How the Media Manufactured Hatred of Hillary Clinton

[Panich52]

Bill Moyers & Company

How the Media Manufactured Hatred of Hillary Clinton

Clinton's popularity didn't start to plummet until the press focus turned to her emails.

BY NEAL GABLER | OCTOBER 25, 2016

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 don’t 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 didn’t 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 wasn’t 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. ...

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[Dawson Leery]

1. HRC's favorability is -5% on average. Himmler's bastard child is -31% on average.

Yet there is so much more garbage being thrown against the more popular candidate.

[TheDebbieDee]

2. It's called "Propaganda" and HRC has been a victim of it

Since Bill had the audacity of being elected President in 1992!

[still_one]

3. The republicans started the "Hillary hatred", when she introduced her healthcare plan in 1993, and

the media became a willing accomplice ever since.

For decades the media has been telling us that "Hillary isn't likable", and other negative descriptions. We all saw it during the primaries, "Hillary is shrill, she doesn't smile, she seems defensive", and other bullshit characterizations.

After beating that memo 24/7 through the polluted airwaves, in their infinite wisdom they decide to ask it in a poll question, "Is Hillary likable"

The very definition of push polling

[Wellstone ruled]

4. Any type of National Health Care

scares the crap out of the Rethugs. Remember,Wall Street depends on any and all Insurance companies for buying their crap. And in turn,this industry provides tons of cash to their Congressmen and Senators for their little empires.

And yes,this seems to be the start time of the Anti-Clinton propaganda. To this day,Newt still thinks he the Speaker and what he says is the rule of the land.

[karynnj]

5. It was March 2015 when the world learned she had a private email server

This was a negative story and it hit exactly on one of the things that was a HRC negative, secrecy. She handled this badly meaning she had to address it several times making her seem not to have been honest.

It also hit on something the media has always had huge interest - their own access to administration information. FOIA requests have been important to media coverage of administrations for decades. It is no surprise they covered this story.

The fact that she was seen positively before this show that this REAL story had an impact.

[farleftlib]

7. Agreed

That was a self-inflicted wound. FOIA serves the people though.

[Coyotl]

6. Present tense, they still do.

[FrenchieCat]

8. Till just now still....