The “fitness” category includes news reports on candidates’ policy positions, personal qualities, leadership abilities, ethical standards, and the like. Tone of Nominees’ Coverage on Topics Relating to Their “Fitness” for Office Source: Media Tenor. “Just like Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” as Barry Goldwater said dismissively of America’s two parties in the 1960s.įigure 2. Clinton’s ratio was identical-87 percent negative to 13 percent positive. In Trump’s case, this coverage was 87 percent negative to 13 percent positive. Figure 2 shows the tone of the nominees’ coverage on non-horserace topics, those that bear some relationship to the question of their fitness for office-their policy positions, personal qualities, leadership abilities, ethical standards, and the like. At any given moment in the campaign, one of the candidates has the momentum, which is a source of positive coverage. Much of the candidates’ “good press” was in the context of the horserace-who is winning and who is losing and why. It peaked at 81 percent negative in mid-October, but there was not a single week where it dropped below 64 percent negative.Įven those numbers understate the level of negativity. Not a week passed where the nominees’ coverage reached into positive territory. Negative coverage was the order of the day in the general election. Such reports accounted for about a third of the coverage. Excludes reports that were neutral in tone. General election covers period from August 8-November 7, 2016. Full campaign covers period from January 1, 2015-November 7, 2016. Tone of Nominees’ Coverage Source: Media Tenor. Overall, the coverage of her candidacy was 62 percent negative to 38 percent positive, while his coverage was 56 percent negative to 44 percent positive.įigure 1. But over the full course of the election, it was Clinton, not Trump, who was more often the target of negative coverage (see Figure 1). Trump’s coverage during the general election was more negative than Clinton’s, running 77 percent negative to 23 percent positive. If that’s true, journalists had a peculiar way of going about it. She was criticized for everything from her speaking style to her use of emails.Īs Clinton was being attacked in the press, Donald Trump was attacking the press, claiming that it was trying to “rig” the election in her favor. Her “bad press” outpaced her “good press” by 64 percent to 36 percent. Knight Foundation.Ĭriticism dogged Hillary Clinton at every step of the general election. The research was partially funded by the John S. The study’s data were provided by Media Tenor, a firm that specializes in the content analysis of news coverage. This Shorenstein Center study is based on an analysis of news reports by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The study tracks news coverage from the second week of August 2016 to the day before Election Day. This is the final report of a multi-part research series analyzing news coverage of candidates and issues during the 2016 presidential election. “It’s a question that political reporters made no serious effort to answer during the 2016 campaign.” “Were the allegations surrounding Clinton of the same order of magnitude as those surrounding Trump?” asks Patterson. The study found that, on topics relating to the candidates’ fitness for office, Clinton and Trump’s coverage was virtually identical in terms of its negative tone. It needlessly erodes trust in political leaders and institutions and undermines confidence in government and policy,” resulting in a media environment full of false equivalencies that can mislead voters about the choices they face. “Yet an incessant stream of criticism has a corrosive effect. “A healthy dose of negativity is unquestionably a good thing,” writes Thomas Patterson, the study’s author. The negativity was not unique to the 2016 election cycle but instead part of a pattern in place since the 1980s and one that is not limited to election coverage. A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage during the 2016 general election, and concludes that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received coverage that was overwhelmingly negative in tone and extremely light on policy.
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