How media hostility only helped Donald Trump

Almost every other American media house blatantly and aggressively endorsed Hillary Clinton in the run up the to the US presidential elections.

newly-elected US President Donald Trump | AP

Apart from perhaps the New York Post, almost every other American media house blatantly and aggressively endorsed Hillary Clinton in the run up the to the US presidential elections, and lost no opportunity -- and there were many -- to run down her Republican rival Donald Trump.

Despite this, Trump won. Why did the people of America clearly snub and ignore the media endorsements? Chances are that perhaps the media overdid it. News organizations tend to lose credibility when they offer clearly partisan reports. Social media too played a very crucial role. People got smarter when offered an open forum to discuss and exchange views.

For example, when more women started coming out accusing Trump of sexual harassment, many people actually took to social media to describe it as a bluff engineered by Hillary and her team.

This was a significant development since people generally believe what the media tries to sell. But each time a person read a fellow voter who convincingly argued on social media that these charges were made at Clinton’s behest, she lost a voter. In other words, the media overkill actually backfired against Clinton.

In a jubilant article immediately after Trump’s victory, the traditionally Republican Fox News declared: “The election was a national rejection of both the traditional media and the Hollywood elite who piled on money, endorsements, appearances and offensive videos telling people to vote. Celebrities went full-on insane.

Actor Mark Ruffalo vowed to do a nude scene if Clinton won. Madonna said she would perform oral sex on Clinton voters. It was so overboard that it might well have caused voters to just say no to all of the star media.”

Also, Trump didn’t take all this lying down. He reacted by sending out a ‘black-list’ – which banned a bunch of media conglomerates including the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and Politico from his campaign. He even went public with it in the third presidential debate – naming a couple of news media giants as Clinton’s hardcore supporters.

This election also exposed the underbelly of pre-election surveys and polls. Bar a few, every news media organization predicted a clear victory for Clinton.

The end result, however, made them run for cover. Analysts subsequently blamed it on ‘double-minded’ voters. In fact, there were reports that many people publicly declared they would back Hillary because they were worried about being labeled racist, but then quietly voted for Trump.

So now with Donald Trumps’ victory, we have the prospect of a presidency at odds with the media. We’ll either have a hasty patch-up or a dirty cold war. The media is going to, without a doubt, play up every blunder the temperamental Trump makes, confirming to his supporters that the media establishment is out to subvert the change they voted in.

Unlike candidate Trump, president Trump is not going to rest content with a flurry of angry tweets. America now faces the prospect of a president without the conventional six-year honeymoon with the media. Unless the media eats its words and begins to play nice with the new president.