Media coverage of the 2016 United States presidential election
Media coverage of the 2016 presidential election was a source of controversy during and after the 2016 election, with various candidates, campaigns and supporters alleging bias against candidates and causes. Studies have shown that all 2016 candidates received vastly less media coverage than Donald Trump. Trump received more extensive media coverage than Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders combined during a time when those were the only primary candidates left in the race. The Democratic primary received substantially less coverage than the Republican primary. Sanders received the most positive coverage of any candidate overall, whereas his opponent in the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, received the most negative coverage. Among the general election candidates, Trump received inordinate amounts of coverage on his policies and issues, as well as on his personal character and life, whereas Hillary Clinton's emails controversy was a dominant feature of her coverage, earning more media coverage than all of her policy positions combined.
Donald Trump
Trump benefited from free media more than any other candidate, and the coverage was according to a study reviewing three sources of data, "not particularly negative, either overall or relative to other candidates." From the beginning of his campaign through February 2016, Trump received almost $2 billion in free media attention, twice the amount that Clinton received. According to data from the Tyndall Report, which tracks nightly news content, through February 2016, Trump alone accounted for more than a quarter of all 2016 election coverage on the evening newscasts of NBC, CBS and ABC, more than all the Democratic campaigns combined. Observers noted Trump's ability to garner constant mainstream media coverage "almost at will". However, Trump frequently criticized the media for writing what he alleged to be false stories about him and he has called upon his supporters to be "the silent majority". Trump also said the media "put false meaning into the words I say", and says he does not mind being criticized by the media as long as they are honest about it. During and after his presidential campaign and election, Donald Trump popularized the term "fake news", which he frequently accused mainstream media outlets of. A 2018 study found that media coverage of Trump led to increased public support for him during the primaries. The study showed that Trump received nearly $2 billion in free media, more than double any other candidate. Political scientist John Sides argued that Trump's polling surge was "almost certainly" due to frequent media coverage of his campaign. Sides concluded "Trump is surging in the polls because the news media has consistently focused on him since he announced his candidacy on June 16". Prior to clinching the Republican nomination, Trump received little support from establishment Republicans.
Hillary Clinton
In her 2017 memoir What Happened, Clinton argued that the media was one of several contributing factors to her loss. Analyses by Columbia Journalism Review, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School show that the Clinton email controversy received more coverage in mainstream media outlets than any other topic during the 2016 presidential election. The New York Times coverage of the email controversy was notoriously extensive; according to a Columbia Journalism Review analysis, "in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton's emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election." In attempting to explain the lopsided coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review speculates, "In retrospect, it seems clear that the press in general made the mistake of assuming a Clinton victory was inevitable, and were setting themselves as credible critics of the next administration." Media commentators drew comparisons of Clinton's email usage to past political controversies. Pacific Standard Magazine published an article in May 2015, comparing email controversy and her response to it with the Whitewater investigation 20 years earlier.
During the Republican primary, Marco Rubio criticized the media for giving his Republican primary opponent, Donald Trump, disproportionate coverage. He criticized the media's tendency for horserace coverage, rather than focusing on substance. He also blamed the media for negative coverage of his campaign. He said there was "kind of a weird bias here in the media rooting for Donald Trump because they know he’s the easiest Republican to beat."
Ted Cruz
Ted Cruz criticized the disproportionate coverage of Trump during the Republican primary. Cruz suggested that the media was deliberately boosting Trump's candidacy, and that they were holding back damaging stories about him until he won the nomination. After the conspiracy tabloid the National Enquirer ran a story alleging without evidence that Cruz might be having extramarital affairs, he said that Trump and his "henchmen" had planted the story.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders, the Sanders campaign, supporters and alternative media sources have said that the mainstream media was biased against Bernie Sanders in 2016. For these commentators, evidence of bias includes: minimal media coverage, negative or scant coverage at crucial times, and insufficient focus on policy in media coverage. According to Thomas E. Patterson, Sanders got two-thirds of Clinton's media coverage during the Democratic primary as a whole.
