title:  Here’s Proof That Mainstream Media Helped Trump Win
text: Democrats and other progressives who watched how the mainstream media treated Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have for months suspected that the fix was in for Trump, and now a new report has numbers to back up those fears.Thomas E. Patterson of Harvard Kennedy School s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage of the 2016 election and they found that coverage of the race often echoed attacks against Clinton from Trump and his Twitter account, drowning out anything positive about the former Secretary of State.There wasn t much in Clinton s general election news coverage that worked in her favor .Stories about her personal traits portrayed her as overly cautious and guarded and ran 3-to-1 negative. News reports on her policy positions trended negative by a ratio of 4-to-1. Everything from her position on health care to her position on trade was criticized, often in the form of an attack by Trump or another opponent. Her record of public service, which conceivably should have been a source of positive press, turned out differently. News reports on that topic were 62 percent negative to 38 percent positive, with Trump having a larger voice than she did in defining the meaning of her career. He was widely quoted as saying,  She s been there 30 years and has nothing to show for it. Even when the media evenly covered Clinton and Trump they often elevated nonsense stories about Clinton to the same level of serious concerns about Trump and his failures. Democrats saw many of these poorly constructed media stories in real time, and complained to the press about  false equivalence,  which allowed Trump to skate by on whether he has the temperament or maturity to be in charge of the world s largest nuclear arsenal.Thanks in large part to media malpractice, we re all going to find out if Trump can handle it. Pray he can.Featured image via Flickr