[village-idiot]

It's hard to say that the media was on her side when they gave billions worth of free coverage to Trump. They also gave her email scandals equal weighting compared to Trump admitting to sexual assault and directly asking a foreign government to hack his opponent on live television.

[leereeves]

That was negative coverage of Trump. Perhaps what 2016 proved is that there really is no such thing as bad publicity.

[village-idiot]

They not only covered his rallies without commentary, they would regularly post up hours of video waiting for the rally to start.

Make no mistake, the media recognized very quickly that Trump drew viewers. There’s a damn good reason why CNN is posting record profits.

[leereeves]

As Bernard Cohen reportedly said, the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.

Seems to be true in this case. They covered Trump, which made him the person people think about.

They told people to hate Trump. The electorate didn't listen.

Back to the original question, does that mean we're easily manipulated?

[village-idiot]

I agree 100% on the first point.

On the original question: evidence seems to say yes.

[leereeves]

How can you agree that "the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think" and at the same time think we're easily manipulated?

[village-idiot]

Because the bar for manipulation is not “think X”. It’s very possible to move public opinion by the way things are worded, presented, and brought up without ever going as far as saying “think X”.

Heck, very very few advertising campaigns involve telling the user to buy a product or service. Most focus more on creating a new need/want, or in repeated exposure to make the advertised good seem “normal”.

Now the tricky thing is that manipulation requires intent, which is very hard to prove. Hanlon’s razor would have us believing that in most cases, shady things happen because people are dumb, not malicious. So for my part I personally believe that the media got addicted to the ratings and felt internal pressure to provide equal coverage even when the scandals were quite unequal.