Trump Relies Heavily on News Media He Bashes

Related: Pew Plots Rise of Trump

According to a just released Pew Research Center study, Donald Trump's campaign website "mostly posts" stories from outside news media, in contrast to Hillary Clinton, whose campaign news sections "almost entirely bypass the news media," resemble digital news outlets, and are populated mostly by in-house content.

Trump has famously slammed the media, both in general and by insulting individual reporters along the campaign trail and following debates.

The same pattern held for social media postings from the candidates.

Pew said that 78% of Trump's Facebook posts were links to outside news stories, while 80% of Clinton's posts were links to her campaign pages—and their mostly self-generated stories and info.

Pew said Twitter showed a similar pattern.

Trump's fondness for tweeting at the drop of a hat or rise of a poll number was borne out in the study. Trump’s tweets were retweeted almost 6,000 times on average, compared with some 1,500-plus for Clinton.

The study was of campaign websites of presidential candidates—looking at design features, static content and original news items (news articles, press releases and videos) posted between May 1 and June 15, 2016.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.