We must ask: How did Donald Trump win the primary with one of the smallest campaign budgets in the crowded Republican field? The answer is quite simple: traditional media outlets just couldn’t get enough of Trump.
In order for a candidate to rise in the polls, news coverage and attention is crucial to gain momentum and raise money for a campaign. Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy looked at the news coverage by mainstream media outlets in the year leading up to the first primaries.They studied major outlets and their coverage of Donald Trump such as: CBS, Fox, News, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, USA Today, and The New York Times, and found that they “covered Donald Trump’s campaign in a way that was unusual given his initial polling numbers” (Ingram). In other words, Donald Trump garnered free media spotlight despite polls not indicating he was in the lead. Meanwhile, the study found that “the Democratic race got less than half the coverage that the Republican race did” and most of Hillary Clinton’s coverage was negative throughout her campaign.
Worse yet, the study also found that “Donald Trump got the equivalent of about $55 million in free advertising space from the eight major media outlets it studied- and about $16 million worth of that came from the Ne York Times alone” (Ingram). When we ask ourselves why traditional media outlets gave so much free attention to Donald Trump the answer is clear: the outsider status of Donald Trump and the unorthodox campaign that was so contradictory to typical political behavior was easy to sensationalize.
When the Media finally turned on Trump, it was too late.
Public distrust for media is at an all time high according to a Gallup poll; however, if one simply asks around it’s not hard to deduce that trust in media has deteriorated significantly in the US. It’s typical that trust in the media dips during election years as candidates fire back when bad publicity is thrown in their direction, but in 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump manipulated the public’s distrust of the media in his favor(Gallup). Trump has been very vocal in denouncing traditional news outlets through dubbing them with his unique pet names such as: “the failing New York Times” and dubbing CNN, “Clinton’s News Network”(Trump’s Twitter). Historically, Republicans and Independents have been more critical of the media than Democrats (Gallup). Trump was able to devalue attacks on him from the media as a result of his constituent’s lack of trust in media. As a result, his followers chose alternative news sources such as social media and Breitbart News which centered Trump in a more positive light than traditional media.
When asked about the Gallup poll, Donald Trump actually took pride in believing that he had contributed to the public’s increase in distrust in the last two years: “I think I had a lot to do with that poll…because I’ve exposed the media..the level of dishonesty is enormous. IT’s so dishonest. I can do something that’s wonderful and they make it sound terrible” (Gold POLITICO). Whether or not Trump actually believes that the media is enormously dishonest is irrelevant, because he is right to assume that he played a major role in reducing the trust in the 4th estate. Media is critical to a functioning democracy, and the trust between the public and the media should be maintained at a high threshold in order for reason and our shared values as American people to triumph. With the advent of social media we are quickly finding that honest news and fake news are so intermingled that the common user is having a great deal of difficulty deciphering what is fake from what is real.
“In terms of bellwether moments, this is our anti-Watergate…journalism’s fundamental failure to this election. In terms of social media, twitter played an unprecedented role. It’s the original sin that comes with unfettered, unfiltered, media attention.” -Kyle Pope
At first, reporters ran to Donald Trump in order to get a slice of the ratings that he garnered on all news networks as a result of his continuous scandals and atypical remarks of a politician. Then, around the time that Trump became the Republican nominee, reporters and journalists alike began to backpedal. Journalists began to take Trump more seriously, and started to ridicule and point at his supporters and stereotype the lot of them as rural, racist, sexist, bigots. Given that most of the establishment, on the left and on the right, were not behind Trump, journalists were forced to find regular, everyday people to bring on TV in order to bring Trump’s perspective into light; however, these everyday people were unlike pundits and usually unable to withstand the bantering and debates that usual candidate backers would be capable of. Hillary Clinton joined journalists when she dubbed Trump’s supporters “deplorable”(Chozick nytimes) The word made headlines such as “How Many of Trump’s Supporters Really Are Deplorable” by fivethirtyeight.com, “Yes, Most Donald Trump Supporters Are Deplorable” by NYmagazine, and an Economist article titled: “How Deplorable are Trump Supporters?”
“Reporters’ eagerness first to ridicule Trump and his supporters, then dismiss them, and finally to actively lobby and argue for their defeat have led us to a moment when the entire journalistic enterprise needs to be rethought and rebuilt. In terms of bellwether moments, this is our anti-Watergate…journalism’s fundamental failure in this election, it’s original sin, is much more basic to who we are and what we are supposed to be. Simply put, it is rooted in a failure of reporting.”-Kyle Pope
It should come as no surprise that Trump supporters that were consistently alienated by mainstream media quickly turned away from traditional media altogether. Trump’s followers turned to social media and alternative news sources such as Breitbart in an effort, in my opinion, not to feel consistently insulted by supporting their candidate. Trump’s followers appropriated the name “deplorable” and became proud of the word, selling all sorts of merchandise through Etsy and other e-commerce stores(donaldjtrump.com). Journalists fundamentally failed to appeal to rural America, and, as a result, a huge amount of Americans moved to Twitter and other sources that are known to be hotbeds for conspiracy theories and blatant lies.
What Happened? 