The Married With Children Effect
In 1989, Michigan housewife Terry Rakolta (and ex-sister in-law of Mitt Romney’s brother Scott) began a boycott to get Fox sitcom Married With Children taken off the air. The show was struggling to find an audience on what was, at the time, a little known television network. But Rakolta’s boycott changed all that. People all over started asking “what’s so offensive about Married With Children?”
The lesson Fox executives took from this was simple: if your programming is offensive enough, outraged critics will shower you with free publicity.
By 1996, the Fox network was powerful enough to start its own 24-hour news channel. 4 years later, Fox’s “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” was hatched. Soon, scripted programs on Fox (The Simpsons, Family Guy, etc.) were openly feuding with Fox News. What started as a boycott by a well-connected house-wife had turned into a self-contained business model: liberal Fox and conservative Fox News, working together to generate an endless cycle of perpetual outrage.
Fast-forward to 2015, shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage across the nation. Indiana pizza parlor Memories Pizza became the focus of national attention when ownership announced that they would refuse to cater gay weddings. Immediately, the pro-gay rights movement mobilized to protest the pizza shop. As with Terry Rakolta’s Married With Children boycott, the Memories boycott backfired, raising more than $800,000 in donations.
2 months later, reality television star Donald Trump formally announced his presidential campaign. A month after that, Huffington Post gleefully declared that they had “fired” Trump from their political coverage. Why?
“Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you’ll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians and The Bachelorette.”
Instead of leading the charge against granting a single ounce of free publicity to Mr. Trump, Huffington Post transformed their entertainment section into 24/7 Donald Trump coverage. Five months later, Huffington reversed its decision, blaming “the media” for aiding Trump’s rise in the polls.
“So we will no longer be covering his campaign in Entertainment. But that’s not to say we’ll be treating it as if it were a normal campaign.”
By the end of 2015, Mr. Trump had firmly established himself as the candidate most ostentatiously despised by mass media outlets. The message from the media was crystal clear: we won’t treat Trump fairly because he doesn’t deserve to be. We won’t treat him fairly because it’s impossible! He’s a menace! He would be a sideshow if not for all these stupid, hateful, bigoted, middle-America voters who support him.
As the media outlets, one by one, announced that it was impossible for them to treat him like the rest of the candidates, Trump’s credibility with anti-mainstream media primary voters skyrocketed. The negative coverage, ostensibly aimed at undermining his campaign, validated the very same persecution complex Trump based his candidacy on. For appearances sake, they had proven Trump right: ‘They don’t take him seriously or treat him fairly, just like he said they wouldn’t!’
“Of course, Trump isn’t the only candidate out there spouting extreme and irresponsible messages, but he’s in a unique position in the wall-to-wall coverage, from Meet the Press to SNL, that he elicits. By not calling out Trump’s campaign for what it is, many in the media, addicted to the ratings buzz he continues to deliver, have been legitimizing his ugly views.” -Jay Rosen
Trump gets too much coverage AND not enough people in the media have called him out. Calling him out more requires more coverage, which helps Trump, which means the media must call him out even more vociferously.
The Married With Children Effect...
