Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has not gotten a fair shake in the mass media. This analysis looks at how the likes of CNN, The Washington Post and big social media platforms are biased to the left side.
Photo by Jerica Drago
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Major networks like ABC, CNN and MSNBC have shown a massive amount bias favoring Hillary Clinton or a big dislike for Donald Trump, or both. Trump gets more abuse than other common enemies like ISIS, North Korea or Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Michael Goodwin, in his article titled, “American Journalism is Collapsing Before our Eyes,” in The New York Post, quotes Jim Rutenberg, a media columnist for The New York Times, in summing up what the average journalist thinks about Trump: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?” I understand why Trump is getting all of this negative attention, but why not Clinton? Especially when 68 percent of Americans don’t trust her. A lot of that has to do with her infamous e-mail scandal and her tendency to lie. In the past month she has shown signs of being sick with coughing episodes, including multiple video angles of her appearing to have fainted before she got in a van. Most of the media, like The Washington Post and New York Times, just dismiss the sick reports as a myth or just simply trying to move away from it. An example of that is Washington Post columnist Chris Cillizza on Hillary’s illness issues: “Here’s the thing: This is a totally ridiculous issue — for lots of reasons — and one that if Trump or his Republican surrogates continue to focus on is a surefire loser in the fall.” What if Trump were suffering from some illness similar to Hillary, having public coughing fits? Or worse, what if he was known for lying and facing pressure from the government because of wrongdoing. The media would be all over it like a rash. Pat Caddell, a public opinion pollster, talked to Breitbart.com about his views of the mainstream media doing whatever they can for Hillary. “This is the crisis of democracy – the mainstream media, which is in the tank, in the most violent way, against Donald Trump and for Hillary Clinton, that I have ever seen in the 45 years that I have been at the top of presidential politics,” Caddell said. I believe it all boils down to the person who is in charge of the particular media outlet. During the last election and since, Facebook didn’t select Republican news stories on their trending section, but would post Democratic topics. A former Facebook “news curator” told Gizmodo that they would modify what was trending. “Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” said the former curator. The story goes on to say: “This individual asked to remain anonymous, citing fear of retribution from the company. The former curator is politically conservative, one of a very small handful of curators with such views on the trending team.” He told Gizmodo: “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.” Michael Nunez from Gizmodo interviewed another curator who talked about how biased Facebook was. “It was absolutely bias. We were doing it subjectively. It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” said the former curator. “Every once in awhile a Red State or conservative news source would have a story. But we would have to go and find the same story from a more neutral outlet that wasn’t as biased.” This past August, CNN interviewed a retired New Jersey police officer, who saved a baby from a hot car. During the interview the man was wearing a shirt supporting Donald Trump. When the interview was re-run, the shirt was blurred out. I assumed, like several Americans, that CNN was the more trustworthy political network in America. As a Conservative, I do find Fox more entertaining, yet they are Republican biased, but this goes to a new level. Thankfully, I’m a sports writer. Sure, I will have to write plenty of opinionated articles on why Chaminade can beat CBC or give my take on why a certain player probably will not get all-state. Sports has always gotten the public beating their chests, but not like in politics where articles can affect the public on why they should or shouldn’t vote for a certain candidate.
Triston Buckley 
Emily Retzer