Is the Media to Blame?

The book defines public opinion as the political attitudes and core beliefs expresses by ordinary citizens as revealed by surveys or polls. Public opinion is important because it deals with our popular sovereignty. Gender is one reason why people’s political attitudes differ. According to The Washington Post “the 2016 elections turned out to be the largest voting gender gap in the half-century history of exit polls.”

The prediction of women carrying Hilary Clinton to victory was defeated when Donald Trump was elected as the new president. Hilary Clinton won women by 12 points which was the same number of points as former President Barrack Obama. The book states that “Women identify more with the Democrats and are more likely to vote Democratic candidates.” With the shocking outcome of President Trump winning office many voters were shocked. The gender gap became even bigger this year with Donald Trump taking office because men, specifically white men, voted more right.

Men increased their support for the Republican candidate by 5 points. In the 2016 election, the number of women who voted was weaker for the Republican candidate. When Barack Obama was elected for president his number or women voters were higher than Hilary Clinton. This is due to the fact that women in the minority have influenced the support of the democratic party.

The Washington Post said that 96 percent of black women and 76 percent of Hispanic women supported Obama during his 2012 election and for Hilary Clinton the number was smaller. Was it Hilary Clintons fault that not as many women voted for her? Or was it the medias fault for depicting her as an untrustworthy candidate?

According to The Washington Post gender is not the only factor. “White women, on the other hand, typically favor Republicans, though those with college degrees posted modest margins for Democrats in 1996, 2000 and 2008. Clinton won them Tuesday by six points, a small wing that highlights the educational and ideological divide among white Americans.”

With much more than gender creating gaps amongst American voters, race and education all affect each other in determining who represents the country the best. Donald Trump came as a big surprise to many Americans especially women after the media released videos of his derogatory comments toward women.

The most notable being the access Hollywood video that was released. Following the release of this video Billy Bush, former Access Hollywood host, was fired and months later Donald Trump became our president. With more than a year of polling suggesting that women would vote in favor of Hilary Clinton, what happened? Is the media to blame?

Is the media covering elections wrong and releasing biased information? With both candidates being painted in negative ways by the media it left Americans with little to choose from and not much trust in the country’s next leader. How do we as Americans fix the problems of polling and create less of a gap for elections to come?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/09/men-handed-trump-the-election/?utm_term=.25ea8de2fffa

6 Responses to "Is the Media to Blame?"

Klein Evans says:

February 26, 2018 at 9:15 pm

Katherine,

Thank you for this compelling and insightful argument.

I agree with your overall argument in that the media can be quite devious and tricky when delivering information to the public. I believe that your awareness to make the comparison to the media portraying both men and women political figures protects your argument from being attacked by the counter-argument of gender inequality.

Although this strengthens your argument, I do feel that you miss the fact that some of this information is in fact true to a certain extent. They do released biased information based on their company, but the information itself is not completely false. The media tends to exaggerate certain events as well as blow them out of proportion, not falsifying them. I agree with you in the fact that the media deserves some of the blame, but not necessarily all of it. At the end of the day, the people who the media are targeting have done something that the media finds out about. It is just the manner that the media voices the information is where the problem occurs.

Thank you again for your post Katherine, I enjoyed reading it.
Langley Crisp says:

February 27, 2018 at 7:33 pm

Dear Katherine,

I very much appreciate your opinions regarding the media’s role in the 2016 Presidential Race. I definitely agree with you; the media is unequivocally a biased source that has the potential to impact voter’s opinions.

However, I don’t think it’s fair to completely blame the media. The facts that the media presented during the 2016 Presidential Race weren’t completely inaccurate. Hillary Clinton did neglect security in terms of her email server. President Trump very much so did say horribly crude comments about women in the Access Hollywood Tape. While the media can sensationalize these stories, and different networks may choose to highlight different elements of each story, the opinion that Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy or that President Trump is misogynistic is derived from the facts of each story. However, I do understand the argument that the media’s presentation of each story may be enough to alter the opinion of some less informed voters.

In fact, I would argue that it was President Trump, not the media, is to blame for his victory. President Trump’s media presence started decades ago when he was a real-estate mogul in New York City. He even pretended to be his own publicist, John Miller, so he could be the one to directly speak to the media. He made himself available to the media for interviews, photoshoots, or anything just to gain exposure.

Trump is not the successful business man that he is portrayed as in the media. He has numerous unsuccessful business ventures (Trump University, the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City) that are overlooked time and time again.

This is because of how he worked with the media in order to make himself a character – a “Richie Rich” type. Donald Trump created a character for a TV show called The Apprentice and he actually convinced America that he embodied that character (even though his track record shows otherwise.) He convinced people to trust him during the election because of his wealth and success. The outcome shows that people were able to overlook his vulgar comments, and other negative press, because of his success. He became the lesser of two evils (Untrustworthy Hillary Clinton versus misogynistic Trump) and he did so by manipulating the media.

You may argue that this makes the media complicit in Trump’s rise. But the media didn’t create the Trump political phenomenon. Trump created the media that in turn created Trump the presidential candidate.

Thanks for a great post!
Haley Overlander says:

February 27, 2018 at 8:39 pm

Kate,

I appreciate your post on the effects of gender and media in the 2016 polls. I agree that gender definitely influenced the polls, however, I also believe that there are an innumerable number of other factors that led to the outcome we are dealing with today. Given it is true that 42% of women voted for Republican Donald Trump, while 53% of men did, we cannot say gender was the main influence. Although there is factual evidence that President Trump has degraded and insulted women throughout his life, many women still chose to vote for him as their political leader.

I do not agree that the media is entirely to blame for the lack of women who voted for Hillary Clinton. In my perspective, though I am sure this can be contested by many, the election was the decision of who would be the ‘better of two evils.’ Yes, the media has plenty to do with influencing public opinion, but so do the candidates themselves, what they represent, and what their pasts show of who they once were, or still are. Because people have very different concerns regarding where their priorities lie, Trump’s clear degradation of women, may not have been as high of a concern to many women as was financial prosperity within the American economy. As said by Morgan Chalfant of Elite Daily, “though individuals may want to elect Clinton to the White House, it’s important for voters to back these candidates not because they are women but for the policies and stances they represent.”

To touch on the aspect of how negative news media coverage of Hillary Clinton could have affected the number of women voters, I found an article that exemplifies the negative news coverage that Trump received throughout the election process for comparison purposes. For example according to PABLO BOCZKOWSKI of NiemanLab, ” leading news organizations in the United States have consistently and almost uniformly engaged in negative coverage of Donald Trump… detailed reporting and elaborate opinion pieces have dug into every conceivable aspect of the Republican nominee’s sexist, racist, and xenophobic statements…the leading news outlets have also scrutinized Trump’s business operations, from the management of his casinos and real estate projects to his tax-filing practices, and reported profusely on the less-than-positive aspects of these operations.” If these continuous reports on the negative aspects of every part of Trump’s personal and professional life did not turn him away from winning the presidency, then I don’t believe bad press really has the power to do what we once thought it did. In this day in age, any press really does seem to be good press.

Thank you for your post!

Sources:

BOCZKOWSKI, PABLO. “Has Election 2016 Been a Turning Point for the Influence of the News Media?” Nieman Lab, 8 Nov. 2016, http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/11/has-election-2016-been-a-turning-point-for-the-influence-of-the-news-media/.

Chalfant, Morgan. “How Sex And Gender Will Affect The 2016 Presidential Election.” Elite Daily, 8 May 2015, http://www.elitedaily.com/news/politics/x-ways-sex-already-playing-role-2016-election/1021437.
Kayla Corbin says:

February 28, 2018 at 2:18 pm

Katherine,

This argument and the questions posed in this post are very timely and relevant.

With that being said, I agree with your overall argument. The media can be influential when it comes to ideas, but to what degree are they to blame for the political polarization we see in the U.S.?

Similar to what has been said in previous comments, the media more often than not reports the facts. Even though how they present them may be biased, there are still facts presented (in most cases). However, in a supply and demand country we must realize that the media would not supply that bias if we didn’t demand it. There is clearly a market for divisive rhetoric, and if the news media is doing so well then the American people are keeping the market afloat. It’s true that most Americans pick a side, and then only listen to comments that align with their ideals, therefore it’s easy for the media to exploit and encourage that.

Focusing on social media might have strengthened your argument, because we now know due to the Russian Probe that propaganda and actual false information was spread through social media. The news media on the other hand is biased, but they aren’t telling blatant lies (even though they might exaggerate), they are still a lot more credible and knowledgeable than what you find on social media. Most of the negative rhetoric we get surrounding candidates can be seen on social media, where people express views they already have from their political socialization, and the media just repeats and perpetuates them to appeal to viewers.

When it comes to polling, I feel like polling does what it’s designed to do. There is no way to be 100% accurate with polls because they are given to humans. But, most of the time they paint a depiction of what people are thinking or saying, not necessarily what they are going to do, we saw this during the 2016 election where people said they were going to vote for Hillary, but didn’t.

Overall, you asked an intriguing question that got me thinking how much we influence the media and how much they influence us and what we can really achieve from polling, since people are only human.

Thanks again for the post!
Everett Harper says:

March 1, 2018 at 1:23 am

Katherine, I very much enjoyed your argument on the media’s influence because I believe that is extremely relevant to today’s political atmosphere.

I agree that the majority of the blame for these voting gaps is due to the media. I think that in previous elections (mostly in our last election) that all media outlets, whether it be republican or democrat biased, attacked each candidate for flaws that were not relevant to the election. It appeared as if the media was digging for every possible wrongdoing of each candidate in order to influence voters one way or another. While I feel that critiquing policy on both candidates is fair for the media to do, I believe that the media has begun to critique who the candidates are as people more than their politics.

While I think that media is a large reason for gaps in voting, I do not believe that it is entirely the media’s fault. I think that the voters themselves are also to blame for the voting gaps. With all of back and forth banter that came with the previous election, I think that voters need to take time out of their day to research, analyze, and critique the candidates on policy and then proceed to develop their own opinions/views. We see that most voters sided with their respective candidates because of something they saw on the news about them, but I believe that voters should be held accountable for finding the unbiased truth about the candidates to choose who they are voting for.

Media outlets serve as a quick and easy way to develop opinions about a candidate and I agree that it plays a large roll in determining who votes for who. Although the media is usually accurate in presenting aspects of candidates policies, I firmly believe that it is ultimately up to the voters to see through the media’s ways of bashing the candidate they don’t support. Overall, very well written.
Samuel Lambeth says:

May 5, 2018 at 2:00 pm

Katherine,

You sufficiently explained how media influences voters and citizens’ acts of political participation. You asked if media is to blame for the gender gap in today’s voting trends. I believe media plays a role in the way we perceive candidates, but not as much in whether women choose to vote in elections. The media has limited sources for their headlines, due to the fact that most statements are released from the officials or a liaison. As a result, the media is forced to frame what the candidates say in order to satisfy their viewers and sponsors based on the organization’s political ideology. The generational gap also influences the turnout on the number of women voting in elections. Women from older generations do not take on the role of demonstrating their political ideology, because they didn’t see it growing up. However, as we see today, more younger generation women and minority group members are voting and even running for positions. Great job on your post!

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