Red Vs Blue: Have America's Newspapers Lost Their Way?

Andy Peden

Red vs Blue: Have America’s Newspapers Lost Their Way?

Political Science

Faculty Sponsor: Dr. John Tures

The presidential election of 2016 was anything but ordinary, with the two leading candidates being vastly different than any others before them. One candidate has the privilege to be the first female front runner for the Democratic Party and the other was a television personality billionaire that has no prior political experience. These two also happened to be some of the least liked candidates in modern times according to a joint poll conducted by Gallup (Saad 2016).

According to the poll, “head into the final hours of the 2016 presidential campaign with the worst election images of any major-party presidential candidates Gallup has measured back to

1956” (Saad 2016).

Total Favorable and Unfavorable Ratings of Major Party Presidential Nominees, 1956-2016

Based on U.S. adults; Ranked by % total favorable Nominee Total favorable Total unfavorable % (+1 to +5) % (-1 to -5) 1956 Oct 18-23 D. Eisenhower 84 12 1964 Oct 8-13 L. Johnson 81 13 1976 Sep 24-27 J. Carter 81 16 1960 Oct 18-23 J. Kennedy 80 14 1968 Oct 17-22 R. Nixon 79 22 1960 Oct 18-23 R. Nixon 79 20 1976 Sep 24-27 G. Ford 78 20 1972 Oct 13-16 R. Nixon 76 22 1968 Oct 17-22 H. Humphrey 72 28

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Nominee Total favorable Total unfavorable % (+1 to +5) % (-1 to -5) 1984 Sep 21-24 R. Reagan 71 30 1980 Oct 10-13 J. Carter 68 32 1984 Sep 21-24 W. Mondale 66 34 1992 Oct 23-25 B. Clinton 65 32 2008 Oct 23-26 J. McCain 64 35 1980 Oct 10-13 R. Reagan 64 37 2008 Oct 23-26 B. Obama 62 35 2012 Oct 27-28 B. Obama 62 37 1956 Oct 18-23 A. Stevenson 61 31 2004 Oct 22-24 G.W. Bush 61 39 1992 Oct 23-25 G.H.W. Bush 60 40 2004 Oct 22-24 J. Kerry 57 40 1972 Oct 13-16 G. McGovern 55 41 2012 Oct 27-28 M. Romney 55 43 2016 June 14- H. Clinton 51 50 23 1964 Oct 8-13 B. Goldwater 43 47 2016 June 14- D. Trump 42 59 23

2016 nominees are presumptive; Dates for all years except 2016 are final pre- election; No data for 1988, 1996 and 2000

GALLUP

Donald Trump stood at a staggering 59% unfavorability rating right before the election.

The previous record of unfavorability of 47% set by Presidential hopeful Barry Goldwater in

1964 and Hillary Clinton barely manages to edge out Goldwater with 50%. Gallup isn’t alone in Citations Journal of Undergraduate Research 2 © May 2017, Vol. 14

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producing these figures Harry Enten a senior political writer at FiveThirtyEight ended up with very similar numbers based on their own polling data (FiveThirtyEight 2016).

With just those few components you would be correct in expecting this to be a groundbreaking election, but those small details are only the start. There have also been allegations of Russian interference, leaked secret emails, threats against the rival, and questions of health. To say that the media has had a field day with all these stories would be an understatement. There has been a Citations Journal of Undergraduate Research 3 © May 2017, Vol. 14

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constant struggle between both candidates to keep the attention of the press in any manner possible. The real question was there significant media bias for one candidate over the other?

Has the print media been more negative to one candidate than the other?

It might seem like an obvious answer, but until there is statistical evidence to back those claims, or are they just mere speculation. In the same vein as Tim Groeling’s 2008 study into media bias of the four major news networks. In his article for Presidential Studies Quarterly titled “Who’s the Fairest of them All? (Groeling 2008) An Empirical Test for partisan Bias on

ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News” Groeling attempts to do a comprehensive, empirical test instead of a cursory glance Tim Groeling examines the coverage of presidential approval polls on

Fox’s news program, Special Report, as well as the evening newscast of ABC, NBC, and CBS.

Grilling states “In this study, I will attempt to empirically measure whether Fox News has, in fact, systematically skewed its news over the past decade and compare its news choices to those of the network evening newscasts. Specifically, I will be examining whether Fox's Special

Report, ABC's World News (Tonight), the CBS Evening News, and the NBC Nightly News presented biased portrayals of public opinion regarding the president in their coverage.”

Groeling makes a fair point, that there are benefits of a supposed media bias against politicians. By being able to say that the media is bias against them it enables the politician to dismiss any claims by the media against them. People do seem to prefer an underdog. Groeling mentions that, “even in the absence of such bias in an attempt to ‘work the ref that is, vociferously protest a close call in an attempt to have the next one go your way. And, because of well-documented cognitive bias - such as confirmation and disconfirmation biases, selective perception, anchoring, attention bias, the clustering illusion, and selective perception, among

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others partisans might sincerely perceive news as being biased against their preferred stance, even when it is actually unbiased.”

Groeling addresses the two main problems of bias research. The first problem is the subjectivity of defining what is bias, and the second is selecting what is bias. Groeling cites

Vallon, Ross, and Lepper’s 1985 research that says that identical stories can labeled as diametrically opposed bias depending on who is watching the programs. Groeling uses the example of President Bush, “If President Bush is reported to be standing by his secretary of defense, who is being pressured to resign, that stance could be interpreted as positive (a man who sticks with his convictions and by his allies) or negative (a man who ignores reality or is foolishly stubborn).” Even the media watchdog groups, Media Matters, Media Research Center, the Center for Media Public Affairs, and the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting group have failed to come to an agreed upon description of what exactly constitutes media bias.

Groeling then uses a method from that he and Sam Kernell used to study negative bias in network news (Groeling and Kernell 1998). In that study, the minimized methodological and evidentiary problems by limiting the analysis to that reported on the public’s approval of the president. Groeling says that, “Such polls represented a subset of presidential news that minimized subjective coding and for which we could observe the population of potential news stories as well as those actually reported.” This allowed Groeling to look at each network’s in house public option polls of the president and compare them to what news segments were broadcast during the nightly news. By comparing the two Groeling could see if networks were simply following public opinion or intentionally being bias.

Groeling comes to the results that there is indeed substantial evidence of bias in the

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media towards different political parties. Groeling states in his conclusion that, “Across the different model specifications, only ABC's coverage of Bill Clinton failed to register at least marginal significance in any model specification. Further, in every case, the differences found were consistent with the partisan's stereotypes: ABC, CBS, and NBC all appeared to favor good news for Clinton and bad news for Bush, while Fox appeared to favor the reverse.” In this figure, you can see the results of Groeling’s study.

One article on the subject by Glenn Smith and Kathleen Searles talks about the break down in distinction by the American public between what is an opinion shows and what is a factual news show. This breakdown between fact and opinion could possibly be one factor in the rise of media bias towards candidates.

Walter Conkrite once said that, “Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine.” The tendency of people to watch news coverage that aligns with their own partisan point of view has to do with a reinforcing effect. By watching this news people want to hear the news from a perspective that they agree with. It’s a cycle of looking for a source of information that agrees with a person’s already set opinion. By separating viewers into their own political parties there is more hostility towards the other party, almost like with party sorting.

Glenn Smith and Kathleen Searles (2013) look at whether opinion shows have the power to influence viewers enough to change their opinion more than standard news coverage. They researched and looked at media bias during the 2008 election campaign on opinion shows and how they covered ideologically similar candidates and how critical these opinion shows were of the opposition.

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In another article on the subject titled “Fair and Balanced News or a Difference of

Opinion? Why Opinion Shows Matter for Media Effects” Glenn Smith and Kathleen Searles, examine the rise of opinion shows in relation to traditional news coverage. One such individual they look at is Rush Limbaugh and they write, “Conservative talk show hosts dominate political radio by opining to their listeners. Chief among the talk show hosts is Rush Limbaugh, who refers to his listeners as ditto-heads, because they are supposed to listen up and ‘say ditto’”

(Smith and Searles 2013, 671).

The authors (Smith and Searles 2013) studied the 2008 presidential election coverage of the serious news shows on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC and looked at how individuals responded to the different stations. One experiment involved a study by Iyengar and Hahn (2009) titled “Red

Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use” in which individuals were shown several news stories. During the course of their study Iyengar and Hahn found out that individuals preferred news from ideologically similar sources to their own despite the actual content of the news bulletin. This reinforces the idea of preferred bias.

Despite looking for several sources Smith and Searles had to focus much of their attention on Fox due to large amount of data that was available at the time on both their news and opinion shows. Fox even released a statement which made a well-defined division between their news programs and their opinion shows. The authors also looked at MSNBC, but due to the networks lack of available data there was little or no definitive distinction between what show was classified as an opinion show and as factual news coverage

They authors found that “opinion shows on Fox News had 34 percent more exclusive

Obama stories than exclusive McCain stories, whereas MSNBC’s opinion shows had slightly

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more exclusive stories about McCain than Obama” (Smith and Searles 2013, 676). Their results were consistent with what they expected from the beginning.

From this research one could conclude that there is a self-fulfilling cycle of [people] receiving news from like-minded people. What goes in comes back out. By listening to other peoples’ opinions and not forming their own, people tend to follow the flock even if it leads you off a cliff.

Through a fair amount of digging we might be able to better understand what kind of relationship these candidates had with the media during the latter part of their campaign. By looking at 1,662 articles from 6 different newspapers and doing a content analysis, we will see what if any bias is there. We collected articles from mid-September through mid-October.

We read over these articles one by one to do a content analysis. This analysis is defined

After thoroughly evaluating those articles to ascertain qualitative data, we can then convert them into numerical data. We rated each article in one of three ways; either they were labeled as positive, neutral, or negative towards the candidate. The overall tone of the article, plus keywords enabled us to classify them. We recorded each entry and coded each article that was read by who red, the date it put was published, the content analysis of the article, which newspaper the article was from, the circulation size of the paper, and which candidate it was about.

In our content analysis, we gave each article a 1 for positive, 0 for neutral and -1 for negative.

This allowed us to feed the information through SPSS and run a variety of equations on the data, but more on that later. We defined an article as positive if it praised a specific candidate through the majority of the article. If an article was one that applauded a candidate’s efforts or touted Citations Journal of Undergraduate Research 8 © May 2017, Vol. 14

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some past experiences or even voiced support of a specific candidate’s campaign promise. Here is an example of a positive article by the Las Vegas Review Journal from mid-September. It praises Donald Trump’s efforts to reach out to the African-American community in Detroit.

“Donald Trump swayed to songs of prayer, read scripture, and wore a traditional prayer shawl Saturday on a visit to a predominantly black church in Detroit, as he called for a “civil rights agenda of our time” and vowed to fix the “many wrongs” facing African-Americans. “I am here to listen to you,” Trump told the congregation at the Great Faith Ministries International. “I am here to learn.” Trump has stepped up his appeals to minority voters in recent weeks, but the visit was the first time Trump has addressed a largely black audience since winning the

Republican nomination. Trump was introduced by Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, who wrapped a traditional prayer shawl, around Trump and told his congregation that, “This is the first African-

American church he’s been in, y’all! Now it’s a little different from a Presbyterian church!”

Seated next to him in the front row was Omarosa Manigault, a former contestant on Trump’s reality television series, who has helped to guide his outreach to the black community. Also accompanying him was Detroit native Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who ran against

Trump in the primaries and is now advising the campaign.

While protesters were a vocal presence outside, Trump made a pitch inside for support from an electorate strongly aligned with Democrat Hillary Clinton. “I want to help you build and rebuild Detroit,” he said. “I fully understand that the African-American community has suffered from discrimination and there are many wrongs that should be made right.” He also said the nation needs “a civil rights agenda of our time,” with better education and good jobs.” Here you

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can see that this article highlights Trump sympathizing with the African-American, and puts him in a positive light. “Unlike his usual campaign stops where he confidently has addressed mostly white crowds that supported him and his plans for the country, Trump’s visit to Detroit on

Saturday was intended to be more intimate.

Some protesters tried to push through a barrier to the parking lot but were stopped by church security and police. Rev. Horace Sheffield who led a march from his church blocks away said: “I walked up to the gate and said I was going to church. I was immediately confronted and was told I needed a ticket. You need a ticket to get in church? Anybody who is in this church should be appalled.” Ahead of his trip, Toni McIlwain said she believes that as a candidate,

Trump has a right to go anywhere he wants. But, she said, it takes a lot of nerve for him to visit

Detroit. Many black people in the city, she said, are still stung by his stop in Michigan last month, when he went before a mostly white audience and declared, “You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed.” He asked, rhetorically, what blacks had to lose by voting for him instead of Clinton. “People picked up on”

Trump saying “you’re all just crap,” said McIlwain, who for years ran a community center that offered education and drug prevention programs in one of Detroit’s most distressed neighborhoods. “He generalized the total black community. How dare you talk to us like that and talk about us like that?” she said. But the risky nature of the visit was underscored by what appeared to be unusually cautious planning by the Trump campaign. On Thursday, The New

York Times published what it said was a script of pre-approved questions Trump would be asked in his interview with Jackson, along with prepared answers. Jackson told CNN on Friday that he

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softballs. Trump’s intention was to meet and speak with local residents while he’s in town

“because he’s been criticized,” Jackson said, “for preaching to African-Americans from a backdrop of white people.” Among the members of the clergy denouncing Trump’s visit was the

Rev. Lawrence Glass, who said Trump’s heart was not into helping blacks. Glass said Trump represents “politics of fear and hate” and that “minorities of all kinds have much to lose taking a chance on someone like” Trump. After the church visit, Trump made a brief stop at Carson’s childhood home in southwest Detroit. Surrounded by security and a swarm of reporters, Trump spoke briefly with the home’s current owner, Felicia Reese, wishing her luck. “Your house is worth a lot of money.” he told her, thanks to the Carson connection.

For Trump, courting black voters is a challenge. Most polls show his support among black voters is in the low single digits. Many blacks view some of his campaign rhetoric as insulting, and racist. Detroit is about 80 percent black, and many are struggling. Nearly 40 percent of residents are impoverished, compared with about 15 percent of Americans overall.

Detroit’s median household income is just over $26,000 — not even half the median for the nation, according to the census. The city’s unemployment rate has dropped, but is still among the highest in the nation. And public school students have lagged behind their peers on statewide standardized tests.”

A negative article was defined as one that was critical of a specific candidate for a majority of the article. These articles were ones that were highly critical of a candidate’s past actions, comments, campaign promises, or their supposed reliability as president. Here is an

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example from the Atlanta Journal Constitution from mid-October 2016 titled “Every politician wears a mask”

“A political campaign is the candidate's effort to persuade the crowd that the mask is the genuine article. It becomes the responsibility of voters to penetrate the deception, and decide whether they can live with both the mask and the real face behind the fakery. This is where we are in the race for the White House. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in the process of being unmasked. Clinton by WikiLeaks, with perhaps more than a little help from the Russian intelligence community. And Trump by the trail of video and audio musings often on sexual matters that he's deposited over a three-decade career in the spotlight. Trump's unmasking arrived in grand fashion, via a plush "Access Hollywood" bus from 2005.” Here in this article we can see an example of negativity towards Donald Trump. “By contrast, Clinton's has become the drip-drip-drip of thousands of purloined emails released day after day. Trump supporters accuse the media of ignoring revelations about Clinton and her campaign, but they may be confusing neglect with caution.

By and large, journalists aren't bothered by the fact that hacked emails are stolen property. But questions about authenticity and worries about being spoon-fed partial information possibly through a Russian filter do give one pause.” In this previous section is an example of a negative statement about Hillary Clinton. “That said, we now know many things about the former secretary of state that we didn't before: Like George H.W. Bush before her, and unlike

Barack Obama or husband Bill, Hillary Clinton has a problem with "the vision thing." "Do we have any sense from her what she believes or wants her core message to be?" asked Clinton adviser Joel Benenson, a month before her campaign was launched. She admits

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that her reflex is to close up like a clam. "I'm trying to let people into my life," Clinton said, according to the transcript of an off-record interview with a New York Times journalist. "I'm trying to relate to people. Not relate to them, you know, talk about being a grandmother -- talk about, you know, the experiences I had growing up and all that. Talk about my own mother. And in that way, kind of make connections."

Ironically, given her junior role in the Senate Watergate hearings of the

1970s, Clinton has a near-Nixonian bent when it comes to the media. Last year, top aide Huma

Abedin asked whether the candidate could "survive not answering questions from press" during the first leg of her campaign. (The answer was no, but Clinton avoided press conferences for the first nine months of 2016.) As anyone who has followed the scandal over her private email server knows, Clinton has a problem with saying she's sorry. "Apologies are like her Achilles heel," wrote one staffer. Clinton is far more friendly to Wall Street banks and free trade than she has let on, the emails show. A portion of one of her highly paid speeches to Wall Street interests has been part of the leak. "If everybody's watching, you know, all of the back-room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So you need both a public and a private position," Clinton said in 2013.

The leak came up in last week's debate, prompting an awkward effort to compare herself to Abraham Lincoln. But the damage was done. The first rule of masks for politicians: Never acknowledge the mask. Now let's turn to Trump. Clinton's WikiLeaks disclosures have required a certain amount of shoe leather to explore. But Trump's video was metaphor by special delivery: An unmasked and unseen Donald Trump (accompanied with great enthusiasm by a minor member of the Bush family) narrates his philosophy of women as accessible chattel just as

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a well-outfitted bus rolls into the picture. An unmasked Trump calls for a Tic-Tac just in case and the bus door swings open. Out steps the masked Trump. Polite, respectable, and when the actress is pressed even huggable. The power of the video, the reason it is so damaging, is the very fact that you can witness the transformation in real time. The wall between public and politician isn't there and then suddenly it is.

Forty-eight hours later, on a debate stage in St. Louis, Anderson Cooper asked the question upon which Trump's fortunes have turned. Unsolicited kissing and crotch-grabbing are forms of sexual assault, the CNN anchor noted. "Do you understand that?" Cooper asked. "Locker room talk," was the essence of Trump's reply. In other words, that wasn't the real him. It was another masked man, playing to the audience of one Billy Bush. "Have you ever done those things?" "No, I have not," Trump eventually said, throwing down the biggest gauntlet since Gary Hart challenged reporters to check out his private life in 1984. So far, a number of women have raised their hands to claim that they had experienced the real Trump - the unmasked one. Curiously, the unmasked versions of both Clinton and Trump aren't too different from the personas they present to their audiences. Sharp edges have been rounded, the most egregious features erased, but the basic outline remains. It's just a matter of what face, masked and unmasked, we're prepared to live with for the next four years” (AJC 2016)

Neutral articles were defined as ones that were neither critical or approved of a specific candidate. These were normally general information about a candidate or where they were on the campaign trail. Here is an example of a neutral article by the San Diego Union Tribune. “On Oct.

28, 1980, former California Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan and Democratic President Jimmy

Carter held their only debate of the presidential campaign. The conventional wisdom was that

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Reagan needed to show himself to be unthreatening and a plausible commander in chief after months of warnings from Carter that the former actor and General Electric pitchman was both a warmonger and dangerously inexperienced. Reagan cleared that bar and what was perceived as a close race turned into a decisive rout a week later.

By 1980 standards, Donald Trump's performance at Monday night's debate was a fiasco.

The network of alliances that the United States built around the planet after World War II in

Europe and Asia, in the South Pacific, and in the Americas created a durable framework that has allowed our nation and much of the world to thrive. But Trump depicts our allies as parasites, not trusted, valuable partners. Given that a president is relatively unconstrained in foreign affairs, it is easy to imagine what a wrecking ball Trump might be in the Oval Office. One of

Hillary Clinton's comebacks "Anyone who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes" _ succinctly brought this peril to life. Clinton was both more in command of the issues and more focused in her responses.

But in 2016, with anger at America's status quo running high, the old rules may not apply. It was striking to see the CNN post-debate panel reacting to Trump's debate evasions and bluster and yes, lies about birtherism and his early support for the Iraq war and believe the responses would hurt him; these critiques are cooked into the race. If they were going to undo Trump, they would have by now.

Meanwhile, Trump put Clinton on the defensive over her history of support for trade pacts and on the fact that Islamic State has flourished in recent years. His bringing up Clinton's

"33,000 deleted emails" was an effective riposte to being pressed about not releasing his taxes, reminding watchers that both candidates have ethical liabilities. And when Clinton brought up

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the apparent Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee, Trump pounced and noted that the hack uncovered Democratic officials favoring Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders _ a fact that infuriated millions of young Sanders supporters. Other highlighted issues could haunt Trump. His blithe defense of stiffing contractors in various business deals should resonate with anyone who's ever gone unpaid for providing a service. And Clinton's seemingly credible late-debate allegation about Trump demeaning a Latina beauty pageant contestant as "Miss

Housekeeping" was an eye-opener and should generate headlines. But the dynamics of this race are so unusual that it is impossible to know what, if anything, will stick with voters. After 16 months of Trump sounding like he did last night, he's dead even in the polls. Will the debate change that? We hope so. But wishing doesn't make things so.”

The data provided for this paper was gathered by Dr. John Tures and the Fall 2016

Research Methods class. I owe both them and Dr. Tures many thanks for all their hard work. We chose six different newspapers from various parts of the country. We tried to capture the country as a whole, and divided the newspapers we choose from those on the coast to seem that were more centrally located. The newspapers that we chose were the Atlanta Journal Constitution from Georgia with a circulation of 231,094, the Las Vegas Review Journal from Nevada with a circulation 133,560, the New Hampshire Union Leader from New Hampshire with a circulation of 48,140, the Chattanooga Times Free Press from Tennessee with a circulation of 73,525, San

Diego Union Tribune from California with a circulation of 334,723, Provo Utah Daily Herald, from Utah with a circulation of 26,757, and The Oregonian from Oregon with a circulation of

209,944. These papers represented a wide array of Americans.

The newspapers were coded as Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC), 1 = Las Vegas

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Review Journal (LVRJ), 2 = New Hampshire Union Leader (NHUL), 3 = Chattanooga Times

Free Press (CTFP), 4 = San Diego Union Tribune (SDUT), 5 = Provo Utah Daily Herald

(PUDH), 6 = The Oregonian (ORG).

The newspapers that were chosen had circulation sizes that ranged from over 300,000 down to just under 50,000. The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s circulation was 231,094, the Las

Vegas Review Journal was 133,560, the New Hampshire Union Leader was 48,140, the

Chattanooga Times Free Press was 73,525, the San Diego Union Tribune was 334,723, the

Provo Utah Daily Herald was 26,757, and The Oregonian was 209,944. The papers were also coded with either a 0 or 1 depending on if their circulation was <100,000 =0, or >100,000 = 1.

Next, we looked at the partisanship of these six different newspapers and who they endorsed in the 2016 Presidential election. The Atlanta Journal Constitution refused to endorse a candidate, the Las Vegas Review Journal endorsed Donald Trump (Las Vegas Review Journal

2016), the New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed Gary Johnson (New Hampshire Union

Leader 2016), the Chattanooga Times Free Press had a split endorsement with the conservative

Free Press portion of the paper not endorsing anyone (Cooper Chattanooga Times Free Press

2016) and the Times portion of the paper endorsing Hillary Clinton (Sohn Chattanooga Times

Free Press 2016), the San Diego Union Tribune endorsed Hillary Clinton (San Diego Union

Tribune 2016), the Provo Utah Daily Herald endorsed third party candidate Evan McMullin

(Provo Utah Daily Herald 2016), and The Oregonian chose not to endorse either candidate

(Gunderson The Oregonian 2016). Although there were a few surprises, specifically with The

Oregonian not supporting either candidates, since they supported President Obama in during both of his presidential elections.

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With the use of SPSS I ran a Chi Square and Linear regression test on the variables, favorability of the article towards the candidate and endorsement of the newspaper, had a statistically significant relationship with the dependent variable at a .01 level, meaning we can be

99 confident in rejecting the null hypothesis that the variables are unrelated. It does not prove the variables are strongly connected, as more research needs to be done, but this does show it is a research agenda worth pursuing.

Slant of Newspaper coverage of Donald Trump

Slant of Newspaper coverage of Hillary Clinton

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Newspaper Story Slants for Both Candidates

Negave, Negave 228

Neutral Neutral, 387

Posive Posive, 136

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

Posive Neutral Negave

As you can see in the charts above that Trump received slightly more negative coverage

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than Clinton, but they both had surprisingly neutral coverage.

The cross-tabulation chart below shows that Trump collected 363 negative articles versus the 299.1 expected, 310 neutral articles instead of the 351 expected, 142 positive articles versus the expected 163.8. When compared to Clinton that got 228 versus the expected 265.1 negative articles, 332 versus the expected 311 neutral articles, and 161 positive articles versus the expected 144.9. While it does give some credibility of media bias against Trump and for Clinton there is not enough statistical significance to definitively state that it is the case resulting in a null hypothesis.

After much review, it is evident that while neither candidate was particularly liked,

Trump received the brunt of the negative attention. While looking at both this study and the ones mentioned earlier, there seems to be some evidence that the media has a liberal bend that makes them lean towards the Democratic Party and lean away from the GOP. Perhaps being hated by the mainstream media endeared Trump to the general public. That is another study for another

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day.

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wants-to-learn/ (Accessed April 26, 2017).

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Galloway, Jim. 2016. "The Unmasking of Clinton and Trump." The Atlanta Journal

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for-mcmullin-is-a-vote-for/article_d5f3ca37-01ec-510c-9b02-7b71593fd0ce.html

(Accessed April 26, 2017).

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Iyengar, Shanto and Kyu S. Hahn. 2009. “Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological

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https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2009/iyengar-redmedia-bluemedia.pdf (Accessed April

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