The framing of Donald Trump before and after the 2016 USA presidential elections. A case study of The Herald.

Abstract

The study will look at how Donald Trump is presented in Zimbabwe‘s public media which is The Herald newspaper. The Herald is well known to be an ideological state apparatus for the ruling government. This is so because President Mugabe‘s government created the state-controlled Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust (ZMMT), a watchdog that eventually took overall ownership of The Herald and its sister papers (Nyahunzvi 2001). In Zimbabwe the media is much more polarized on political lines. Whereas the public media are accused of being pro Zanu Pf, private media employ ―the nothing- can-ever-come-out-of-this-wretched government attitude (Mano 2005:65). At most instances, content in The Herald disposes the relations that Zimbabwe has with other foreign nations as previous US administrations have always been framed in The Herald as imperialistic, manipulative and exploitative. So this research will be looking at Donald Trump‘s portrayal and presentation in The Herald which is Zimbabwe‘s daily newspaper. The way he was framed before and after the USA 2016 presidential elections will be put into light. 1.2 Background of the study With the coming out of the presidential office by Barack Obama, the coming in of Donald Trump became another spectacle for the African community also particularly for Zimbabwe. The former USA President Barack Obama had aroused expectations around the world, but nowhere as much as Africa (Lyman and Robinette 2009). There was a general feeling among Africans including the nation of Zimbabwe that when Barack Obama was elected as the president of the USA, he would bring a positive social and economic growth to the African continent, as he is of an African descent. Africa is a continent where politics is all about patronage, and as he was a president of the United States with Kenyan roots, Barack Obama seemed to many Africans like the ultimate political patron (Kruse 2015).Thus, his foreign policy focused less on Africa and more on Asia, the Middle-East and Europe and this was a great disappointment to Africa (Kruse 2015).So with Donald Trump coming into the American political scene with his American nationalistic stance, the world including African states eagerly awaited to see what he has to offer. Africa and the rest of the world witnessed the election of Donald Trump who became president of America with his controversial, polarizing figure and his nationalistic rhetoric. What is interesting is the framing of his political rhetoric in The Herald. His nationalistic rhetoric resonates with that of the Zanu Pf leader Robert Mugabe but in The Herald Donald Trump is portrayed in an unparallel stance. Through framing the news media influentially shape public opinion (De Vreese 2005). Thus ―those who produce the news are aware of the expectations of the audiences as consumers or as citizens or some combination of both‖ (Oates 2008:5).The framing of him as a misogynist, ultranationalist only seemed to spur him to power as he managed to portray the media as giving out false news to tarnish since American presidential elections are a matter of global concern, events were also followed in all countries Zimbabwe included. With a population of around 12.5 million, the country has an estimated literacy level of 85 percent. By virtue of their literacy rate, it means that most Zimbabweans are in a position to read newspapers on their own and they were able to follow the development in the presidential race in America. Most articles on Donald Trump in The Herald are framed in a negative stance and leave room for the readers to deduce the type of relationship Zimbabwe has with the USA. Media coverage sometimes positions stories in either a favorable or unfavorable manner ( Bystrom et al., 2001). The problem that arises is that many of the people ‗worship‘ the printed word and will simply believe what they have read be it from a single newspaper without subjecting it to scrutiny and yet academics contend that all news is propaganda (Mbanje and Mahuku2012). Protective nationalism has had a long history in Zimbabwe with The Herald being the forefront of this kind of reportage especially on issues of internal politics in Zimbabwe and the country‘s standing in the global relations. This nationalist message carried out by Donald Trump can also be compared to President Mugabe`s political rhetoric which is usually conveyed through The Herald. Thus, the coming in Donald Trump became another spectacle for the nation of Zimbabwe as his political discourse puts forward nationalism in a stance that is similar to that of Robert Mugabe where the whites where dispossessed from the farms they had in Zimbabwe under the notion of „The 3rd Chimurenga‟. The framing of Donald Trump could therefore have been seen as an attempt to portray him in a negative stance, therefore establishing the type of relationship the Zimbabwean government has with the USA through The Herald‟s articles on him