On June 16, 2015 Donald J.
Trump rode his escalator down in Trump Tower and announced he was running for
the President of the United States. Leading up to that announcement, he talked
about several reasons why he had decided to run. The most controversial of
which was illegal immigration.
His announcement was
pretty much considered a novelty by the media. Much like George Perot was back
in 1992. The difference is that Trump was running as a Republican and Perot ran
as an independent. Trump said he wouldn’t take money from donors. That he’d not
owe anyone any favors because he would self fund saying “I’m really rich.”
Trump got a lot of free
press coverage. He was bombastic, and not afraid to call out politicians,
including Republicans, for saying things to get elected but not following through. He said
politicians would not do what’s needed to “make America great again.”
While talking about
immigration, he said that Mexico was not sending their best and brightest but
instead sending murderers, rapists, and some were good. He was talking about
the videos we saw in 2014 of people riding on top of trains, and walking from
Mexico to the United States and crossing the border illegally. The media turned
it into Trump being biased against Mexicans.
The media never believed
that Trump could have a chance. First, he’s a businessman and never been in
politics before. Second, there were twelve other candidates announced and more
coming totaling 17.
By the time of the first
debate, the question was, if Trump doesn’t win the Republican nomination, will
he pledge to support whoever the nominee is or become an independent. He didn’t
commit until a week or so later.
Trump proved he could make
news. This saved him from spending millions of dollars in advertising. In addition,
Hillary had several problems. Over 60% of Americans felt she was not honest. She
was considered a flawed candidate and about the only thing going for her was
that she was a female. Trump being in the race and leading, caused less
discussion of Hillary’s flaws to devote time to the news Trump was making. At
one point, with the E-mail scandal and the personal server, the press spent
less than one minute talking about that but spent 29 minutes talking about
Trumps comments on Access Hollywood in 2005, 11 years ago.
There just wasn’t enough
time on the news for much discussion of Jeb Bush, who was the presumed to be
candidate against Hillary prior to Trump getting much of the news coverage.
Bush’s poor showing in the
beginning caused him to spend millions of dollars to get his message but he
couldn’t break through the news that Trump was getting. Carly Fiorina’s showing
in the first debate at the secondary table took away more news from Bush and
Dr. Ben Carson’s rise in the polls took even more away. Three non politicians
were getting more coverage than Bush despite the dollars he was paying in
advertising.
The predictions of the
pundits were all about someone else winning the nomination. When Bush dropped
out, it became about Senator Rubio or Senator Cruz. Then Rubio dropped out and the
personal attacks by Cruz on Trump and by Trump on Cruz lead the news until
Trump won it outright.
With the convention
coming, the talk in the media was all about a brokered convention and keeping
Trump from the nomination. From the day that Trump got in nobody in the media
gave him a chance. Once he secured the nomination, it was how to grab the
nomination through the brokered convention. The press had been proven wrong
each time.
The main story once the
nomination was secured was how evil the supporters were for chanting “lock her
up”. But then the Democrat convention
started and the Kahn controversy started up. Night after night and week after
week, the media hammered Trump on the Kahn family and had nearly zero focus on
Hillary’s legal problems.
Leading up to the
election, the media spent most of their time criticizing Trump for holding
rallies but not having a ground game. He was running a campaign that was not
the standard campaign as it’s always been done. They focused on White Women
with a college education, white women without college educations. Blacks,
Hispanics, white men both college educated and non college educated white men
and told us how each group would vote.
They criticized him for
going to Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, three traditionally Democrat
states. They said he should have been spending his time in places that he had a
chance to win.
They criticized him for
pointing out the press at his rallies and saying how dishonest they are. They
claimed they were afraid that it would lead to people attacking the press corps
at his rallies but said next to nothing when it was found that Hillary was
paying someone to have people come to Trump rallies and start the very problems
they were criticizing Trump for.
On Election Day, they
predicted that it would be an early night with some predicting what time they’d
be calling the election for Hillary. When it got to be 2:00 in the morning and
it was almost a certainty that Trump was going to win, they were trying to
figure out how the polls could have gotten it so wrong. Rarely have we heard
about how the media had it wrong except to say that it was a huge upset.
Since the election they
constantly remind everyone they interview (usually each other) that Hillary won
the popular vote. Until the past couple of days they’ve talked about the
reasons why Hillary may have lost but haven’t. They really spoken to the
people. Reince Preibus, the former RNC chair and now Trump said they’d be
looking at re-arranging the press briefings and the media now is concerned
about their seating arrangements.
There should be a
separation in the media. Reporters should be giving unbiased reports while the
television shows don’t need to hide their bias. That bias has led to Fox News
being number one for better than ten years. Fox News is more conservative but
bring in a balance of the two sides while the others, such as CNN, ABC, NBC,
CBS will have liberals outnumbering conservatives on their panels. MSNBC doesn’t
even pretend. They don’t bring very many conservatives on. When they don’t put
liberals on, they bring in Moderate Republicans.
Apparently, the media has
misinterpreted the First Amendment where it says Freedom of the Press. Freedom
of the press was to allow for the press to report events and not have a
government telling them what to report and what not to report. However, they
have created their own problems by not being honest and reporting to the
people.
How many times have we
heard the press misinterpret (purposely or not) what newsmakers say. How many
times have we seen the media cozy up to the leaders of this country? In many
cases, it’s too cozy of a relationship and the people suffer due to the lack of
accurate news. That’s been very apparent in this election and since.
You’re welcome to comment.
Brett
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