Misinformation: a series part 1.75
The lifting of the mainstream media's left leaning veil
The free press is needed in a functioning democracy, news outlets and reporters are meant to serve as watchdogs for the public and inform us of the inner workings of the machine that is the government. In the United States there are three main branches or "estates" of governance; executive, legislative and judicial, the role of the press is so important that they're referred to as "the fourth estate".
The term fourth estate dates back centuries when people used to relay information about the King and Clergy back to the commoners giving them influence over the public and they're primary role of informing the masses about those in power hasn't changed much in centuries. As governance evolved the press has been an integral piece of that evolution. Once the U.S gained independence and wrote they're constitution they enshrined the press into it with the first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The amendment gives free speech to all but also specifically mention the press likely because of they're significance.
In some way, shape or form this relationship between the government and media has been replicated in democracies around the world. Overall this relationship has worked out well for the public, it's held the people in power accountable for their actions, since they know that misdeeds will likely be exposed by the press and consequently to the masses they govern. One of the most effective and famous instances of this is the Watergate scandal where sitting president Nixon was caught trying to cover up a break in of the DNC (Democratic National Committee's) headquarters that his administration orchestrated. The exposure of this information and subsequent investigation lead to his resignation in which he would have likely been impeached if he had not preemptively resigned.1 This upon the hundreds of other government scandals exposed by the media demonstrates the power and responsibility they hold.
The press has usually tried to triumph themselves as the messengers of objectionable facts and purveyors of truths and although they're content does contain factual information and a majority of what they publish is rooted in some form of truth, bias is almost impossible to avoid.
In analyzed coverage of the 2008 elections this bias became apparent. In a study done by the Joan Shorenstein Centre (An institution of the Harvard Kennedy School Of Government) titled "The invisible primary--invisible no more" found this bias when they analyzed 5 months of early election reporting. "Overall, Democrats also have received more positive coverage than Republicans (35% of stories VS. 26%), while Republicans received more negative coverage than Democrats (35% VS. 26%). For both parties, a plurality of stories, 39%, where neutral or balanced."2 The study also found Democrats received more coverage overall. "Democrats generally got more coverage than Republicans (49% of stories VS. 31%.) One reason was that major Democratic candidates began announcing their candidacy’s a month earlier than key Republicans, but that alone does not fully explain the discrepancy." The study analyzed 1,742 early election stories in total. This showed that media coverage following the election was reported through a politically biased lens. This in of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, if it’s disclosed to the audience that the content they're viewing is politically motivated. An example of this can be seen in Ben Shapiro's show where he ends every broadcast stating "you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative radio show in the nation." So although Ben's show covers news events and is riddled with factual citations and examples ultimately the show has a strong right wing bias which again is fine because the viewership is made aware of this.
The same cannot be said in the mainstream media. Even though they have been evidenced as left leaning outlets they've never openly discussed or admitted their bias and remain projecting themselves as "purveyors of truth".
This phenomenon of not admitting bias is not exclusive to the left of center political networks. Fox News for years advertised themselves as "fair and balanced" when in reality they leaned right. Allsides.com rates their online branch of news content as right biased. Their team found "...Fox News runs a number of sensationalist headlines and that its story choice is right-wing. In many cases, we found the body text of the articles to be rather balanced or just stating the facts."3 Allsides also references a 2014 PEW research study that found 46% of Fox's audience was Republican whereas only 18% where left or left of center and 37% of the audience was considered mixed or center.
Fox News “Fair & Balanced” logo
Therefore Fox knew who their viewership was and catered content that appealed to a majority of their base. Fox was also something else, they were the most watched cable news network and had been consistently for nearly two decades. It was big news when MSNBC overtook them as number one for a week in December of 2018. Newsweek reported on the story stating "MSNBC raked in 1.56 million viewers between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m--the "sales day" hours--during the week of December 17-21. Meanwhile, Fox News brought in 1.54 million and CNN 975,000, according to Nielsen Media Research."4 They also noted "The ratings moment was a historical achievement for MSNBC, which hadn't managed to top Fox News and be the most-watched network during the daytime slot in 18 years."
Obviously the other networks competing with Fox wanted their number one spot and as already mentioned these other news networks already had a pre-existing left leaning bias, couple this with the fact that their successful competitor Fox only thinly veiled their right wing preference. This set of circumstances would set the stage for a shift that would come in the mainstream media. This shift came to light during the first checkpoint of the modern history of misinformation, the 2016 presidential election.
As already discussed in part 1 Russia ran an influence campaign during the election and as covered in part 1.5 Trump went from an obscure candidate to the nominee for the general election and eventually to being elected President. The 2016 election coverage lifted the veil of the mainstream media's already existing left wing bias. As Trump gained more momentum throughout the campaign the established press largely abandoned their post of attempting to appear center and neutral more and more.
Trump announced his intentions to run for President in mid-June of 2015, the media wasted no time jumping on him. By July 9th CNN published an entire article about his comments towards Mexican immigrants he made during his announcement. The quote from his announcement in its entirety is as follows: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”5 The CNN article never includes the entire quote they only include the "rapists" portion and conveniently infer that Trump also called them "killers" which as shown he never did in his original quote. They also never mention that Trump pulls back a bit at the tail end of his statement by stating that some are good people, likely conceding to the fact that some illegal immigrants are crossing the border for the sole purpose of seeking a better life. Instead CNN spends the whole article denouncing Trump and how it's damaged him and more broadly the GOP especially with Latinos. Even though the article itself admits Donald didn't see a dip in polling as a result it does end with predicting the Trump campaigns doom by quoting a Latino co-chairman for an arts foundation saying ""It might work in Iowa and New Hampshire, but assuming that if he were to continue on, he's going to hit a wall of hate when it comes to primaries in Arizona, Nevada, California, New Mexico or Florida." With this contributor concluding:
"He's going to be stopped there by Latino voters, no question."6
As we all know "The Donald" was not stopped and kept gaining momentum and delegates as the primary portion of the election continued. Much like CNN the rest of the established press echoed predictions of his campaigns doom throughout the race.
As mentioned in part 1.5 the NY times tried to explain away his early popularity by correlating it with a natural bump candidates receive in the polls as a result of their announcement. In January of 2016 NBC also again tried to explain away his success as a candidate. They quoted a political observer and "data expert" Nate Silver as saying "Trump is a famous person who is getting disproportionate coverage in the press and that, more than deep support for his policy positions, explains Trump’s lead in the polls."7 The article also eluded to two other possible reasons for his lead as being his ability to tap into the working classes economic anxiety and or that he appeals to "non-college educated" (code word for stupid) voters. Language like this "non-college educated", "xenophobic" and eventually "deplorable" would become commonplace to describe Trump supporters. As the race continued mainstream media would double down on their "coverage" explanation for Trumps popularity and cable news would come to realize the practice of bias and divisive coverage was extremely lucrative.
Negatively covering a Republican candidate was nothing new for the mainstream media. The study mentioned in this article by the Joan Shorenstein Centre found that 47% of the coverage surrounding Obama was positive in 2008 whereas just 18% of coverage was positive for his Conservative opponent John McCain. The difference with Trump was the escalation in ratings.
Former CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves was quoted as saying:
"It may not be good for America, but its damn good for CBS."8
Moonves said this in regards to the rating boost caused by covering Trump. In June of 2016 the media again doubled down on their "coverage" explanation for the rise of Trump. Politico put out an article framing the fact that Trump had so much popularity because cable news continually covered him and his campaign.
The article states that cable news essentially gave Trump almost two billion dollar’s worth of free press as well as running six stories about his campaign for every one story that they ran about his closest primary competitors Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Therefore shear exposure of his campaign became the primary hypothesis to explain his popularity. The Politico article also touches on two other key factors that influenced the direction of cable news's content; One that before Trump cable news was struggling and was experiencing drops in their ratings and two the reason for this was because social media and other forms of news media where beginning to overtake cable news in popularity.
The mainstream media had found new life in covering Trump and since they already had a left leaning bias and because they spent a majority of the primary framing him as democracies anti-Christ they only had one direction to go once he secured the nomination for the general election that direction was further left.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton where announced towards the end of July as the candidates for the general election however a third force entered the race around this time and that was Russia. As mentioned in parts 1 and 1.5 Russia hacked the DNC (Democratic National Committee) and obtained several emails and then leaked them to the public through Wikileaks. This came to the public’s attention just as the general election was kicking off.
2016 Democratic National Convention. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Now a new scapegoat for Trump’s campaign success was available and that scapegoat was Russia, by the first presidential debate the topic of Russia's hacking and the appearance of Trumps friendliness towards the foreign power became a topic of discussion. "...I think they've been treating it as almost a probing, how far will we go? How much will we do? And that's why I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable."9 Hillary said during the September 26th debate, eluding to how Donald had hoped the hackers also had the 30,000 or so emails that Hillary had deleted off her private server that was part of a separate email scandal.
As the campaign continued the democrats dug their heels in more attempting to link Trump and his campaign to Russia. The New York Times published an article towards the end of October that summarized the lefts desperate need for Trump and Russia to be affiliated. "Hillary Clinton’s supporters, angry over what they regard as a lack of scrutiny of Mr. Trump by law enforcement officials, pushed for these investigations."10 The Times stated referring to F.B.I investigations into the Trump campaigns alleged link to the Russian government. Although at the time the FBI had found no conclusive link to Trumps campaign and Russia Hillary's supporters insisted they keep digging.
"It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government — a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity,”
A former democratic senator of Nevada Harry Reid was quoted as saying in an email to investigators. The left was certain that "The Donald" had commissioned Russia to do his dirty work and aid his campaign by tearing down Hillary's. This allegation of Trump and his campaign being directly linked to Russia and their 2016 "misinformation" influence campaign would eventually turn into the "Russiagate" story, which is the second checkpoint in the modern history of misinformation.
For now the take away from this article is that the left and consequently the left leaning mainstream media needed a scapegoat to explain Donald Trump’s eventual ascendancy into the presidency and what better scapegoat than an already established foreign enemy like Russia and the dangerous misinformation they spread that allowed the Trumpster fire to burn brightly in the oval office.
Footnotes:
"Watergate Scandal", Wikipedia.org, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal
"The Invisible Primary — Invisible No Longer - Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy". Shorensteincenter.org, October 26th 2007, https://shorensteincenter.org/the-invisible-primary-invisible-no-longer/
“Fox News (Online News)", Allsides.com, https://www.allsides.com/news-source/fox-news-media-bias
Janice Williams, "Fox News Loses Top Ratings Spot to MSNBC For the First Time in 18 Years", Newsweek, December 27 2018, https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-msnbc-ratings-morning-1272396
Donald Trump, "Transcript: Donald Trump announces his presidential candidacy" CBS News, June 16 2015, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-donald-trump-announces-his-presidential-candidacy/
Chris Moody, "Donald Trump digs in on immigration", CNN, July 9 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/07/politics/trump-immigration-rapists-mexicans-clinton/index.html
Perry Bacon Jr., "Why Donald Trump's First Campaign Ad Is So Striking", NBC, January 4 2016, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/why-donald-trump-s-first-campaign-ad-so-striking-n489916
Campbell Brown, "Why I Blame TV For Trump", Politico Magazine, May/June 2016, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/2016-donald-trump-blame-tv-cable-news-media-campbell-brown-campaign-cnn-fox-msnbc-213839/
Amy Sherman, "Hillary Clinton claims Donald Trump invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to hack Americans", Politifact, September 26th 2016, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/sep/27/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-claims-donald-trump-invited-russia/
Eric Litchblau and Steven Lee Myers, "Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I sees no clear link Russia", The New York Times, October 31 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html