There seem to be two
types of media outlets in both the UK and US. There are those who
push a clear right wing political agenda to those who would rather
read about celebrities or sport: the Daily Mail or Sun in the UK and
Fox News in the US. As President Obama said, if I watched Fox News
even I wouldn’t vote for me. And then there is the non-partisan
media. What values drive their coverage of political events?
I was thinking about
this after reading a comprehensive account
by Thomas Patterson of the media’s role in the rise of Donald
Trump, based on research by the Harvard Kennedy School’s
Shorenstein Center. The basic story is that the media gave Trump far
more coverage than other candidates in the crucial pre-primary
period. Furthermore, contrary to popular myth, this was not just the
cable news channels, but also papers like the New York Times and
Washington Post. The rise of Donald Trump owes a great deal to this
bias in media coverage.
The other remarkable
thing about this excess coverage, even among the established
newspapers, is that it was favourable. The term ‘favourable’
needs decoding in this context. What seems to happen involves a two
stage process. First, Trump simply gets attention by saying
outrageous things. Once his poll ratings start to rise as a result of
this publicity, he is talked about in a positive way because he is
gaining popularity.
Journalists in the
non-partisan media bend over backwards not to express personal views
on policy or character. What they do instead is treat political
contests as a horse race. It is all about who is up or down, who is
rising and falling. On top of that views are expressed on why some
candidates are doing better than others. Those who are winning
generally require explanations in terms of positive virtues: hence
the favourable treatment of Trump. Few journalists dare say that
Trump is gaining popularity because a large section of the population
is racist!
In other words,
Trump played on conventional, non-partisan news values and won big
time. He was great entertainment at first, and after that got him
noticed he became the news because the additional news coverage
helped increase his poll ratings. That news was favourable because his poll numbers were rising. In case you think this could only
happen for someone on the right, according to this research the
second part of the dynamic was even more true for Bernie Sanders. The
candidate who really suffered was Clinton.
That the media
should play such a large role in allowing someone like Donald Trump
to get so close to the White House should be a big concern for those
working in the media. The free press is supposed to help safeguard
democracy from quasi-fascists,
not make it easier for them to come to power! I wonder if part of the
problem is that the non-partisan media is also mixing politics and
entertainment. As talking about policy is not entertaining for most,
particularly if it has to be done in a ‘balanced’ way, it is more
attractive to the non-partisan media to treat politics like sport. I
cannot help feeling that if in a real horse race it was shown
that the commentary on the race had an influence on the outcome,
something would be done to change that very quickly indeed.
