According to a study done by the Tyndall Report, and reported in mediamatters.org, since the beginning of 2016 only 32 minutes of evening newscasts was spent on discussing policy issues critical to the Presidential Campaign. 32 total minutes is the combined amount of time that ABC’s World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News spent discussing political issues that relevant to the future of America. To me, this is an absolute disgrace and a sure sign that the state of media drastically needs to be changed.
Every single person in America knows about Hilary Clinton's emails and Donald Trump's leaked video of him propagating rape culture. Every single person in America knows what comments Trump made about Hilary today and vice versa as well as the ridiculous twitter wars going on. But did the news cover a substantial portion of each candidate's political platform? With only 32 minutes in the entire year of 2016, I don't think it's crazy for me to say no.
This created a tremendous issue in the 2016 election. The media not only reinforced but helped to create an election full of hatred, name calling, and decisions between the lesser of two people that the majority of people hate. While I do believe that personalities, social behavior, and character are incredibly important factors to consider when deciding who to choose to run the nation and control our future as a nation, it is just as important to consider the validity of their ideas and the morals behind their proposed policies. Having a bubbly candidate with no valid ideas who hides their immoral beliefs behind policies they implement is arguably just as bad as a candidate that is a bigot with incredible foreign relation policy ideas. A presidential candidate requires a well-rounded individual from so many different angles and it is impossible to get the full picture of who that person will be as a president if all angles are not reported on in the media.
Evening news channels are one of the most common ways that Americans get their information and to have every single one of them completely disregard policy issues to instead turn to outrageous comments made does a disservice to voters everywhere. It seems to me that in a presidential election with the two most disliked candidates since anyone can remember that the media should have turned its focus to the policies in order to get voters to look past the characters and into their ideologies that will guide the direction the nation takes. However, talk about policies probably gathers lower ratings than talk about a "nasty woman."
