Home team station critical of RNC

Christine Holmes | ch850016@ohio.edu

July was either a time to flock to the city on the lake or flee, depending on individual political enthusiasm.

With record numbers of journalists registered to cover the 2016 Republican National Convention, the home town journalists of Cleveland seemed especially protective of their turf.

The city's NBC affiliate, WKYC, took the coverage opportunity to heart and provided content on nearly any topic imaginable.

Just searching the station's website with the words "Trump and RNC" resulted in more than 1,200 hits.

Screenshot of search on WKYC website/ Christine Holmes

Stories included information on security, what convention-goers could and could not bring, protests, speeches, and much more.

Not reading through each story, rather skimming headlines, it appeared as though the station took a highly critical stance on everything RNC-related.

Stories about the security forces were in depth and investigative, digging up records on some of the officers coming from out of town to secure the convention.

One story in particular was rather interesting as it revealed one officer expected to patrol the RNC had killed three people since 2008.



The anchor tossing the story even claims possession of RNC by calling it "our convention," which indicated the pride this station took in covering such a grand scale event in its own backyard.

Perhaps that is why the station tended to be highly critical of every detail involving the convention.

Other articles and videos posted on the station's website seemed to be very anti-Trump, or maybe it was the inventible result of the convention's events (plagiarized speech, offensive statements, and protests).

Regardless, the station took a watchdog stance on the Republican National Convention.

The stories went more in depth than simple summaries of the day's events.

The reporters at WKYC questioned everything happening in their city and provided an alternative to the raw streams of speeches and the general public could watch on CNN and other major networks.

In this case, WKYC challenged authority for its viewers and asked the questions the people couldn't.

One criticism of the station is that maybe it took too much of an opposing stance that it lost its objectivity.The following stories serve as examples:

Elizabeth Banks mocks Trump
Donald Trump and Mike Pence share an awkward air kiss

Although it's good to balance out a week of what could be counties pro-GOP stories, this station may have gone a little too far in its critiques.

For those not in Cleveland, they are only seeing negative stories coming out of this station and that's also not an accurate depiction.