“It’s Not The Polls, It’s The Ratings”: The Staggering Numbers Behind The Media’s Trump Obsession
2-to-1. 5-to-1. 10-to-1.
Those are some of the lopsided ratios that appear when you start examining just how imbalanced the campaign coverage has been in favor of Donald Trump this election cycle. And it’s not just that front-runner Trump is getting way more media time and attention than front-runner Hillary Clinton. It’s that Trump’s getting way more than Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
During March, the network evening newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC devoted a jaw-dropping 143 minutes to the Trump campaign, compared to just 26 minutes to the Clinton and Sanders runs, according to an analysis compiled by Andrew Tyndall, who’s been monitoring the evening newscasts for years. Specifically, on NBC Nightly News, 51 minutes were set aside for Trump last month, but just six minutes for Clinton and Sanders. (Two minutes for Clinton, four for Sanders.)
Meanwhile, in the last 30 days, CNN has mentioned Trump approximately 25,000 times according to the GDELT Project using data from the Internet Archive’s Television News Archive. Clinton and Sanders? A relatively paltry 13,000 CNN mentions in comparison.
In terms of free media, Trump’s wall-to-wall coverage has earned him $1.9 billion worth of free media in nine months of campaign, according to the New York Times’ analysis, compared to $746 million for Clinton and $321 million for Sanders.
And during a one-week survey of online news campaign coverage overseen by University of Southern California researcher Ev Boyle, nearly 70 percent of the Washington Post homepage mentions of presidential candidates were for Trump, while the remaining five candidates — Republican and Democrat — accounted for just 30 percent of the mentions.
“Trump’s name appeared on the homepage 112 times across these 7 days, while Hillary Clinton’s name only appeared 13 times,” Boyle noted. “That’s almost 10 times more mentions of Trump than any other single candidate.”
There’s been lots of debate about whether the press “created” Trump’s front-runner status via its obsessive (and often subservient) coverage, or if voters themselves are solely responsible for his campaign success. But it’s also important to focus on the sheer tonnage of the Trump coverage and the wild inequity on display. (Even Fox News marvels at the “clear imbalance.”)
Overeager to portray Trump as a political phenomenon, the press has gorged on his campaign while often losing sight of the fact that perhaps the only true phenomenon has been just how much time and attention the press has decided to give to the Republican. (That, and how Trump has completely “bent television to his will.”)
The staggering imbalance comes in the face of new polling that shows Americans by a huge, bipartisan margin think Trump’s getting way too much press attention.
The disparity is also leading to tensions between supporters and the press. Over the weekend, hundreds of Sanders supporters protested outside CNN’s Los Angeles studios, demanding the candidate get more airtime. “Stop showing Trump so much,” one protester urged. “Stick to the issues.”
Keep in mind this endless buffet of Trump coverage comes at a time when the Republican campaign itself has essentially declared war on the media. When not allegedly assaulting the press, Trump’s team is herding them into pens while the candidate hurls endless insults their way.
We’re witnessing two extraordinary occurrences play out simultaneously: Nobody has ever treated the White House campaign press as badly as Trump, and nobody has ever been rewarded with more coverage than Trump.
So here’s the simple question that won’t go away: Why is the Republican front-runner often deemed to be four or five times more newsworthy than the Democratic front-runner? And why is the Republican front-runner constantly getting way more news coverage than both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, combined?
Statistics like the ones cited above badly undercut a favorite journalist defense that Trump’s massive amount of free media simply reflects his front-runner status. Note CNN chief Jeff Zucker has brushed off claims that the channel’s Trump coverage has been badly out of whack. “The front-runner of the party is always going to get a disproportionate amount of attention,” he said. (There’s too much “handwringing” about Trump coverage, Zucker reportedly told CNN employees.)
But again, why does the likely Republican nominee land almost twice as many mentions on CNN as Clinton and Sanders combined? Especially when current polling indicates Clinton and Sanders have a much better chance of becoming president.
The answer clearly seems to revolve around the short-term profits Trump helps generate. “I go on one of these shows and the ratings double, they triple,” Trump recently told Time. “And that gives you power. It’s not the polls. It’s the ratings.”
But newsroom executives seem reluctant to acknowledge that fact.
“I think that taking candidate rallies unedited is actually a valuable service,” CNN Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist recently explained, when pressed about the Trump tsunami. “I think that taking those rallies live, unedited, without commentary is useful,” he added
In theory, that’s great. If CNN wants to turn itself into C-SPAN during the campaign season and just televise rally after candidate rally in their entirety, more power to them. But have you seen lots and lots of Clinton and Sanders rallies aired uninterrupted? (Veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield compared the regular airing of “unvetted” Trump events to state-run television under Fidel Castro.)
Meanwhile, the numbers are still hard to make sense of. As mentioned, Trump received 143 minutes of network evening news time during the month of March. By comparison, Obama’s reelection campaign garnered 157 minutes of evening network news time during all of 2012.
Seen another way, Trump in just three months this year has received more than 250 minutes of network evening news time, which far surpasses all of Obama’s 2012 re-election coverage.
And there’s still seven months left until November.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters For America, April 6, 2016
“The National Bitch Hunt”: Only The Ballot Box Can Beat Clinton, Not Bogus ‘Scandals’
Fearless prediction: no legalistic deus ex machina will descend to save the nation from the dread specter of President Hillary Rodham Clinton. No cigar-smoking duck like the one on the old Groucho Marx program, no Kenneth Starr-style “independent” prosecutor, no criminal indictment over her “damn emails,” no how, no way.’
Ain’t gonna happen.
Voters who can’t bear the thought of the former first lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State taking the oath of office in January 2017 are going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: defeat her at the polls.
Those impassioned Trump supporters holding “Hillary for Prison” signs are sure to be disappointed. Again. Played for suckers by a scandal-mongering news media that declared open season on Clinton 25 years ago. And haven’t laid a glove on her yet.
Which doesn’t exactly make her Mother Theresa. But it does lend credence to former New York Times editor Jill Abramson’s somewhat surprising column in The Guardian to the effect that, when push comes to shove, “Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.”
Surprising because from 1992 onward the New York Times has been de facto World Headquarters of what I’ve always called the “National Bitch Hunt.” However, after spending years probing Clinton’s “business dealings, her fundraising, her foundation and her marriage,” Abramson’s been forced to conclude that said investigations all came to naught.
And whose fault it that? Why Hillary’s, of course. “Some of it she brings on herself,” Abramson thinks “by insisting on a perimeter or ‘zone of privacy’ that she protects too fiercely. It’s a natural impulse, given the level of scrutiny she’s attracted, more than any male politician I can think of.”
Well, some might argue that the years-long scrutiny of Bill Clinton’s zipper is comparable. However, being wrongfully labeled a “congenital liar” in the Times 20 years ago certainly might teach a girl to play her cards close. If not, being accused in a dear friend’s suicide (Vince Foster), might tend to make her, oh, a tad mistrustful of the press.
But enough ancient history, although few of the 40 percent of Democrats who tell pollsters they don’t trust her know it. Abramson is also right to say that Hillary “was colossally stupid to take those hefty speaking fees, but not corrupt. There are no instances I know of where Clinton was doing the bidding of a donor or benefactor.”
Even as somebody aware that Bill and Hillary Clinton have donated roughly $18 million in speaking fees to charity, I find the sums Goldman, Sachs paid her preposterous. But payola?
As the late Molly Ivins put it: “As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can’t drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against ’em anyway, you don’t belong in office.”
But back to Hillary’s emails. From the onset of the Clinton Wars, it’s been my experience that when the corrections and retractions reach critical mass and the “investigative” articles start to read like Henry James novels—i.e. diffuse and impenetrable—the end of a given “scandal” episode is near.
Last July, the New York Times got things started with an anonymously sourced exclusive claiming that federal investigators had initiated a “criminal” probe into whether Secretary Clinton had sent classified documents on her personal email server. Almost everything important about the story was false. It wasn’t a criminal investigation, nor was Clinton a target.
Rather, it was a bureaucratic exercise to settle an inter-agency dispute about which messages to release—as Clinton herself had requested. The Times was so laggard about making corrections that Public Editor Margaret Sullivan thought readers “deserve a thorough, immediate explanation from the top.”
They never got it.
Now comes the Washington Post with an interminable 5000-word narrative anchored by an “eye-popping” claim that according to “a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey,” a small army of 147 FBI agents was at work deciding if a crime had been committed.
That one fell apart overnight. Last time I checked, NBC’s sources said maybe a dozen agents are involved—an order of magnitude fewer than the Post claimed.
Meanwhile, the American Prospect turned to former Homeland Security classification expert Richard Lempert. Currently a Michigan law professor, Lempert pointed out that there are two big problems with the idea of charging Hillary.
First, we don’t have ex post facto laws. You can’t classify something tomorrow and charge somebody with leaking it yesterday. If you could, working for the State Department would be like inhabiting a cubicle in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Nobody would ever be safe.
Second, the job of Secretary of State’s entails considerable powers: “Not only was Secretary Clinton the ultimate authority within the State Department to determine whether…information should be classified, but she was also the ultimate authority in determining whether classified information should be declassified.”
Another ballyhooed scandal goes up in smoke.
By: Gene Lyons, The National Memo, April 6, 2016
“Don’t Fall For The Media Distortion About Trump”: A Wildly And Destructively Inaccurate Portrait Of Us As A People
The evidence is in, and it shows that the dominant media narratives about 2016 are wrong. Our country is not roiled with across-the-board discontent, and Donald Trump is not the most important voice in our politics. Turmoil in one of our political parties is being misread as reflecting a deep crisis well beyond its boundaries.
The most revealing and underplayed development of the week is Gallup’s finding that President Obama’s approval rating hit 53 percent (not once, but three times). This was its highest level since April 2013. If the people of the United States had lost all confidence in their institutions, the president wouldn’t be enjoying such a surge in popularity.
Compare the current incumbent, first, to George W. Bush. His approval rating at this point in his presidency was 32 percent, on its way down to 28 percent a few weeks later. And in a comparable period in 1988, Ronald Reagan’s approval stood at 50 percent. Note that the incumbent party was routed in 2008 but comfortably held on to the White House 20 years earlier.
And the demography of Obama’s support explains why a relentless media focus on Trump and the Republican primaries entirely warps the message coming from Americans as a whole. Obama’s approval rating is at 89 percent with Democrats and 50 percent among independents. But it stands at only 12 percent with Republicans and 9 percent among conservative Republicans. Yet the voices of conservative Republicans are being amplified beyond all reason by the obsession with Trump and the GOP’s struggles.
Sure, conservatives really don’t like Barack Obama. But that’s not news, and we certainly didn’t need Trump to bring it to us.
And speaking of Trump, the sharp partisan differences in attitudes toward him again signal the folly of viewing this year’s political events through a lens trained almost entirely on one party. A March 16-21 Quinnipiac poll found that Trump was viewed favorably by 62 percent of Republicans but only 34 percent of independents and 6 percent of Democrats. His overall favorability rating: 33 percent.
In the case of Obama, many independents are on the same page as Democrats. In the case of Trump, affection is mostly a Republican phenomenon — and even there, Trump has far less sympathy in his party than Obama has among those in Democratic ranks. Trumpism is not sweeping the nation. It has a strong foothold only in the Republican Party, and not even all of it.
Now only Pollyanna or Candide would conclude that everything is going swimmingly for our country. The Trump rebellion in the GOP and the Bernie Sanders revolution among Democrats both reveal the discontent of Americans who have been left out in our return to prosperity. If there is a bipartisan message in 2016, it is that our ruling classes have ignored the plight of those being hammered by technological change and globalization.
But Trumpism is a very poor guide to what needs to be done. Those hurting include both middle-aged white working-class voters, particularly men, and African Americans who — as the sociologist William J. Wilson showed in his pioneering book “When Work Disappears” — were particularly disadvantaged by deindustrialization. At a time when we need to address legitimate grievances across our lines of division, Trump is driving a racial and ethnic wedge through the country.
As Jason McDaniel and Sean McElwee pointed out in an important analysis of the data on the contest so far, “racial attitudes uniquely predict support for Trump,” including “racial resentment and explicit racial stereotypes.”
This doesn’t mean that we should write off the pain many Trump supporters feel. Nor should we ignore Trump’s challenge to conservative economic orthodoxy. But in the wall-to-wall coverage of Trump, the backlash around race and how he is courting it deserve far more scrutiny — even if this means The Donald might turn down a television network’s offer to do yet another telephone interview, in his pajamas, if he wishes.
At the least, the media might start asking whether the president’s popularity and Trump’s relative lack of it tell us something very important about what is happening in our nation that is being utterly lost in the clamor of Trumpism. We are allowing a wildly and destructively inaccurate portrait of us as a people to dominate our imaginations and debase our thinking.
If you will forgive me for borrowing from the man obsessed with talking about “winners,” someone here is a “loser,” and it’s not Barack Obama.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 30, 2016
“Hey, Hillary: Smile, Girl”: An Unhappy Century For White Men, And It’s About To Get Worse
You know, the world would be a happier place if a girl would just smile more.
Just ask the guys on Twitter.
Now, by “girl,” I mean a former U.S. senator and secretary of state who is likely to be the first female president of these allegedly united states.
As for “the world,” let’s narrow it down. We’re talking mean men who apparently spend much of their day breathing into paper bags because they’re not even allowed to ask a secretary to grab them a cuppa joe anymore without someone from HR signing them up for diversity training.
What? No more office wife? Evidence of hell in a handbasket right there. Just ask them.
So now we’ve got this Hillary woman going all presidential on us. She’s everywhere. Giving speeches. Declaring victories. Starring in one town hall after another. How much suffering must a good ol’ boy endure?
“God,” they pray, “pick another name.”
On Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton did what even Hillary Clinton thought she wouldn’t do: She swept the primaries. Missouri (barely), Illinois, North Carolina, Florida — she won them and my home state of Ohio, which is in the Eastern time zone, people. Boy am I tired of (SET ITAL) that (END ITAL) question.
Clinton strolled her conquering self across the stage in Florida as results poured in, and she delivered a victory speech while some of the white guys in TV-land offered their critiques via Twitter.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough: “Smile. You just had a big night.”
Because nothing says “commander in chief” like a girlish grin for the camera.
Fox News’ Brit Hume: “Hillary having a big night in the primaries. So she’s shouting angrily in her victory speech. Supporters loving it. What’s she mad at?”
Well, golly. Let’s take a look at what she was saying.
This, for example:
“Our commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it; engage our allies, not alienate them; defeat our adversaries, not embolden them. When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong; it makes him wrong.”
Banning Muslims? Torture? Rounding up immigrants? Where are the punch lines, Madam Secretary? If you can’t find a joke in this material, how will you ever make us laugh about the Islamic State group?
Or this:
“Our campaign is for the steelworker I met in Ohio on Sunday night,” Clinton continued, “who’s laid off but hoping to get back to work. It’s for the mother I met in Miami whose five children haven’t seen their father since he was deported. She dreams of a day when deportations end and families are reunited on a path to citizenship in America. And it is for the mothers I stood with in Chicago yesterday, who have lost children to gun violence.”
Not one smile during that whole paragraph.
See what he means?
Fox News’ Howard Kurtz tweeted: “Hillary shouting her speech. She has the floor; a more conversational tone might be better for connecting with folks at home.”
Uh-oh.
Kurtz’s follow-up tweet: “Getting attacked for saying Hillary shouted. Was not saying she was shrill. I’ve just heard her deliver more effective speeches.”
This reminded me of another primary night — the one two weeks ago, when MSNBC cut away from Clinton’s live victory speech so that three guys could talk about how she needs to speak more softly.
At a rally.
Okey-dokey then.
Politics is still a home away from home for women, apparently. Takes me back to a moment a couple of years ago when a Republican U.S. senator, who clearly had no idea that I was married to one of his Democratic colleagues, asked me what I do with my days.
“I write for a living,” I told him.
“Good for you,” he said, swinging his fist across his chest. The smile on his face made me think he’d misunderstood me to say that I had just learned how to make my own aprons.
Some men hear what they want to hear, and too many men don’t want to hear from women at all. This is an unhappy century for them, and it’s only going to get worse. One grandmother barreling her way toward the presidency is bound to work up all kinds of other women who’ve had it up to here with the catcall mentality of men who measure our worth by our ability to make them feel better about their limited view of us.
“Where will it all end?” they wonder.
At the White House, I’d guess.
I’m smiling as I say that. Does that help?
By: Connie Schultz, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Columnist and Professional in Residence at Kent State University’s School of Journalism; The National Memo, March 17, 2016
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