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

[eveofrevolution]

[hudebnik]

Sorry: this is the first time I've successfully posted an article at all. Added graphs and another lj-cut.

[eveofrevolution]

[blackjedii]

[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.

[roseembolism]

It's worth pointing out that this site was no fifferent. It spent the vast majority of its time reposting anti-Clinton criticism. Obviously, people here liked the massive negativity, so just own it.

[mimblexwimble]

This is a user-populated social platform, not a news site. The comparison doesn't make much sense.

[bnmc2005]

On a totally unrelated topic; it's worth pointing out that this site is Russian owned as well.

[amw]

Ha!