Harvard study teaches obvious lesson: Never pick a fight with a Gold Star family
Ahem, Donald.
A new study from Harvard lays out qualitative data showing just how damaging Donald Trump’s public battle with a Gold Star family who lost a son in Iraq actually was.
The Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy released the third report Wednesday in their ongoing series looking at the coverage of the 2016 presidential campaigns. The new study, which focused on the recent Republican and Democratic conventions, reinforces the Center’s previous findings that the media loves covering optics over policy issues in presidential campaigns.
But there was also another striking takeaway: Donald Trump’s battle with the parents of fallen Army Captain Humayun Khan was a huge loss for Trump, which was quickly reflected in the polls.
Analyzing six major newspapers and five nightly newscasts, Harvard professor Thomas Patterson writes the coverage Trump received from the feud was as unprecedentedly extensive as it was negative.
The ensuing firestorm brought Trump a slew of coverage during the final week of the convention period. The reporting was nearly 100 percent negative, and cut across nearly every area of Trump’s coverage: his stand on immigration, his personal character, his knowledge of the law, his poll standing. The Khan exchange was that week’s most heavily covered development, shifting the balance of news attention strongly in his direction. He got 34 percent of that week’s campaign coverage—the highest weekly total of any presidential candidate at any point to date in the 2016 campaign. And the overall tone of his coverage was 91 percent negative—the most negative for any candidate in any single campaign week to date.
As Trump would say: “Not good!”
The shift is also represented in the below chart looking at the monthlong convention period. Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father, gave his prime-time speech on the floor of the Democratic convention during the third week, on the convention’s final day.
Though the study found that both candidates received predominately negative coverage during the conventions, Trump’s negative-to positive coverage the weeks during and after the Democratic convention was particularly bad.
In fact, they were the worst weeks of his entire campaign.
“From the time he announced his candidacy until the start of the conventions, Trump had not experienced anywhere near the press criticism directed at him during the final two weeks of the convention period,” Patterson wrote.
The coverage for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, during the same four-week period was more positive than Trump’s, but still more negative on balance (56 percent to 44 percent).
The broader conclusions of the study found that negative reporting dominated the conventions, as journalists gravitated toward partisan attacks, rather than examining the candidates’ proposals, “even though the conventions are a time when questions of policy and leadership come to the forefront of the campaign.”
Overall, negative reporting on policy outweighed positive reports 82 percent to 18 percent (no wonder both the nominees are so disliked).
“One could conclude that the candidates’ platforms are devoid of worthwhile proposals,” Patterson wrote. “Or, one could conclude that journalists aren’t all that interested in the candidates’ issue stands, except when they’re attacked by the opposing side.”
One could also conclude not to attack Gold Star families — unless you want to get piled on by the media.
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