Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

As journalists continue to critique their coverage of the presidential election, Nieman Reports is publishing an ongoing series of articles exploring the issues, challenges and opportunities—from newsroom diversity to fake news to community news outlets—that will inform reporting going forward. The full list of articles is below.

Three weeks after Donald Trump won a historic victory to become the 45th president of the United States, the media postmortems continue.

 

In particular, the role played by the media and technology industries is coming under heavy scrutiny in the press, with Facebook’s role in the rise of fake news currently enjoying considerable coverage.

 

This represents a shift from earlier in the campaign, when the volume of media airtime given to Trump was often held culpable for “The Apprentice” star’s political ascendancy.

 

In truth, a Trump presidency is – in part – a reflection of the status and evolution of the media and tech industries in 2016. Here are 10 ways that they combined to help Trump capture the White House in a manner not previously possible. Without them, Trump might not have stood a chance....

It looked like a garden-variety promotional tweet, designed to attract attention to the AP’s big investigation into allegations of conflict of interest on the part of the Democratic presidential candidate. But by trying too hard to drum up interest in the piece, the wire service made itself the target instead.

The post made a significant, and startling, claim. Namely, that “more than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.” Surely this was compelling evidence of a conflict.

As sharp-eyed reporters for competing news outlets noted within minutes of the tweet and article being posted, however, this statistic was only true if you ignored the thousands of government officials, dignitaries, and so on that Clinton met in her capacity as Secretary of State....