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What? From the summary of your link: "Why was Clinton’s coverage substantially more negative than Sanders’, and why did Sanders get so much less coverage than s

What? From the summary of your link: "Why was Clinton’s coverage substantially more negative than Sanders’, and why did Sanders get so much less coverage than she did?" Did I ever claim the media wasn't biased? Of course the media had an effect on the election, and that effect wasn't neutral. The fact that the media has systemic biases does not imply that major media organizations conspired in favor of a candidate, Hillary Clinton, who was actually considered by most to have been negatively impacted in the general election, and according to the link you posted, was covered more negatively than Bernie Sanders. This is a giant mess conflating DNC problems with fundamental realities of news media with an unproven conspiracy theory. I have always been responding to this: "the corporate media [...] colluded to stop a once in a lifetime opportunity in Bernie Sanders to help their friend and collaborator Hillary Clinton, and so we ended up with Donald Trump." I promise you, that is not the position of the Shorenstein Center or any other academic research organization focused on journalism.

ABCLAW 10y ago
The primary criticism of media from the Sanders camp was a lack of coverage. Please revisit the Shorenstein Center study on this point. The numbers bear this out, and you're welcome to do further homework on the issue, as well as the importance of variables at play in media coverage. Sentiment analysis is not the only element of reporting coverage that matters. Here's some more analysis which shows the putative internal mechanism for the frequency of media's reporting, which is consistent with the internal stakeholder incentives. The analysis shows that there is a dramatic decoupling in reporting frequency as between Clinton and Sanders. http://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-president-2016/ http://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-presi... The finding regarding his airtime in comparison to Cruz in the Shorenstein report is damning. So is the search interest correlation decoupling between him and Hillary. Those are hard numbers. Numbers which bear our a narrative which was raised and repeated during the primaries, and then vindicated by numerical analysis afterwards by a number of reputable sources. Additionally, when the DNC leaks did occur, they revealed that Clinton's preferred media outcome did occur, and that the DNC systemically favoured her over Sanders. Put simply, we have the act laid bare by statistical analysis, the relationships between the actors in question mapped out by the leaks, and the incentive for the parties to act all mapped out, yet your position is that there is no evidence whatsoever that something happened.
- ForrestN 10y ago
  Not at all. You're describing a real problem, but it is in no way a conspiracy, in no way is it new, and in now way is it uniquely related to Hillary Clinton. The media has a problem with "horserace" coverage, which is the subject of your Shorenstein Center study. The problem, which is structural rather than conspiratorial, is that the media is obsessed with covering which candidates are winning and by how much, with projecting who they think will actually win, and then focusing on those candidates. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and creates an enormous barrier to entry for outsider candidates. As the Shorenstein Center study concludes: "The problems associated with press coverage of the 2016 nominating campaign are rooted in the mismatch of journalism values and the structure of the nominating process. There is little question that the nature of the 2016 campaign—Trump’s presence, particularly—brought the mismatch into sharp relief. But the broad tendencies in press coverage of the 2016 coverage are ones that exhibit themselves every four years." The truth is that Sanders was considered by everyone to be a long shot candidate, so he got less coverage. The coverage he did get was much more positive than the coverage of Clinton. They both got radically less coverage than Trump. So, no act laid bare by statistical analysis, just a long-standing bias in favor of covering the most famous candidates with the most celebrity status. The relationships between candidates and reporters is totally public and was in no way revealed by any leaks. It's an obvious part of doing the job of political reporter that only people who had never closely followed a campaign were surprised by, and that was willfully misrepresented by the likes of Breitbart and Fox News as somehow nefarious. Remember, there was no corresponding RNC leak, which would of course show that reporters were talking to politicians there constantly too. There is nothing in the DNC leaks that proves reporters working in concert with the DNC to influence the outcome of the election in Hillary's favor, only that the two groups were attempting to influence each other in service of their own goals (to get new information and to win the election, respectively). So, no relationships between actors mapped out. Anyway, if there were a scheme to use frequent mentions to favor a candidate, it's clearly Trump, not Clinton. It's well documented that Trump stories drove the most clicks, which is why news outlets focused so much on him. Was there a massive conspiracy between all the Republicans, including Trump himself, who spoke to reporters every day, clearly tilted the general election in favor of Trump, and had a direct incentive to get a scandal-prone celebrity into office? Most people who follow politics closely know that Clinton has a famously bad relationship with the media and has earned incredibly negative coverage as a result. She's very famous and so she gets covered but there is definitely no giant multi-company conspiracy to support her.

ABCLAW 10y ago

The primary criticism of media from the Sanders camp was a lack of coverage. Please revisit the Shorenstein Center study on this point. The numbers bear this out, and you're welcome to do further homework on the issue, as well as the importance of variables at play in media coverage. Sentiment analysis is not the only element of reporting coverage that matters. Here's some more analysis which shows the putative internal mechanism for the frequency of media's reporting, which is consistent with the internal stakeholder incentives. The analysis shows that there is a dramatic decoupling in reporting frequency as between Clinton and Sanders. http://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-president-2016/ http://decisiondata.org/news/political-media-blackouts-presi... The finding regarding his airtime in comparison to Cruz in the Shorenstein report is damning. So is the search interest correlation decoupling between him and Hillary. Those are hard numbers. Numbers which bear our a narrative which was raised and repeated during the primaries, and then vindicated by numerical analysis afterwards by a number of reputable sources. Additionally, when the DNC leaks did occur, they revealed that Clinton's preferred media outcome did occur, and that the DNC systemically favoured her over Sanders. Put simply, we have the act laid bare by statistical analysis, the relationships between the actors in question mapped out by the leaks, and the incentive for the parties to act all mapped out, yet your position is that there is no evidence whatsoever that something happened.

ForrestN 10y ago
Not at all. You're describing a real problem, but it is in no way a conspiracy, in no way is it new, and in now way is it uniquely related to Hillary Clinton. The media has a problem with "horserace" coverage, which is the subject of your Shorenstein Center study. The problem, which is structural rather than conspiratorial, is that the media is obsessed with covering which candidates are winning and by how much, with projecting who they think will actually win, and then focusing on those candidates. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and creates an enormous barrier to entry for outsider candidates. As the Shorenstein Center study concludes: "The problems associated with press coverage of the 2016 nominating campaign are rooted in the mismatch of journalism values and the structure of the nominating process. There is little question that the nature of the 2016 campaign—Trump’s presence, particularly—brought the mismatch into sharp relief. But the broad tendencies in press coverage of the 2016 coverage are ones that exhibit themselves every four years." The truth is that Sanders was considered by everyone to be a long shot candidate, so he got less coverage. The coverage he did get was much more positive than the coverage of Clinton. They both got radically less coverage than Trump. So, no act laid bare by statistical analysis, just a long-standing bias in favor of covering the most famous candidates with the most celebrity status. The relationships between candidates and reporters is totally public and was in no way revealed by any leaks. It's an obvious part of doing the job of political reporter that only people who had never closely followed a campaign were surprised by, and that was willfully misrepresented by the likes of Breitbart and Fox News as somehow nefarious. Remember, there was no corresponding RNC leak, which would of course show that reporters were talking to politicians there constantly too. There is nothing in the DNC leaks that proves reporters working in concert with the DNC to influence the outcome of the election in Hillary's favor, only that the two groups were attempting to influence each other in service of their own goals (to get new information and to win the election, respectively). So, no relationships between actors mapped out. Anyway, if there were a scheme to use frequent mentions to favor a candidate, it's clearly Trump, not Clinton. It's well documented that Trump stories drove the most clicks, which is why news outlets focused so much on him. Was there a massive conspiracy between all the Republicans, including Trump himself, who spoke to reporters every day, clearly tilted the general election in favor of Trump, and had a direct incentive to get a scandal-prone celebrity into office? Most people who follow politics closely know that Clinton has a famously bad relationship with the media and has earned incredibly negative coverage as a result. She's very famous and so she gets covered but there is definitely no giant multi-company conspiracy to support her.