Who was the media biased for in 2016?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Clinton but their coverage allowed the Trump presidency to occur.

Exactly. Most people in print and television media were Clinton supporters, exclusive of networks and publications that more or less openly affiliate themselves with movement conservatism.

This wasn't hard to infer from their coverage. But that didn't produce a deluge of pro-Clinton propaganda.

Whatever their biases, media figures are professionals. They're looking to win views and clicks, not hearts and minds. Their coverage tended to be sensationalist, ahistorical, innumerate, and politically ignorant, but it did not persuade viewrs - and, with rare exceptions, was never meant to.

TRUMP TRUMP OMG look at what TRUMP said! There were 11 Republicans in the debate but TRUMP TRUMP isn't he terrible and unqualified BUT MUH CLICKZ MUST REPORT MOAR TRUMP

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

So is anyone going to address the multiple objective studies showing Hillary getting by far the most negative coverage of any candidate, or will we just pretend they don't exist like anti-vaxxers do with inconvenient truths?

I mean, here's the thing, and it might be the biggest problem with the American news media today: False balance. Trump was objectively a bad candidate.  Objectively worse than Hillary Clinton.  As in, could pass the "any reasonable person" test with flying colors if you simply looked at the facts.

But one side supports Trump.
One side supports Clinton.

The media brought Hillary Clinton down to Trump's level, because of the faulty need to maintain the perception of balance.

If Hillary Clinton had run against literal Hitler, the media would have found a way to bring Clinton down to his level, and bring Hitler up to hers.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

During the election there was numerous claims that the media was biased.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton claimed that the media was biased against her by focusing excessively on the story of her e-mails, digging up past scandals, and attempting to deliberately create a "horse race" narrative that didn't exist.

Supporters of Bernie Sanders claimed through the primaries that the media was biased against him by portraying him as an extremist, overestimating Clinton's delegate lead, and giving him insufficient coverage.

Supporters of Drumpf, of course, continue to argue the media was biased against him. During the GOP primaries his various challengers frequently complained about the free air time Drumpf received from the media.

So which was it?

The final result in the NPV was 48-46. If anything, the media tried to propagate a landslide narrative despite polls showing the opposite. Except for a couple weeks in October, Clinton never really led the polls by more than 1976 Carter/2012 Obama margins.

And as Nate Silver pointed out, even though Clinton's lead looked a lot like Obama's lead in 2012, you had to pick apart the numbers carefully to see that the number of undecideds (and where those undecideds resided) in 2016 made Clinton's victory way less certain than Obama's was in 2012.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

If you go by the commentators, it was hugely biased toward Clinton;this was the "inevitable" Clinton victory.  If you looked at the polls, it was a close election.

Here is the final RCP results, with no tossup.  It shows a Clinton win, with 272 electoral votes:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/2016_elections_electoral_college_map_no_toss_ups.html

She was leading in NH by 0.6 points on the RCP average; the polls could be off by 0.7 points for it to be a Trump victory. Yes, pundit after pundit called it for Clinton, sometimes big for Clinton.   Even Fox had nobody insisting that Trump would win. 

Frankly, the polls looked like 2012. And in 2012, an Obama victory was a foregone conclusion. That's not bias, that's objective analysis.

It's very hard to make an objective case for Trump having a realistic chance, given all available data. Nate was derided for giving Trump a >30% chance, but Nate was absolutely correct: too much volatility, too many states where Clinton had not topped 50% in the polls, and way too many undecideds. But it was difficult to see.

If you showed me the exit polls for WI, leaving out vote breakdown, I would have told you Clinton won the state by 5 points. The way people voted, compared to their opinion of the candidates, defies all logic and reason. It means we need to fundamentally change our assumptions when designing polls.