Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had not been feeling well along the campaign trail and developed a fever on Sept. 2, Clinton’s physician Dr. Lisa Bardack wrote in a report.

News outlets nationwide only began an exhaustive investigation of Clinton’s medical history after her dehydration and pneumonia episode in New York City during a ceremony commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks and her cancelling of appearances at events in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“Hillary Clinton Collapses At 9/11 Memorial,” headlines blared the next day. Journalists soon took to expressing their opinions on Clinton’s age and its impacts on her chances at the voting polls. Coverage of the 2016 presidential race began to revolve around a coughing spell and a stumble into a van.

In the context of the breadth of coverage of Clinton’s health, it’s surprising that Trump’s medical history has not also been examined as extensively by the American public. The Trump campaign claims that Clinton isn’t healthy enough, but Trump himself has not released a full medical report besides an unsubstantiated one-page statement proclaiming Trump to be in “excellent physical health,” a claim that has gone largely unquestioned.

At the same time, the media’s coverage of Trump is also skewed; instead of treating the presidential candidate as a politician, journalists are treating him as a celebrity by placing more emphasis on what he says instead of the reasoning behind his words. The glorification of Trump’s words effectively normalizes hate speech to the point where the public is persuaded to simply dismiss Trump’s constant stirring up of controversy.

While the population of people who are disappointed with the current lack of depth of the news about the election may be a silent majority, such members of the American public need to help the media represent their views by ignoring articles with unoriginal content and exposing others to pieces representing different viewpoints on the presidential race.

By making such disinterest in the coverage of the election public, decreasing the number of readers of repetitive articles would incentivize diverse media coverage of the election with articles on more aspects of the candidates and their campaigns, instead of focusing on a central, recurring argument or theme.

On the other hand, they also need to begin holding journalists accountable for expecting Clinton, a female presidential nominee, to fulfill such higher standards of health, in comparison to the criteria used to judge other presidential candidates’ ability to govern the country effectively.

Proper coverage of the presidential race is essential to allowing the American public to develop their own judgements of Clinton and Trump without being influenced by what the media says about the candidates.

Failure to provide the American public with a collection of contextually rich, diverse articles on the election and giving them the same information week after week effectively brainwashes readers into formulating opinions reflective of the media coverage they consume.

By sharing articles supporting a different opinion or a new perspective on the election —essentially, “voting with their click,”— people can draw attention to more relevant issues related to the presidential race and allow others to truly evaluate whether either Clinton and Trump can live up to the title of President of the United States.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on October 11, 2016.