From The Media Failed Americans This Election Season, by Eric Boehlert via HuffPost:
The latest data from television news analyst Andrew Tyndall confirms that broadcast network evening newscasts this year devoted nearly four times as much airtime to covering Hillary Clinton’s emails as they have spent covering all campaign policy initiatives from all candidates for the entire year: 125 minutes for emails, and 35 minutes for in-depth policy discussions on issues like terrorism, immigration, policing.
...
“When Gallup recently asked Americans to say what they recall reading or hearing about her, one word — ‘email’ — drowned out everything else,” according to Gallup’s Lydia Saad and Frank Newport.
The Comey letter was the subject of more than a week of breathless coverage across the cable news channels.
In the nine days following Comey’s announcement, “email” or “emails” was mentioned thousands of times on the three cable news channels, according to TVEyes.
…
Does that seem overly obsessive to anyone? Does that seem like a press corps blindly in search of a crime? Does that seem like a press corps that simply doesn’t like Hillary Clinton and applies different standards to covering “scandal” stories about her?
The above article was published on November 7th. A day before the U.S. elections.
The following excerpt is from an article similarly titled, The media has failed this nation, by Daily Kos’s own Frank Vyan Walton, published on this site on November 6th. Two days before the election (bolding is mine):
Under the Fairness Doctrine, facts were facts and opinions were opinions. During a news broadcast, what was presented for public consumption were. the. facts. No spin. No opinion. No gray area. No on the one hand this but on the other hand that. Once the factual reporting was done, if a corespondent wanted to offer an opinion or editorial on a particular subject it was marked and documented as such.
Now nothing is marked or identified as an opinion—because everything is a matter of opinion. Everything would now have to be marked as an “editorial” because that is almost all we actually see, and most of what we read. Everyone has an opinion, and figures that that opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s opinion of what facts matter and which facts don’t matter.
…
These are facts. The media has failed to present us with most of these facts, failed to highlight them and insist that they are. indeed. facts. And that is why this election is anywhere near close.
Sure, there’s plenty to argue about and I’m not about to proclaim that Hillary has done no wrong or that Trump can do no right. He does have some positive qualities and she does have some sketchy ones—but then that’s all a matter of opinion isn’t it?
America has to make a choice, and that choice should be made based on facts rather than dodgy, unsubstantiated opinions.
Well, we all know what happened since then, and Trump’s election is a direct result of our Fourth Estate being derelict in its duty to report the facts. The corporate, dollar-driven U.S. media of the 21st Century wanted a horse race, or else they wanted rock-bottom tax rates guaranteed under a President Trump; thanks to our mainstream media, our country will likely be plunged backwards into the early 20th (or even the 19th) Century in terms of policy, social contract, human rights, and basic human decency.
For the past week and a half, I’ve witnessed progressives, Democrats, liberals, Bernie supporters, Hillary supporters, Stein supporters, and other progressives/liberals turn against one another in a circular firing squad, pointing fingers at why we lost, why the Democratic Party failed us, why we failed each other. This misdirected ire is useless and unproductive. Attacking one another instead of the real culprits takes our eyes off the genuine enemies of our republic, and worse, it plays right into the puppetmasters’ hands.
Plus, the media’s already doing the dirty work of pinning the blame squarely on us. We’re “soul-searching.” “Jockeying” for our next leader. Yes, we’re the ones to blame for Trump’s win. The media is shaming us for doing everything in our power to stop a madman, yet failing to reach out to the poor, besieged, “angry white voter.” For propping up an unpopular career politician, who, in many Americans’ minds—again, no thanks to our stellar media—is just as bad as Trump.
And even in our grief, rightful anger, and peaceful protests, the media is failing us AGAIN.
All my parents tell me that they see on “the news” is that “the Democrats are rioting” and their “violence” is proof that we’re sore losers—and hey, Americans voted for Trump because they were unhappy with the way the country was going! (Yes, my parents actually told me that.)
Again, we can thank the media for tainting the minds of everyday Americans like my mom and dad, who now, apparently, lump their daughter (who, by the way, has regretfully NOT yet been able to make it to a protest due to work, children, church volunteer, and other commitments—but will on the 29th) in with the relative handful of anarchist agitators who are giving a bad name to the thousands of otherwise peaceful protesters across the nation. Even Congressman John Lewis is telling the peaceful to be peaceful, basically feeding into the media myth that we’re all rioters and criminals who “won’t accept” the election results.
And the media is freaking doing it again, as Laurence Lewis points out in Saturday’s piece titled, “The lights are blinking red.”:
Yesterday the President-Elect of the United States settled a massive fraud lawsuit, but last night his viciously homophobic and misogynistic Vice President-Elect got booed by a Broadway audience. Guess which the media are focusing on today?
Lewis then follows with a recap of Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickinson’s Tweetstorm about the sorry state of our media. His article points to this Tweetstorm, but here are a couple more gems from Dickinson:
The media hasn’t (or haven’t, depending on how you treat the subject noun) simply failed us, past-tense. They’re still failing us. And they’ll continue to fail us.
If we let them.
The anti-Trump protests are doing little, in my opinion, except to express a common outrage, band together with like-minded people, and protest the results of an election that—despite people’s best efforts to persuade the Electoral College otherwise—is likely to be confirmed on December 19th and sealed into inauguration on January 20th.
In my opinion, we’re training our ire at the wrong target.
Peacefully and nonviolently, we need to get in front of every media outlet—and their cameras and their talking heads—from the major media centers in New York City and Atlanta to the myriad of affiliates in our own towns.
If the people in the media wonder what we’re protesting about, we’ll tell them we’re protesting them. Their misinformation. Their misleading the public for profit and sensationalism. Their compliance with the powerful and the privileged and the people who hold the keys to our country and think it’s their personal treasure chest. Their malfeasance in their duties at the expense of everyone else in the country who has to suffer from the wreckage. Their failure to tell the truth.
We’ll have plenty to protest against the Trump administration, I’m sure, after Mr. Trump puts his hand on the Bible in January so he and his lapdogs can piss on the Constitution.
But for now, we should protest the ones who got our country into this mess in the first place.
Make them put their cameras on us. Make them aim their scrutiny toward themselves.
Make them tell the truth.
UPDATE: eater has supplied some great contact links for the big media outlets, cable as well as broadcast (thanks, eater!). Let’em have it!
USA Today
Politico
Wall Street Journal
New York Times
Washington Post (although I do comment them for their mostly truthful coverage on the election, and you should, too)
ABC News
NBC News
CNN
MSNBC
FOX (I loathe to call them “News”)