The Media Is Running Against Hillary Clinton, Too

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

I've got a new piece up at BNR about how the media is effectively working with Donald Trump to run against Hillary Clinton (and about how BNR is dedicated to calling it out):

There is much reporting today on Trump's sexist rhetoric during his victory speech (such as it was) last night, including his claim that, were Hillary a man, she wouldn't have gotten 5% of the vote—an incredible assertion embedded with the implication it's somehow easier to be a woman in US politics—and that all she has going for her is the "woman card."

But in most of that reporting, one won't find much analysis of Trump's gendered rhetoric. Indeed, many news outlets will fail to even explicitly identify it as sexism.

...Many on the right will openly champion Trump's sexism. Not so among the corporate media, who resort to more subtle manifestations of the gender barrier: Unflattering photos, discredited tropes about "low enthusiasm" and "likability," diminishing the historical nature of Hillary's candidacy, commentary on her voice and appearance, treating the cost of her haircuts as a news story, highlighting the opinions of women who don't like her, as if women are a monolith.

And the failure to call Trump's sexism exactly what it is. Reporting it without comment, while he turns the presidential election into an epic battle of the sexes.

It will be pervasive, and it will be insidious. And we will be paying attention.

Click through to read the whole thing!

I'm really, really happy and proud to now be part of two teams who unapologetically center women in our coverage of politics, and who consider feminism an integral part of progressivism.