A 30 Year Smear Campaign: How the Media Manufactured Hatred of @HillaryClinton
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How the Media Manufactured Hatred of Hillary Clinton
Clinton's popularity didn't start to plummet until the press focus turned to her emails.
http://billmoyers.com/story/last-night-3/#.WBFZB0iuEa0.twitter
By Neal Gabler | October 25, 2016
How the Media Manufactured Hatred of [...]
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks to members of the media aboard her campaign plane. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
As the late columnist Walter Winchell used to say: Onions. Onions to virtually everyone in the press corps for promoting a narrative that has, I believe, become a self-fulfilling prophecy. More than that, it is a narrative, I also believe, that undermines confidence in the election process and damages the country.
We all know the story. This is the hate election, the lesser-of-two-evils election, the most-unpopular-candidates-in-the-history-of-modern-presidential-politics election. Everybody hates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. If only we had different candidates from whom to choose, the pundits say, as they roll their eyes and emit heavy sighs! No doubt, you dont like either one of them very much. You will pull the voting lever with resignation. Or so we are told.
But I began to speculate on how much of the Hillary hatred at least (Trump was very unpopular as reflected in polling data from the get-go) was driven by the press coverage, how many Americans were effectively brainwashed into hating Hillary or felt peer pressure to join the anti-Hillary chorus because the media kept telling us how awful she was, and we didnt want to be outliers to the hate brigade.
And while there is no definitive way to measure the impact of press coverage on public opinion, I think a fairly powerful case can be made that the media narrative created the media narrative yet another case of political post-modernism.
The fact is that Hillary Clinton wasnt unpopular when she announced her decision to run in April 2015. If you look at the Gallup survey in March of last year, 50 percent of Americans had a favorable impression of Clinton, only 39 percent an unfavorable one. So there was clearly no deep reservoir of Clinton hatred among the general public at the time. On the contrary: Americans liked her; they liked her quite a bit.
Already by June, however, her favorability had not only taken a hit. It had plummeted. By July, according to Gallup, her favorability hit an all-time low with only 38 percent positively and 57 percent viewing her negatively putting her 19 points underwater........................................
.....................Wrong-headed or not, none of this explains Clintons July 2015 plunge; it only certifies it. What makes that plunge somewhat baffling is that Clinton made several major policy pronouncements that month two laying out the broad strokes of her economic policy, and another discussing race. Again, whether you agreed with these pronouncements or not, she was being a serious candidate. It certainly couldnt have accounted for the sudden turn by voters.
But policy wasnt what the media were focused on that July. They were focused on emails. There was a court-mandated dump of Clintons emails late that month, and the media leapt on it with alacrity. This certainly wasnt the first time the public had heard about Clinton using a private email server while Secretary of State. That news had come out in March 2015 and hadnt affected her favorability at all. But the fixation on emails, which had long been an addiction among Republicans and the right-wing media, suddenly became an addiction in the mainstream media as well. According to a Lexis-Nexis search, The New York Times, to cite one example, had seven stories that month with Clinton and emails in the headline. More important, most news sources reported erroneously that Clinton was the subject of a criminal investigation by the FBI. In reporting a sudden drop in Clintons popularity in its own NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that month, NBC professed not to understand why, though it had only to look at its own reporting. You could say that Clinton was sabotaged.
And that wasnt all.....................
niyad
(113,232 posts)Botany
(70,483 posts)Rinse, lather, and repeat
BTW If you want to piss off tea party/trump head/republican ask him or her
to tell you exactly what crime Hillary committed. This crap goes back to the
time when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas "they" are so afraid of HRC
that they have been trying to bring down both her and husband for years .....
just like President Obama if they can't win an election they try to tear the other
side down with smears and lies.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)Bill USA
(6,436 posts)terrorists: the American Taliban
...........................................
LakeArenal
(28,813 posts)They just string out the Kool-Aid drinkers who spout the talking points of the GOP. Most everyone who has personally interacted with Clinton say: Hardworking, funny, smart, quick thinker, made of steel, NICE, loyal... We never see or hear that.
Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)that the Republican men were terrified of Hillary. They were afraid she would be overly involved and influential in Bill's decision-making, which was especially true after Bill gave her the health insurance project. They didn't know how to handle a woman like that...very uncomfortable. Remember, women's lib was hot off the griddle (if I have my timing right) and they couldn't even handle that. To this day, they run and hide if a woman like Elizabeth Warren clears her throat to speak. Good grief. In all this time since the Clinton administration, they are still wimpy?
I have asked Republican friends what they have against Hillary and they can't come up with any facts, just comments they've heard repeated by the Republican base. Say it enough times and it becomes the truth.
For most, it is too late to reprogram them. They are up to their eye-balls in Kool-Aid.
BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)LAS14
(13,781 posts)Orrex
(63,199 posts)Now you have to click all the way over to Jackass Ridicules to get your GOP-manufactured Hillary Hate.
DFW
(54,330 posts)Unfortunately, I don't.
Some people I liked here, and don't see any more, must have ended up over there, as they disappeared during my 6 month sabbatical.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)A group of former and current DUers hijacked the name of a respected and deceased DUer and started a website whose only intention seems to be spreading BS about HRC. They are a bunch of "Bernie or bust" people. Full disclosure- Bernie was my first choice, but he lost the primary, and I am backing HRC.
Bill USA
(6,436 posts)rurallib
(62,406 posts)Bill USA
(6,436 posts)bookmarked!