This article discussed the ways in which the media covers Trump, and how Trump has attacked the media to avoid asking questions about his own corruption and misgivings. Archer notes that many politicians in the past, Republican and Democrats, have employed similar tactics and have expressed the same distaste for mainstream media. In Trump’s presidency, the magnitude, intensity, and frequency of these attacks on the media have skyrocketed, making them quite different from Nixon, Bush, and Clinton’s attacks on the media. The rise of cable news channels like MSNBC and FOX have changed the way reporters cover candidates and the way we look at the media as a society. In some shape or form, all politicians are calling out some branch of the media as they believe different sources are unjustly biased against them. In this effort to control the narrative, politicians are keeping more secrets from the American public. I think the rise and demand for conservative news is pretty interesting. The ways in which are modern political parties impact social media, YouTube, and television are huge developments in history because partisan cable news channels now make millions of dollars and have pretty significant impacts on informing(or misinforming) voters about the news.
There are definitely a lot of similarities between Trump and Nixon’s campaign. Nixon was considered much more moderate than his fellow California politician that is more often associated with modern conservatism, Ronald Regan, who would become president about a decade later. Nixon probably would have disagreed with many of Trump’s policies (I’m not sure Trump still fits the mold of any political party for that matter, and he probably never did to begin with), but like Trump, Nixon’s campaign found a great success in mobilizing the “silent majority” oF America. The use of the media and the rise of television in the 60s and 70s had a pretty big impact on voter turnout since many (probably pretty racist) people who did not agree with legislation being pushed during the Civil Rights Movement felt like they were not being represented since they were not actively protesting and being covered by the media. Trump tapped into a similar support group in his 2016 campaign; people that voted for Trump and did not agree with Obama’s progressive politics, but they weren’t publicly expressing their admiration for Trump
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