News Coverage of the US 2016 General Election
2016 has been a very dramatic year in many ways, but none so much as the political scene. While the UK had a lot of debate at the start of the year, the news coverage globally was nothing compared to that of the Presidential Election in the United States, which, for over half the year, featured long and constant debates from the numbers of candidates that put their name forward. However, the real news started once it came down to the last two candidates - Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
In terms of coverage, we'll start off with one of the United States biggest news channels, CNN. Specifically, the day before the election, it is worth noting how much they had been consistently talking about Hillary's emails, as opposed to talking direct opinions regarding the debate or trying to discuss anything about the opponent. Leading up to the final week, they provided coverage of debates and discussions, as all news channels did, but interestingly it is difficult to find much news regarding any opinions about the candidates on this website, and it comes across as them trying to remain neutral as if to not alter the opinions of the American public.
Compare CNN's coverage to that of the largest UK news station, BBC, and you can see political opinions being discussed from as early as February 2016. What is most interesting about this is the way the opinions seem to form, with this news story from February referring to how Americans are 'angry', and later news reports discussing American political paranoia, represented by one of Donald Trump's many unusual looking photos. Paired with these other two stories is one discussing the American hatred for Hillary, which goes into interesting depth to explain why Americans seem to have this dislike for Hillary and why a lot of people wouldn't vote for her because of who she is - no article like this exists for Donald Trump, or, if it does, it is buried somewhere and much harder to find, which shows an interesting viewpoint of how the BBC will argue at length to explain why Americans would hate Hillary Clinton, but offer no explanation for the hatred of Donald Trump, almost as if they see it as something that is natural or obvious. Historically, the UK has generally been a more left-wing country than the US, and it stands that the lack of discussion about Trump almost seems to be a method of persuading the British public to remain with a more left-wing opinion of politics and not be persuaded to support Trump and other equivalents within the UK.
With just the two largest news companies you can see a huge difference in the representation of the debate, as CNN would talk more generally and generically, looking at facts and figures, being a very quantitative analysis of footage, statistics and even debates, showing the general opinions of answers to questions, and while it almost comes across as if they were more on Hillary Clinton's side, it also comes across as that the statistics were just on Clinton's side, and it seems interesting that CNN almost manages to make itself look neutral in the debate despite its large influences. The BBC on the other hand barely tries to hide its hatred of Trump, and while it doesn't show Hillary as being the best candidate, it's much easier to find information about the election, and a lot of it is more supportive of the Democrats in general.
A lot of these differences come down to audiences. As mentioned previously, the UK is, in general and historically, a much more left-wing country, having had 13 years of Labour government from 1997 to 2010, and with even the most popular right-wing party in the UK, the Conservatives, being, usually, more left-wing and open than the Americans republican party, and the only UK party coming close to the same values as the Republicans, or, in particular, the Trump Administration, being UKIP, who struggled to get any votes in the 2015 election, with the Labour and SNP parties got the majority of votes in total, being the two most left-wing candidates available to the country. What this shows is how the US audience is generally much more right-wing, and this is almost as if there is some sort of stigma left over from US history, back before, for example, John Kennedy. This is represented in statistics, where it can be seen that the majority of whites and males in the US voted for Trump, as well as him securing the vote of the older people, showing that age, race and gender can be easily influenced to vote for somebody. While CNN might have remained somewhat more neutral than British news sites, many people will focus on their preferred local news that may have more "extreme" views, as can be seen in Britain with people who are more likely to vote Conservative often reading The Sun and The Daily Mail, which represent much more Conservative values, and it can be assumed that many Trump voters would only read Trump's approaches on news, or right-wing news such as Chicago Tribune, the New York Post, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Dallas Morning News, and the Wall Street Journal, which all represent much more Republican values, and have been shown to represent a larger majority of Trump voters than Hillary voters, showing that reading a small bubble of specialised news designed for your opinions will give you a more close minded view, which seems to show that, if we were to assume the white, older males read, for example, the Dallas Morning News, which is deep-rooted in a largely Republican state, it would represent Donald Trump as a better person than Hillary Clinton for his values, making people of this particular group more likely to uphold his values.
Out of all the stories on this site, the one that stands out the most is "Got election stress? Breathe, work out, unplug ... and vote", which discusses, in particular, not being stressed about the election and the debates. It seems fairly neutral and innocent, but in the subtext of the news it seems to subtly suggest voting Trump. They make a note to mention making America "happy again", which is a parody of Trump's famous slogan, and it seems that in doing this they want to put that subtle Trump out there, and they continue to make a statement about how it's important to vote above all else, which, while not outright saying "Go vote Trump", is definitely hinting at this idea, which is similar to British Conservative newspapers.
While this small newspaper might support Trump quietly, the other less so quiet Trump supporting news source in the US is another one of their three largest news sources - Fox News. Unlike CNN, who hid their election news under a bunch of nonsense to make the world seem a bit better, Fox puts politics at the front and foremost of their site, and they are often mocked for how much they seem to be biased. One news report on their website shows Celebrity reactions to the election, published on November 8th, the day of the vote, which showed, fully, that all celebrities who mentioned a dislike for Trump as being "outrageous", and refuses at any point to mention any celebrities who supported Trump, such as Kanye West and Katie Hopkins (a British citizen who can't vote anyway), as if they were trying to avoid bringing up any potential targets of controversy, but happily spreading it about Hillary's supporters as they see fit. They even mention J.K. Rowling, a British author's, opinions, as if it is some crazy opinion in the UK to think Trump is wrong, which, as BBC showed, is a fairly popular opinion in Britain. Fox seems to represent above all else that they are a Republican news source, but never outright saying it, and it is interesting just how different the site is compared to the more neutral-seeming CNN. A quick look at Fox makes it seem very right-wing, where as a quick look at CNN would make it impossible to determine an opinion, though Americans who are able to watch and access CNN easier may have different opinions, it definitely comes across as more news and less propaganda.
What is interesting, is the statistics of people who view CNN and Fox. Fox (and the other big US station, MSNBC) have a very old, white, male audience. CNN have an audience of most of the other demographics in the states, with Hispanics, African-American, Asian and, crucially, young and female audiences all preferring CNN's approach to neutral news, which shows that when it comes to age, gender and race all prefer the more neutral and left-wing news, which represents the democratic separation between the two political parties of America in that all these different people prefer CNN's news. The other thing of note is demographics, where, weirdly, the upper class all prefer Republicans, the middle class all prefer Democrats, and the lower class have an almost 50/50 split of preferences, which is also reflected in British politics, suggesting that these statistics are almost worldwide. America was divided before this election, and is divided after, with more and more people seeing the Republican voters as being racist, and Democrats being viewed as terrorist-sympathisers, it's safe to say the country is somehow more split than the post-Brexit UK, and the world is unsettled, with many different social and economic groups being more split up. The richer are happy Trump is in power, the poorer are less than happy about it; the better employed are happy, the lesser employed are not. Politics cause a rift and media coverage can either make it better or worse, and in this case it feels like they make it worse. Despite this, there's one crucial news source that hasn't been discussed that is, for a lot of younger people, more important than CNN, the BBC and Dallas Morning News. The internet.
One of the worlds largest and most trusted news sources is the website Reddit, a forum website for any person to discuss any thing. Many parts of reddit are dedicated to different topics, ranging from video games, art, cute animals and news. r/news and r/worldnews are two of the largest places for getting a general opinion on politics, and any person's views can be seen in the open. If you were to look at the post from the 9th November, there is a clear view given by people that they didn't support Trump or Hillary, but voted Hillary. Many different viable news sources represented in a single place and with comments from the public to talk about it. Many people show a dislike for Mike Pence, many show their love for Bernie Sanders, and most importantly, they debate the news, rather than give a final, de facto opinion on politics. The internet is a great source of news, and while other place, such as r/TheDonald would represent some extremely biased opinions, you can see that, as a whole, the variety of opinions could lead a website like reddit to become the new news, while Fox news struggles to stay relevant in recent years.
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