ATLANTA (defeo.biz) — This year’s election has been interesting, to say the least.
The race for the White House has brought out the worst in people. And, most disapprove of the campaign’s harsh rhetoric.
For all of his shortcomings, Donald Trump has changed the dynamic of this year’s race. Few might have successfully predicted he would capture the Republican nomination.
But, the race has been rocked by allegations against both candidates. And, many voters don’t seem overly excited about either of the candidates representing the two major parties.
Trump has been accused of using vile language a decade ago and inappropriately touching several women. Clinton was caught using a private email server and lied to the public about sending and receiving classified documents from the server.
“This tabloid mentality which seems to dominate the media because it draws viewers and it sells newspapers feeds this kind of thing. It doesn’t stop one terrorist bomb,” Randy Evans, a Georgia Republican National Committee member, said last week during an Atlanta Press Club panel.
“It doesn’t address one penny of the deficit. It doesn’t bring back an ambassador killed in Libya. It doesn’t restore Crimea to the Ukraine. It doesn’t do any of those things and yet it’s the No. 1 topic,” Evans added. “And it’s just a reflection of how we in this country have become more and more tabloid-focused, more tabloid-centric in contrast to the rest of the world.”
For his part, Trump has changed how reporters cover a candidate. Reporters today are driven by page views, meaning the more someone like Trump talks, the more headlines he may receive.
“It’s a symbiotic relationship, right? We feed off of Donald Trump, and he feeds off of us,” Greg Bluestein, a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said during the Atlanta Press Club panel.
“We look at our click numbers. … We would never look at our metrics five years ago,” Bluestein added. “It was barely talked about in hushed whispers. We’d get a note maybe from a producer saying, ‘hey, that story did really well.’ Now, it’s an everyday thing for any working journalist to look at your metrics.”
Private emails from John Podesta’s hacked email account released by WikiLeaks since the panel revealed some reporters regularly contacted Clinton staffers. A Gallup poll released last month shows just 32 percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the media, down 8 percent from last year.
Watch the entire panel:
