Today, I was curious. I went to the home page for the highest circulated news paper in the ten largest metro areas, two additional widely circulated national news papers, and the top three cable news providers and searched for the words “Trump” and “Clinton.” The results are presented below.

First off: Dallas, Atlanta…what the hell? One mention of each name? Dallas News appears to have shifted to a tabloid type internet outlet; however, they do offer a link for comments at the bottom of the page and what amounts to an apology to people looking for real news. I should point out that the site has a “news” page that is separate from the homepage (of a newspaper’s website…) that has mentions at 10-0 for Trump and Clinton, respectively. The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s page seems more legitimately news, and there is a subpage for the 2016 election cycle, but mentions there stand at 1-1 as well. Must be a southern thing…

Trump shows up more than twice as often across the board. This is worrisome in the sense that we will never get a fair shake of candidate Hilary Clinton before the election. The media has known all along that talking about Trump gets clicks, which probably helped him win the primary, but now the buzz about him is taking away from the true purpose of the long election process. This is supposed to be an extended job interview, and it has become a sideshow. It is clear that Donald Trump should not be our president, but as the media has been mesmerized by all that he has become, Hilary Clinton has skated by placing flashing lights on the juiciest bits of this phenomenon. It is almost as if the media is asking the question “why is this campaign still alive” continually such that the campaign can not die. Then, people label Donald Trump a master of the media… I don’t know what the hell is going on and I think it might take a few PhD level dissertations studying this election to disentangle it all.

Where can we get information then? Don’t count on legitimate information coming from any of the traditional news outlets.

I’m a scientist and science issues are among my primary concerns. Scientific American did a survey for the four leading candidates regarding their positions on several “science” topics. I put science in quotes because some of the questions stray away from traditional science concerns; however, the methodology and survey is extensively covered and presented by Scientific American. Here is a link.