Report on news coverage of the election

[hudebnik]

A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage during the 2016 general election, and concludes that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received coverage that was overwhelmingly negative in tone and extremely light on policy

Comments

[bnmc2005]

I read an article on this study a while back, Is this the same information here?

(quoting from this other source)

The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers-a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls. Trump’s coverage was positive in tone-he received far more “good press” than “bad press.” The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls.

The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic. For her part, Hillary Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her “bad news” outpaced her “good news,” usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase

[blackjedii]

Twitter as a platform needs to burn to death. Permanently.

But I am not so sure about "liberal establishment" not having any power. Go to Huffington Post right now and it is all sorts of leftist rage. There's Slate, Mary Sue, Daily Dot, even Cracked tends to be on the left these days. Reddit's the same - it heavily moderates to where posters have noticed big posts being deleted or locked because of content. (luckily it was stupid conspiracy content buhut my point being - it's not like control hasn't been exerted here

[bnmc2005]

But I am not so sure about "liberal establishment" not having any power. Go to Huffington Post right now and it is all sorts of leftist rage. There's Slate, Mary Sue, Daily Dot, even Cracked tends to be on the left these days.

I don't think of these as 'news' sites, though? I think of them as opinion sites. Like people magazine or Cosmo - almost. Slate is well done, no doubt but when people want 'news' they think, CNN, MSNBC, ABCNews, I'm thinking of newspaper sites too; NYT, Atlantic, etc.

[blackjedii]

Well....

CNN - leans slightly right

MSNBC - brands itself as left but aside from maybe Chris Hayes and Maddow is pretty darned centrist-pretending-to-pander-left

ABCNews - child company of ABC which is owned by Disney. Probably not as biased but given that there are only a handful of TV conglomerates (and there will be less once Time Warner cable merger goes through which it will in a R administration), kind of doubt its objectivity.

IIRC NYT and Atlantic are both pretty left. Just as WSJ is right. But at least they're generally up front about it.

It's still the same problem - news and which news you choose are commodities to be bought and sold. They still have to pander to their audience to make money. :/ Local news is a lot better about objective reporting in that respect.

[lovedforaday]

MSNBC - brands itself as left

used to. they went so-called mainstream after andy lack took over nbc news. some of it's laid out in GQ's interesting profile of Joe Scarborough http://www.gq.com/story/joe-scarborough-has-big-dreams-trump-musical

[blackjedii]

yep - which is why I added the pandered-to part.

It was baaad this morning. My dad was watching it and Scarborough was literally yelling at guests for "being on his show." But not surprised at all that they let their hosts act like such assholes. :|

[bnmc2005]

In the end... it's not Alt-Right or Russia or whatever, it's good ol' revenue that's changing media and how things are getting reported or what is considered "valuable" based on user data.I hear ya but I guess what I'm talking about here is how people engage with the site, reading the comments more than the article themselves

[blackjedii]

I agree. But I'm hesitant to say it's ALL right.... I've seen enough dogpiles and people run off Twitter for not being "liberal enough" to really feel comfortable there.

What gets me about it is that people aren't engaging with their own community, their own neighbors, or even their own country - their engaging with orchestrated rhetoric designed to be divisive.
+ 1000.

Also wrt a point you made previously - agree on Clinton's lack of messaging in a way that Obama did. I do remember he did an AMA not long after he was elected and was pretty actively engaged beforehand. Clinton's way to be engaged was... to do a weekly podcast. With a trusted friend and pre-scripted questions. She wasn't willing to reach out into the great unkown AT ALL.

[mimblexwimble]

Not being "liberal" enough, or being outright racist/misogynistic/bigoted?

[blackjedii]

It depends.

Joss Whedon left (apparently temporarily) after a group of fans bullied him for Black Widow in the most recent Aengers movie.

A group also went after S.E. Hinton after she said that she had not written her main characters in The Outsiders as gay.

mind you - I think this is just the nature of Twitter. There is no way to avoid getting dogpiled / bullied in a super-fast way and that's a serious problem for anyone. It's just not solely a left-right issue

[mimblexwimble]

Were either of those folks "bullied", though, or just criticized? SE Hinton said some pretty questionable things in response to that person who asked if two of her characters had feelings for each other, and people reacted. But I remember a ton of positive, supportive responses to her tweets. I don't disagree that social media can turn toxic, fast, but we need to be clear about what we mean when we say bullying or dog-piling. A large group of gay activists or gay people voicing their concern directly to a person is not bullying. Calling out racists is not bullying. Just because someone flounces off of Twitter doesn't mean they were bullied--quite frankly, it sometimes means they couldn't take criticism after dishing out a lot of bullshit.

[hudebnik]

"Is this the same information here?"

I believe that link is to a previous article in the same series. The present article is about the last three months before the election.