining access to voter records. Comey was tougher, but still we were caught flatfooted with the second accusation (except for the fact we had people like Weiner associated with us just waiting to provide an opening).
unblock
(52,181 posts)it took a massive effort with roots going back a quarter-century to subvert the democratic will of the people.
if one official made a clearly biased call and turned the result of the super bowl, that call would be itself a media sensation, the subject of many investigations and instant replays and probably a firing and changes in rules or standard practices.
but this wasn't anything like that. this was the equivalent of letting one side play with twice as many players on the field, letting them get away with tripping and holding, giving them 5 or 6 downs instead of just 4, while constantly calling penalties on the other team for penalties that aren't even in the rule book. and when that team was *still* ahead, *then* flagrantly making a biased call in the closing seconds of the game.
how were we in a position where one bad call could cost the election? why on earth take that one call out of the context of an entire system that was heavily biased against our side?
we need to fight to make voting easier, not to suppress voting.
we need to fight for fairness in the media, not biased coverage.
we need to fight to keep foreign influence out.
we need to fight to keep the media focused on issues that matter to people for four years, not bright shiny pseudo-scandals that catch eyeballs momentarily but don't affect people for four years.
if we had a remotely fair playing field, donnie would have been completely shellacked, and people would have applauded hillary's brilliant campaign, because she would have won even with a campaign that wasn't half as good as the one she ran.
why the hell should it be all on the candidate to run a campaign that makes up for the 5%, 8%, 12%, whatever bias in the system?
and who blames the victim of an obvious cheat for not overcoming the cheat?
seriously, if you lose playing 3-card monte, the only people telling you you just have to look at the cards better are people who are enabling the cheat.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)All good coaches call out bias in the refs.
Why?? Because pointing out ref bias Helps You Win.
Of course we should point out media bias.
While we work on other fronts as well.
pnwmom
(108,973 posts)were conspiring together to meddle with the election, with an assist from the FBI and the media.
Demit
(11,238 posts)It was the media deciding what people WOULD see.
"...not a single one of the three major cable news networks (CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC) aired Hillary Clinton’s talk to a workers union in Las Vegas. Instead, they chose to air a live stream of an empty podium in North Dakota where Trump was scheduled to give a speech."
Edited to add more (also from the New York Times):
"The same discrepancy occurred earlier this month, when the cable networks aired Mr. Trump’s address to the National Rifle Association live from start to finish. A speech by Mrs. Clinton in Detroit days later, to a labor union, did not receive the same coverage; all three networks skipped the speech, with Fox News airing a lighthearted segment about a nationwide backlog of cheese."
The media edited out what they didn't want people to see.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Besides -- go search under "Clinton talk to unions in Las Vegas." I sure see a lot of hits, videos and news reports. Maybe it wasn't on NBC, CBS, etc., but it was there if one cared to look. People didn't because they aren't into politics like we are.
Demit
(11,238 posts)podium!" I'd agree that the networks would be bowing to what the people wanted. If people called in and said, "Show us a segment about cheese!" your claim would make sense. But it doesn't happen that way.
It's not viewers who decide what the "news" is, it's the media. Network execs, more precisely. They're the ones who pick & choose what to show viewers during a presidential campaign.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)and advertisers.
This is just a few examples of the type of exposure that should have sunk Trump, except for the fact we have a lot more vile white wingers in this country than most thought --
blob:https://www.youtube.com/f93bd0c4-4bb5-486b-8f10-436deb300eb7
http://time.com/4475349/donald-trumps-speech-immigration-transcript/
Demit
(11,238 posts)How does a transcript of a Trump speech prove that the media was only showing what people wanted to see?
Yes, network people make educated guesses all the time on what might bring in viewers. What they present to advertisers, though, has to be previously-collected hard data on viewership. But we're not talking about focus groups and Nielsen ratings. We're talking about news coverage. Covering news as it happens. Or as it ISN'T happening, as in the case of live coverage of an empty podium that Trump had yet to arrive in front of. The networks could have switched to coverage of an event that WAS happening while they waited, but they didn't. That was, at the very least, a network news director's on-the-spot decision. He was choosing what he thought you should see.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Mexicans. If someone didn't change their vote with that running as often as possible, they weren't going to vote for Clinton.
The fact is, Trump wasn't on the national networks that often. He might have been on CNN, MSNBC, etc., but he wasn't on NBC, ABC, etc.
We lost because:
We didn't have a good answer for Comey;
Bill Clinton screwed up visiting the AG in a highly suspicious looking meeting;
There are a lot more bigots in this country than thought and they didn't care about Trump's misogyny;
The primaries were unnecessarily cruel to Clinton, beat her up actually;
The crap we dug up on Trump wasn't as convincing to white wing voters as the stuff they lied about;
If the Ruskies fake news hurt us, we should have had an answer, but didn't;
40% of Dems didn't vote;
Some disgruntled Dems voted third party, sat out, or outright voted for Trump;
and more.
Christ, white wing sites have been calling it the liberal media for decades, and we are calling it the GOPer media. Sounds to me they might just have the balance about right.
The media wasn't our problem, but it might have been how we used the media.
Demit
(11,238 posts)But your "we're just the little old media, we're just here to be used! We have no say in things!" does not fly. Neither does the self-absolving "Oh look, everybody is complaining! We must be doing some thing right."
The media piling on Hillary Clinton has been a truism for years. The media was definitely a factor in our loss. A very, very, very big factor.
spanone
(135,815 posts)this is the truth.
$2 Billion Worth of Free Media for Donald Trump
He still doesn’t have a super PAC. He skimped on ground organization and field offices. Most important, he spent less on television advertising — typically the single biggest expenditure for a campaign — than any other major candidate, according to an analysis by SMG Delta, a firm that tracks television advertising.
But Mr. Trump is hardly absent from the airwaves. Like all candidates, he benefits from what is known as earned media: news and commentary about his campaign on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on social media. Earned media typically dwarfs paid media in a campaign. The big difference between Mr. Trump and other candidates is that he is far better than any other candidate — maybe than any candidate ever — at earning media.
No one knows this better than mediaQuant, a firm that tracks media coverage of each candidate and computes a dollar value based on advertising rates. The mentions are weighted by the reach of the media source, meaning how many people were likely to see it. The calculation also includes traditional media of all types, print, broadcast or otherwise, as well as online-only sources like Facebook, Twitter or Reddit.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html?mcubz=0
JCanete
(5,272 posts)Last edited Wed Sep 13, 2017, 12:00 AM - Edit history (2)
avoids what it does not want the audience to see. While it is certainly interdependent, they are very responsible for what their audience (that which still watches) expects, and in turn, wants. You can't actually tell me that the clinton email scandal, as dry as it fucking is far too esoteric for the masses to understand, was a bigger selling point than any of 50 or a hundred Trump stories they could have been doing.
I don't take the heat entirely off Clinton for this. The Democrats have tied their hands and played apologists for our shitty media that does them dirty while the republicans claim daily that the news is bullshit. That means every skewed story told about democrats will be interpreted by the viewers as 100 percent true because hell, the liberal media is begrudgingly reporting it, while every sordid story about conservatives(as apologetic as the media is for those) will be either discounted as "fake news" or taken with a huge helping of salt, because, after all, its the "liberal" media.
But the thing is, those who work for our corporate media have more than ratings structuring their content. they have advertisers, the perspectives of their producers and CEO's, and the financial interests of their parent companies all at work, sometimes to pressure them to handle a story in a certain way,while other times the work is already done through the hiring process, finding the simpatico pundits and journalists who like asking the kinds of questions the network or paper can get behind.
The media can own some of the fact that the American populace is as poorly informed as it is. Unfortunately that only makes its job easier. These corporations don't lose anything for providing a regressive service.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)
Atman
(31,464 posts)IOW, everything is fake news if it's a negative about Trump, otherwise the mainstream media did a fine job.
haveahart
(905 posts)The media defined whatever they were talking concerning Hillary as a "scandal" and the "allegations" were equated to "crimes."
At the same time Trump was found guilty of or accused of real crimes some of which he settled out of court and others we have out of his own mouth and on video tape.
Atman
(31,464 posts)They always fall back upon "You're a sheeple! Fake news! You believe anything the mainstream media tells you! The media protected Hillary or else she'd be in jail." They've built their own protective shell which nothing penetrates.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)You know, the totally baseless lawsuit Trump agreed to settle for $25 million? Nobody needs to hear about that or dwell on the implications of the ethics of such a man. Certainly not when there's so much nothing to be mined from those e-mails and the squeaky clean Clinton Foundation.
Not inclined to listen to any excuses from the media. They wanted this shitstorm, and they didn't care about the country.
NastyRiffraff
(12,448 posts)Last edited Tue Sep 12, 2017, 03:54 PM - Edit history (1)
or Comey's 11th hour announcement, or the rampant sexism and racism that was there for all to see at every Trump rally. Even the pussy-grabbing tape failed to make a dent in the Deplorables' support. And yes, she was right: there were deplorable! Some of them LOVED that tape and Trump's role in it. ("What a man!" )
No one is saying that the media was the only factor in the tragic loss, but even CNN finally admitted they gave Trump way too much free advertising.
StevieM
(10,500 posts)His July press conference and October Surprise were both complete game changers.
Without Comey, or a different partisan Republican FBI director, HRC would have won in a landslide, even with all the other crap that happened.
StevieM
(10,500 posts)That simply isn't true. And they provide no evidence to substantiate it.
In reality, the best evidence is that the Comey intervention completely reshaped the race in the final 11 days. HRC had the election won--decisively--until the Comey intervention.
Moreover, there is nothing to support the claim that they targeted voters in the wrong way or in the wrong places. The media simply declared that to be so by fiat. And they provided a lot of bad info to do it.
For example, HRC actually had more staffers in Wisconsin than Obama had in 2012. Also, she had huge operations in Pennsylvania and Florida, which were certainly battleground states. Actually, winning Florida and Pennsylvania would have won her the election, whereas winning Michigan and Wisconsin would not have--not that the story about ignoring Michigan and Wisconsin is even true.
thbobby
(1,474 posts)Trump was good for ratings.
A close election was good for ratings.
A Trump presidency has been good for ratings.
It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to see that media was a big winner and America a big loser in this debacle.
I do not believe MSM thought Trump would win.
But they did profit by giving Clinton negative coverage. And they did profit by giving Trump softball coverage.
bearsfootball516
(6,376 posts)Trump may vilify the media, but him being president has been phenomenal for TV networks and their websites. The amount of website traffic they'd be getting if Hillary was president would be a fraction compared to Trump.
peggysue2
(10,828 posts)Opened the can of worms with his own words:
"Trump might be bad for the country but he's great TV."
That exposes not only CNN but the whole media network that couldn't get enough of Trump and his next outrageous statement.
Only we were electing a POTUS, not a reality TV star with a bad head of hair. Some people thought he was funny. Wonder if they're laughing now? Others thought he was a WINNER because he told the world about his vast financial empire, omitting the bankruptcies, the bad credit, the mob ties or the workers and investors he'd stiffed all over the country. That information was available because Trump had been grifting for decades. Where was the media then?
Hunkered down on Hillary's emails that ended up revealing nothing. Scouring through the Clinton Foundation financials that ended up revealing nothing but good works. Shocking!
The media helped elect a con artist, a pathological liar, a compromised business man. And now they want to yelp about Hillary Clinton not taking enough responsibility? Short of crucifixion, I'm not sure what would satisfy these people. But they sure as hell aren't willing to accept any accountability of their own.
Good one on Clinton for calling them out. Let them yelp all they want.
Podkayne K
(145 posts)They're thrilled.
While the world descends into chaos, and millions--and with war looming--perhaps billions of lives destroyed, they are making millions--perhaps billions--of $$$$$$$$$$.
They couldn't be happier.
progressoid
(49,964 posts)orangecrush
(19,510 posts)and Rump were good buddies, their kids went to the same school at one point
He gave Rump tons of free unfiltered airtime, and once the bastard was in office, of course turned the network in the other direction.
A little club of rich psychopaths gave us this disaster.