Week V: Research Update

This week was supposed to talk about the impact of media on the election, but it looks like I'm going to have to take another week to write that blog post. I've run into a few obstacles, but rather than try and churn everything out now, I'm going to give it another week. Have I said "week" enough times? It's been a rough week.

Instead of media, this post is about some of the hiccups in my research execution, and why talking about media in the 2016 American Presidential Election is just a little bit complex.

Because of recent political developments, it's getting more and more difficult to truly unbiased articles and coverage to use. This isn't necessarily at the fault of reporters. It's certainly possible to find journalists at reputable news outlets that are still trying their best to explain the happenings of the world without passing an opinion. What I'm struggling with more is the bias that has risen in what news outlets I choose to share articles from.

President Trump, even during his campaign, has expressed dissatisfaction about the way major media outlets have covered him. But, especially after his election, he's begun to focus the narrative to create an "us versus them" mindset. This can be seen when, in one of the first major press conferences he held as President-Elect, he called CNN "fake news". It can be seen again when the White House banned several major media outlets from a daily press conference, citing a lack of space as the justification for the removal. Although this rationale is controversial, it's still clear to see the White House's bias against certain outlets as they allowed in conservative outlets such as Breitbart and the One America News Network, while denying CNN, the New York Times, and Politico access (despite the fact that they have much larger audiences). It seems that a bias has been attached to not only content, but simply where that content originates from.

Ultimately, I'm writing this post to say that, in researching how the media affected the outcome of the election, I have to use the media. The White House doesn't necessarily agree with the media's interpretation of a variety of events, but that's what I have access to. If I could call up President Trump and Hillary Clinton and ask them about their views and "what really happened", I would. But because that's impossible, I have to assume the media, and any post or research done on it and based in media coverage, is going to be biased. Now more than ever.

So, knowing this, please read next week's post with an open mind. Understand that, although I did what I could to remove my own bias and bias from media outlets, there is still a lot of controversy about how the media changed the election outcome. And it may be a long time before we can ever remove ourselves enough to understand what really happened.