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Anti-policies bias

Bergslagstroll

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Maybe it already been discussed a lot, but if these facts are true one scary thing about the American election was the anti-policies bias in the news. That it’s risk turning politics into a reality show instead of a discussion how different policies affect people’s life.

It’s also increased the economic elite possibility to influence politics against the interest of ordinary people. Because people's are attention are for example instead focused on all the crazy things Donald’s Trump says and does. The same thing I think is more common here in Europe also, that it’s more and more focus on scandals and conflicts instead of policies in the media coverage.

Also I don’t know the trustworthy of this report so feel free to present your own sources either confirming or refute the findings. I just know that here in Sweden we almost every day had stories about something crazy Donald Trump said or Clintons scandals but extremly little about what they actually planned to do as president. That can be indication of your American reporting because swedish journalists usually just like to copy, paste and translate foreign news.

With just two weeks to go, issues coverage this year has been virtually non-existent. Of the 32 minutes total, terrorism (17 mins) and foreign policy (7 mins) towards the Middle East (Israel-ISIS-Syria-Iraq) have attracted some attention. Gay rights, immigration and policing have been mentioned in passing.

No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates' terms, not on the networks' initiative.

http://tyndallreport.com/comment/20/5778/
 
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Maybe it already been discussed a lot, but if these facts are true one scary thing about the American election was the anti-policies bias in the news. That it’s risk turning politics into a reality show instead of a discussion how different policies affect people’s life.

It’s also increased the economic elite possibility to influence politics against the interest of ordinary people. Because people's are attention are for example instead focused on all the crazy things Donald’s Trump says and does. The same thing I think is more common here in Europe also, that it’s more and more focus on scandals and conflicts instead of policies in the media coverage.

Also I don’t know the trustworthy of this report so feel free to present your own sources either confirming or refute the findings. I just know that here in Sweden we almost every day had stories about something crazy Donald Trump said or Clintons scandals but extremly little about what they actually planned to do as president. That can be indication of your American reporting because swedish journalists usually just like to copy, paste and translate foreign news.



http://tyndallreport.com/comment/20/5778/


This isn't hard to explain at all. What you saw was an "anti-policy" bias during this election campaign, wasn't a case of the news media having something against reporting on important policy issues. The reason policy coverage took a back seat this election campaign, stems from the inherent liberal bias that dominates the mainstream news media in American. Political coverage by the mainstream news media is heavily influenced by the personal ideological beliefs of the reporters, journalists, editors and news anchors within every news department, of every news organization. That influence has been growing stronger every year, but never as strong as we witnessed during the 2016 presidential campaign. The lack of policy issues coverage that took place during the campaign, was simply the byproduct of that bias.

Coverage of political campaigns by the news media falls under 2 categories... Policy and scandal. Since we are coming off of 8 years with a Democrat in the white house, most of the policy changes came from the Republicans. It was the same in 2008 except it was 8 years of a Republican president and the Democrats were the ones with the majority of policy changes proposed. In the 2016 campaign Hillary Clinton had very little to offer policy wise, because the policies in place on taxes, healthcare, terrorism and the economy were either Obama or democratic policies. Hillary offered nothing of substance that would solve the immigration problem, or create more jobs, but did talk a lot on social issues and other low priority issues. She seemed to spend most of her time defending Obama's policies and attacking Donald Trump. Donald Trump on the other hand, put a lot of focus on changing immigration, repealing Obamacare and overhauling the tax code, which directly ties to the economy, trade, jobs and terrorism. He also spent a fair amount of time attacking Hillary and making controversial statements.

When it came to the news media, talking in depth about the issues would not bode well for Hillary Clinton or democrats, because as always with presidential elections, the American people want to hear solutions (good or bad) to what they perceive to be the big issues of the day. Trump was the candidate who was promising to address and fix the most problems, not Hillary. Then there is the scandal side of the coverage. Hillary Clinton had more scandals surrounding her than any presidential candidate in my lifetime, most of which centered around political corruption and incompetence. Donald Trump had a few scandals also, but the most prominent negative against him was his words spoken in public and his refusal to adhere to political correctness.

Being that the news media has a pretty heavy left leaning bias, it came as no surprise to me that they offered very little policy coverage and instead focused most of their time covering the scandal side of things. The biggest scandal by far was the Hillary Clinton email scandal, followed by (in no particular order of importance) the Podesta emails, Trump's hot mic comments, Trump U, the Clinton foundation, Huma, Benghazi, The dozens of comments on the trail by Trump, Clinton's released emails, The Trump accusers, the DNC undercover videos and hacked emails, etc... Once again, liberal bias by the news media prevailed when it came to the amount of scandal oriented coverage from each candidate they reported on.

Just look back to the coverage in 2008 and you'll see how liberal bias also dictated the news coverage. I won't go into detail, but sufficive to say the liberal bias in the mainstream news media also dictated the coverage back then also. The difference then was the scandals would hurt democrats, so there was far, far more time given to policy issues.


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