On October 7, 2016, The Washington Post released a tape of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump (now our actual president) on a hot mic expressing the luxuries of being a star. The luxury that stood out, though, was his ability to “grab women by the p*ssy” while they allowed it due to his star-status. The tape was quickly passed around due to its blatant sexism, and his admittance of past sexual harassment on tape. As soon as the 24/hour news stations began to pick it up, one phrase echoed from the Trump campaign: "but her emails."
They constantly toted this phrase, stating that news stations were unfairly covering Trump’s faults in comparison to Clinton’s. One would think that the news stations would counter this by continuing to explain their worries over the candidate’s statements. But they did the exact opposite. They switched the conversation back to the emails, actively allowing themselves to be bullied by his campaign and thus starting a continuous cycle of allowing Donald Trump control the media without them even noticing.
As soon as Trump came into office on January 20, 2017, controversy ensued. The first major conflict was the “Great Inauguration Attendance Debate.”
While the general consensus of all data on the topic showed that Trump’s inauguration was not nearly as large as Barack Obama in 2009, the Trump administration insisted that it was not only larger than Obama’s but "the largest" of all time. One would assume that the administration would back down, but they forced the topic through all mediums, from Twitter to White House press conferences. They combated all media outlets that disagreed with them, quite famously referring to their information as “alternative facts” in contrast to the actual facts presented by those whose job it was to gather it.
Due to his unwillingness to back down, news outlets were forced to look over the data days after its point of relevance in order to appease the Commander in Chief and his team. If at any time the absurdity of the conversation was brought up, someone affiliated with the administration would cry “unfair” and direct the conversation back in Trump’s favor without fail. The non-existent “debate” of his inauguration crowd size would prove to be just the first example of Trump directing the media’s coverage during his presidency.
After the inauguration attendance talk seemingly died down, a new topic rose to the front lines of all news programs: Executive Order 13769, which was created with the purpose of banning entry from citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen for a period of 90 days.Executive Order 13769 is also often referred to as a muslim ban, due to the demographics of these countries, and the administration’s promise to “prioritize Christian refugees” in these areas. As anger mounted from the blatant Islamophobia in the EO, news programs reported on it as such by showing the backlash from people in the country and around the world. To prove the significance of this EO, the Trump administration cited over 78 radical Islamic terror attacks not covered by the “mainstream media.” One would think the media outlets would disavow this statement and go on with their scheduled programming. They would be wrong again, because news outlets such as CNN rebroadcasted and republished their coverage of these 78 attacks, perfectly fueling Trump’s anti-Muslim propaganda.
As it stands today, it appears that a good chunk of the media is allowing this administration to bully their way into determining what content these outlets share and contributing to the Orwellian nature of the modern press.
