メディアだけのせいではない

視聴率狙いのセンセーショナルを求めるとか、何かにつけてメディアは悪口にさらされます。選挙報道も政策論争をせずに失言やスキャンダルばかりを取り上げると非難されがちです。今年の大統領戦では候補者自身も政策を語ってこなかったことをデータから語る記事がありました。

This Election Was Not About the Issues. Blame the Candidates.
Lynn Vavreck NOV. 23, 2016
If you think back to this year’s presidential campaign and recall a lot of articles mentioning Hillary Clinton’s email troubles and Donald J. Trump’s various controversies, you wouldn’t be wrong. If it seems there were fewer articles about jobs, the economy and taxes, that’s because there were. The temptation to blame news organizations for this imbalance is strong, but there is at least some reason to resist it. Critics have long assailed campaign coverage as focused too much on candidate personality, campaign strategy and assessments of who’s winning, instead of on policies and ideas. But this year, the candidates share the blame.

もし候補者自身が政策を対して語らず対立候補の人格批判に終始していたらメディアはそれを反映したに過ぎないと大本の責任を候補者にしています。

But before anyone blames the news media, it’s important to examine what the candidates themselves were talking about over the course of the campaign. If media reports reflect candidate discourse accurately, then it is not merely the media choosing to report on scandals. It might be at least as much the candidates’ choosing to campaign on them that results in unending coverage of traits and characteristics.

確かに候補者の広告は人格批判が多いそうでデータ的にも裏付けられるそうです。先ほど取り上げたdeplorableを使って批判しているものをYoutubeで見つけました。





The content of the ads is revealing. Both candidates spent most of their television advertising time attacking the other person’s character. In fact, the losing candidate’s ads did little else. More than three-quarters of the appeals in Mrs. Clinton’s advertisements (and nearly half of Mr. Trump’s) were about traits, characteristics or dispositions. Only 9 percent of Mrs. Clinton’s appeals in her ads were about jobs or the economy. By contrast, 34 percent of Mr. Trump’s appeals focused on the economy, jobs, taxes and trade.

候補者はメディアが取り上げやすい話題を振ろうとしますから、このあたりは鶏と卵の部分もあると思います。それに視聴者や有権者も共犯になっている気がします。