In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, major newspapers are giving former President Donald Trump’s federal criminal indictment for alleged crimes related to the January 6 insurrection a fraction of the coverage they gave former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server in 2016, according to a new Media Matters study. Media Matters reviewed print coverage in five newspapers — Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post — for stories mentioning Trump’s indictment in the week following U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s October 2 unsealing of special counsel Jack Smith’s latest filing, which reveals damning new evidence of the former president’s alleged crimes.  We found the papers ran 26 combined articles mentioning Trump’s indictment in the week after the unsealing of Smith’s filing. But those same papers published 100 combined articles — nearly 4 times as many — that mentioned Clinton’s server in the week after then-FBI Director James Comey’s notorious October 28, 2016, letter on new developments in that probe, as we documented in a 2016 study. The papers ran more than 6 times as many combined front-page stories that mentioned Clinton’s server (46) as they did front-page stories that mentioned Trump’s indictment (7) over those periods. Obsessive news media focus on Clinton’s server in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign helped Trump to victory, even as Comey ultimately reconfirmed that no charges were appropriate in the case. But eight years later, with one presidential candidate facing active prosecution for federal charges related to his attempt to subvert an election, outlets are making different choices.
    • Rapidcreek@lemmy.worldOP
      252·
      6 hours ago

      Whatever the reason might be, the fact is that Trump is getting much gentler treatment in 2024 than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. That’s especially concerning given that Trump’s alleged crimes are many orders of magnitude worse than Clinton’s alleged crimes.

      • TheHiddenCatboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        6 hours ago

        Definitely seems like the media, bought up by very conservative old men, has a favourite in the election. Not sure if they’re pushing the narrative that Trump is surging to depress Democratic Party vote or motivate us to not get complacent.

        • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
          1·
          2 minutes ago

          The difference is stark and utterly bonkers. Look at every single headline coming out of CNN, CBS, NYT, NBC, ABC, FOX – literally all of them… the fact they’re all reporting on Harris and trump as though it’s a normal candidate dichotomy and not the insane disparity between a politician and a raving lunatic who should be sectioned by his loved ones for his own protection, is simply madness.

          This should not be a contest. Nobody should be taking seriously a man who is a demonstrable racist, fascist, unhinged lunatic who rants about toilets and windmills, who has been found liable for rape, who can barely string sentences together, who has felony convictions, and who has demonstrably committed treason twice – and he’s treated the same by the media as a career prosecutor with none of that and who has actually sane (if centrist) policies….

          Do you see how crazy that is?

        • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
          6·
          2 hours ago

          Seriously? Is it even possible to not know? Or you just like making people list them?

          Here is just the sexual ones.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations

          Here are his current active trials in court

          https://www.politico.com/interactives/2023/trump-criminal-investigations-cases-tracker-list/

          There’s of course more, but isn’t that already enough?

          Unless you wanted Hillary Clinton’s for comparison. She used her personal e-mail address a lot instead of the one she is supposed to use as a high ranking government employee. Her e-mails may, and did, contain classified information. Only the official government e-mail server is intended to be used for sending classified infirmation due to risk of breach by outside individuals. No such breach seems to have occurred, but still a crime to have put them in a position where they weren’t officially as secure as they could have been.

          The result of going through 60’000 plus e-mails was that no intentional wrong was done and they recommended no charges.

          https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system

          Now that we are on the topic of improper handling of classified materials… guess what else Trump has done… and like, actually. Like in a way that resulted in actually being charged.

          He Illegally stored a bunch of classified material where he was living, and while having that information, invited foreign government officials to also stay there. We can’t know if anything intentionally malicious happened. But we can certainly assume that classified information was not “as secure as it should have been”. And when asked to bring that classified material he was illegally storing back, he refused.