As Republican nominee Donald Trump's avalanche of controversial remarks has dominated media coverage of the presidential campaign, some are wondering what this means for how the industry has neglected to properly investigate Democrat Hillary Clinton and her alleged deficiencies.
Michael Wolff writes in USA Today that for "the first time in a presidential election it's good to be a non-entity… [as] Clinton is little more than an observer to the Trump train wreck and the media's hypnotic coverage of it."
He points out that this works well for Clinton, who has been hounded and criticized by the media over her long career, because the relative inattention given her during this campaign means it has been possible for her to avoid a real news conference for almost a year.
But Wolff speculates that just as the media helped to create Trump and then, appalled at what they had done, seek to destroy him, a similar course of action could face Clinton.
If she is elected due to minimalizing her inadequacies for what is perceived as the greater good, then, Wolff writes, the media will be sure to viciously turn on her once she has won the election and, if true to her history, she continues to hold the media in disdain.
The Atlantic points out that the Clinton campaign has used digital media to bypass what they consider the hostile traditional press and generate content that tries to give voters a favorable impression of Clinton.
The campaign recently debuted a podcast, "With Her," which attempts to humanize Clinton and lessen the image much of the public hold of her as stiff and robotic.
This raises questions as to if the traditional media will lose its gatekeeper role to ensure transparency and accountability in a White House run by Clinton.
Although the Clinton campaign points out that she has given hundreds of interviews over the course of the campaign, The Atlantic writes that "press conferences are a more freewheeling format that allow for questions from a broader range of journalistic voices at once…. [and] can help journalists pry more information out of a politician than they otherwise could in a one-on-one interview."
It points out that a Clinton presidency hostile to the press could try and limit some of the access it receives at the White House, which is not ingrained in law but has been the result of decades of custom and negotiations.
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