Measuring Donald Trump’s Mammoth Advantage in Free Media

[Jefferson23]

Of all the ways Donald Trump has shocked the political system, one of the most significant is how he wins primary after primary with one of the smallest campaign budgets.

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/upshot/measuring-donald-trumps-mammoth-advantage-in-free-media.html?_r=0

March 28, 2016 As Sanders Surges, Cable News Runs Prison Reality Show, Jesus Documentary
By Adam Johnson
http://fair.org/home/as-sanders-surges-cable-news-runs-prison-reality-show-jesus-documentary/

[Judi Lynn]

1. So damned strange, isn't it?

[center][/center]
It could never have gotten so grotesque without all the dirty work done by Republcans so long, in order to get completely control over everything by grabbing, taking, seizing, stealing.

Look what they have done to our world.

[Jefferson23]

6. It's what they're good at..theft. n/t

[Rhiannon12866]

2. I've gotten to the point where I turn off the news

He's on all the time, saying stupid and outrageous things, and no matter what's happening elsewhere in the world, the media seems to think we need to hear every word he utters...

[Jefferson23]

5. 24/7, just about. I noticed it apparent when CNN was not breaking from any

of Trumps speaking engagements. The ones that were rather benign in nature
not the rabble rousing rallies....they were not even breaking for commercials.

[Rhiannon12866]

8. I usually turn on MSNBC when I get home

Last night I tuned into the repeat of Chris Hayes, expected to hear more about the shooting at the Capitol, but there was Trump, yet again, more hot air non stop! I changed the channel to Murder, She Wrote, used to watch that with my grandmother and much easier to take...

[Jefferson23]

9. I hear ya and watching old TV shows at least has a charm value..good choice :)

[Rhiannon12866]

10. Turned on MSNBC a few minutes ago and there he is again

He isn't even taking time for breathing, just going on and on about nothing. He seems to think he's still on some reality show, but the sad truth is that he seems to be winning - at least with a certain demographic. Same coverage on CNN. He is a big reason TV has turned into a "wasteland." Murder, She Wrote must be on somewhere...

[Jefferson23]

11. Trump defends aide, says "never settle " battery charge. That's the latest.

ALL DAY LONG, no matter what is going on in the rest of the world, no matter
who else is running for president...doesn't matter. I think it was the CEO of
CBS who was caught saying, Trump is great for business!...MSM are all worthless.

[Rhiannon12866]

12. I agree, blame the media for turning him into a national phenomenon

During the numerous primaries, I wanted to know how the Democrats were faring, but had to look at the bottom of the screen. I used to work with CBS, back in the day, and Dan Rather's publicist was my news contact. CBS sold out when they got rid of Dan Rather, IMO, and the rest of them never were better. This is not "news," it's just one never ending reality show...

[Jefferson23]

13. Hey that must have been fantastic, very interesting..and yes, it's a very different

useless venue now..which is terrible for democracy.

What happened to Rather was awful, shameful..ugh.

[Rhiannon12866]

14. I did see the movie, "Truth," which told the whole story

It was based on the book by his producer, Mary Mapes (who was unceremoniously fired), and Dan Rather said it was accurate, so I believe him. Robert Redford did a good job as Dan Rather. I was told that Dan Rather was committed to doing only "hard news," no celebrity divorces on his watch, and the business has truly gone downhill without him.

[Jefferson23]

15. I read about the films release but have not seen it yet..it received good reviews and

if I recall correctly, Rather was very emotional at the reception of it.

[bemildred]

3. The Culture That Created Donald Trump Was Liberal, Not Conservative

This seems to go here.

Now that Donald Trump, the candidate, has become both widely popular and deeply loathsome, we’re seeing a cataract of editorials and commentary aimed at explaining how it happened and who’s to blame. The predictable suspects are trotted out: the Republican Party, which had been too opportunistic and fearful to stand up to its own candidate, Fox News, which inflamed the jingoes, and white working-class voters, unhinged by class envy and racial resentment.

The predictable bewilderment and outrage are professed. But absent from all these ashen-faced accounts is any examination of the people who put Trump in a position to run for president in the first place. The man didn’t emerge, all at once and fully formed, from some hidden and benighted hollow in the American psyche. He’s been kicking around for 30 years or more, and he was promoted and schooled, made famous and made wealthy, by the same culture and economy that now reviles him, and finds his success so vexing.

After all, it wasn’t some Klan newsletter that first brought Trump to our attention: It was Time and Esquire and Spy. The Westboro Baptist Church didn’t give him his own TV show: NBC did. And his boasts and lies weren’t posted on Breitbart, they were published by Random House. He was created by people who learned from Andy Warhol, not Jerry Falwell, who knew him from galas at the Met, not fundraisers at Karl Rove’s house, and his original audience was presented to him by Condé Nast, not Guns & Ammo. He owes his celebrity, his money, his arrogance, and his skill at drawing attention to those coastal cultural gatekeepers — presumably mostly liberal — who first elevated him out of general obscurity, making him famous and rewarding him (and, not at all incidentally, themselves) for his idiocies.

Sure, he was a nasty man and a blowhard even then, a rich clown playing the media for publicity, a quintessential type: the eternal hustler, too nasty and vulgar to be entirely respectable, but too successful to be ignored. We’ve seen thousands like him and we’ll see thousands more. But he’d built a bunch of buildings, and real estate is to Manhattan what oil is to Texas: a toxic and destabilizing commodity, and a universal excuse for almost any bad behavior. So he wasn’t a liberal man, but he’d spent his life surrounded by them. How bad could he be?

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/28/the-culture-that-created-donald-trump-was-liberal-not-conservative/?menu=1

[Jefferson23]

4. That is a good examination of one side of it, as he says..look at everything.

We were discussing another OP about the rise of Trump last week?
Where the author said, forget Trump, how the GOP establishment practiced
soft racism ( compared to Trump's wall, anti Muslim ban ) for the last 40
years while also robbing the treasury and their base of jobs, leaving an
opening for a Trump to save them.

I think it is also important to include the ill effects of the Telecommunications Act 1996.

The "news" has been dumb downed, filtered, condensed in a manner that leaves
out far more than one can even shake a stick at.


Thanks for adding the article.

[bemildred]

7. You make good points.

It is largely a waste of time to read mainstream news if you want non-consumer information, so to speak. You have to read around in the underbrush.

Anything you need to know about iPhones, or show business, they are on it.