The general adult population is essentially divided between two slogans: “Make America Great Again” and “Never Trump.” While anti-Trump campaigns are trying to make a difference through Mitt Romney speeches and negative media coverage, Donald Trump is still leading the GOP pack and hurtling toward the Republican nomination.

Campaign spending and ads seem like a sure-fire way to get ahead in a political campaign. As of December, Donald Trump had only spent $217,000 on a wave of radio ads, whereas competitors like Jeb Bush dropped close to $28.9 million in the same period, according to the Washington Post. Outside of the other candidates, even the anti-Trump campaign has spent far more money than the billionaire himself. USA Today reported that a few groups are now spending several million dollars on ads against the candidate.

Good political advertisements can have the power to set candidates apart from one another. From that standpoint, one has to wonder why Donald Trump is the frontrunner despite a negligible amount of ad spending. The answer is quite simple: free media. Newspapers, magazines and tabloids—all of which are generally a part of the “establishment,” and therefore the anti-Trump field—have featured Donald Trump on their front pages more times than most other candidates during this election season.   

A March 7 Washington Post headline read “The Hitler-ification of Donald Trump”. The Huffington Post also published a piece called “Donald Trump Threatens Trump University Fraud Victims in New Video.” Even The New York Times wrote, “Donald Trump’s Message Resonates with White Supremacists.” None of these headlines were kind or supportive of Trump. Instead, they contained a completely expected bias against him.

This speaks to the breadth of the anti-Trump movement across the established press and political parties. Democrats despise Donald, conservatives fear his influence on the Republican party and newspapers are largely controlled by those bipartisan interests (think Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers). Dozens of established newspapers—including the Houston Chronicle, the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and the Las Vegas Sun—published editorials begging to stop Mr. Trump before he becomes President Trump.

However, many of these media outlets did not consider that they might be contributing to the growing possibility that Trump could win the presidency. This is because of the age-old concept that any publicity is good publicity… including bad publicity. Trump is constantly in the headlines, whether for saying he wants to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. or just making thinly veiled comments in a debate about his privates. Trump thrives off controversy because it gets people to talk about him nearly all the time. Voters hear the name “Trump” so often that his name festers in their brains and can even result in a vote on a ballot for him. Why pay for advertisements when you can start a scandal that lands you on the front page for free?

This is the main mistake the media has made in dealing with Trump. Instead of trying to ignore what Trump says or does, newspapers, broadcast news and radio shows attempt to capitalize on his “mistakes.” The negative articles were meant to deter the American public; however, the only notable result was that Trump’s name was once again repeated in a headline. Trump is a businessman, after all—he knows how to market, even if he is selling himself as a candidate. The media has fallen into his trap, furthering Trump’s cause instead of their own “Never Trump” initiative.

Bridget Higgins is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at [email protected].