It was a major surprise when Donald Trump won election to the US Presidency. I think the reasons the 1948 election of Harry Truman wasn't mentioned was because of shock and paralysis after the fact of the 2016 election AND because there was no headlines as there were on the occasion of the Truman election.
I think comments about the election coverage by the media have focused on their being sure of the outcome and then being wrong. Their sureness is the excuse, I think, for why they didn't ask more questions and investigate more and that may be true.
Another thing the media did which I think was both honest and unfortunately effective was based on the media's assumption that Trump was so 'out there' as to have no chance of winning and by simply having him present himself then voters would see him for who he ii and what the media thought he is and that would result in his defeat. SO it is likely that both Clinton and Trump received the same amount of time of the evening news shows but the quality of the time was very different. The news shows would tell us what Clinton said and did with not a lot of sound/video bites while the time allotted to Trump was almost all Trump talking and doing stuff. We were told about Clinton and shown Trump. And if there was any commentary it was probably more about Clinton and were nuanced critiques of her thoughts and politciues and foibles against Trump and there was a certain seeming negativity against Clinton in those critiques and negativity about Trump was probably thought to be obvious in how he said what he said.
The result was Trump was getting all this exposure which the media thought was negative while Clinton was thoughtfully analysed with the assumption made people would get "it".
What is true so often is that old adage: "no publicity is bad publicity". Trump's exposure on the news was publicity while reporting about Clinton was journalism.
A fairness rating might have been met if that rating was based on equal time. Fairness of the quality of the time was very different.
A fairness rating might have been met if that rating was based on equal time. Fairness of the quality of the time was very different.
And so here we are!!!! A publicity expert is President while a policy expert is out of service. Someday we will see which expert is best. My guess is policy is more real and important and effective then publicity.
No comments:
Post a Comment