User:KeithTyler/bernie2

Criticism of media coverage of Bernie Sanders presidential campaign

Bernie Sanders in July 2019

Various media outlets have raised concerns that the mainstream media in the United States have made a concerted effort to downplay, underreport, or ignore the popularity of Bernie Sanders, primarily concerning both his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Accusations have ranged from explicit media bias, journalistic malpractice, and distortions of information and data. Alternative media such as Rising with the Hill's Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti (by The Hill), Jacobin, Vox, Common Dreams, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, among others, have published articles, videos, and reports discussing what they see as an alleged media bias against Bernie Sanders. The campaign runs its own media platforms—many of which discuss media bias and what they call the Bernie Blackout.

Accusations of bias often revolve around themes concerning the concentration of media ownership, profit-driven special interests, manufacturing consent and the propaganda model, general media propaganda, conflicts of interests, and agenda-setting theory. The most prominent media organizations being accused of bias have been MSNBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Many of the media organizations have responded to the criticisms in various ways through rebuttals, criticism, and analysis. Various studies have been done in an effort to document statistical data in regard to news coverage of presidential candidates. Legitimacy of the bias has been called into question by some political commentators.

2016 primary campaign

See also: 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries and Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign

On April 28, 2015, Vermont Public Radio reported that Sanders would announce his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on April 30. In an interview with USA Today on April 29, Sanders stated that he was "running in this election to win," and launched a campaign website, effectively beginning his run. Sanders said he was motivated to enter the race by what he termed "obscene levels" of income disparity, and the campaign finance system. On May 26, 2015, Sanders officially announced his candidacy at Burlington's Waterfront Park.

Early campaign months

In October 2015, Story Hinckley of the The Christian Science Monitor published an article discussing what he called a "near-blackout from major TV news sources". He indicated that at the time, Sanders was polling high and bringing in significant donations, yet the mainstream media was giving insufficient coverage of the campaign. Media Matters for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to analyzing American news sources, reported that media networks were overwhelmingly covering Hillary Clinton's email controversy, while ignoring Sanders' campaign. In a study of campaign coverage conducted by Andrew Tyndall, ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted 504 minutes to the presidential race, with 338 minutes devoted to the Republican race, 128 minutes to the Democratic race, and a total of 8 minutes devoted to Bernie Sanders (compared to 145 minutes for Trump, 82 minutes for Clinton, 83 minutes for Clinton's email controversy, and 43 minutes to Jeb Bush).

Later campaign months

In an article published by FAIR, Adam Johnson documented that the Washington Post ran 16 stories about Bernie Sanders over a period of 16 hours, all of which were presented, "in a negative light, mainly by advancing the narrative that he’s a clueless white man incapable of winning over people of color or speaking to women." The Washington Post responded to this claim, stating that FAIR's definition of negative was overly broad, and "conflated news, analysis and opinion". They also noted 16 stories in one day which presented Sanders in a positive light.

The New York Times received criticism when they retroactively made significant changes to an article about Bernie Sanders' legislative accomplishments over the past 25 years. The article was originally titled "Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years Via Legislative Side Doors" but was subsequently changed to "Via Legislative Side Doors, Bernie Sanders Won Modest Victories." In addition to the revised title, several paragraphs were added as well. Margaret Sullivan at the New York Times opined that the changes were clear examples of "stealth editing" and that "the changes to this story were so substantive that a reader who saw the piece when it first went up might come away with a very different sense of Mr. Sanders’s legislative accomplishments than one who saw it hours later." Katie Halper from FAIR noted in response to a defense of the changes that, "in its original form, the article didn’t cast enough doubt on Sanders’ viability and ability to govern."

Harvard Kennedy School report

In June 2016, a report was released by the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy that documented systemic media bias of candidate campaign coverage for the 2016 presidential primaries. The report found that,

...during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls. Trump’s coverage was positive in tone—he received far more “good press” than “bad press.” The volume and tone of the coverage helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls. The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic. For her part, Hillary Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her “bad news” outpaced her “good news,” usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase in her unfavorable poll ratings in 2015.

Patterson stated that,

Less coverage of the Democratic side worked against Bernie Sanders’ efforts to make inroads on Clinton’s support. Sanders struggled to get badly needed press attention in the early going. With almost no money or national name recognition, he needed news coverage if he was to gain traction. His poll standing at the beginning of 2015 was barely more than that of the other lagging Democratic contenders, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb. By summer, Sanders had emerged as Clinton’s leading competitor but, even then, his coverage lagged. Not until the pre-primary debates did his coverage begin to pick up, though not at a rate close to what he needed to compensate for the early part of the year. Five Republican contenders—Trump, Bush, Cruz, Rubio, and Carson—each had more news coverage than Sanders during the invisible primary. Clinton got three times more coverage than he did.

Colleen Elizabeth Kelly contends in her book A Rhetoric of Divisive Partisanship: The 2016 American Presidential Campaign Discourse of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump that Sanders was both right and wrong in his critique of the medias bias. Sanders considered the bias to be both quantitative and qualitative as the corporate media was, "inherently bias against the slate of issues his revolution embraced". Kelly details the Harvard study indicating that the media was explicitly bias against him at first, but that his later drop was due to his performance in the debates.

DNC email leak

Main article: 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak

Between June and July 2016, hackers acquired and released over 19,000 email exchanges of the Democratic National Convention. In regards to Sanders, the leak revealed that the DNC was in violation of their stated neutrality. In the emails, DNC staffers derided the Sanders campaign. The Washington Post reported: "Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Basically, all of these examples came late in the primary—after Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory—but they belie the national party committee's stated neutrality in the race even at that late stage." The controversy resulted in an apology to Sanders by the DNC and the resignation of the CEO Amy Dacey, CFO Brad Marshall, and Communications Director Luis Miranda.

2020 primary campaign

See also: 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries and Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign

February

Shane Ryan from Paste Magazine opined that, like in 2016 with Washington Post's 16 negative posts about Bernie in 16 hours report by FAIR, the 48 hours of Sanders declaration to run, the Post published four negative articles about him, two of which were by the same author. Jennifer Rubin immediately criticized Sanders as a dated, unpopular candidate upon which the next day he reached record fundraising numbers. Rubin continued to disparage the senator's success in what Ryan called, "a great big point-missing whiff, and a lame attempt at self-justification after being made to look like a fool a day earlier."

July

Katie Halper in FAIR documented a number of cases where the media was utilizing selective poll reporting and distortions of graphics. In her article, she starts with an MSNBC 2020 matchup against Trump poll on March 7. The poll showed Biden at 53%, Sanders at 49%, and Warren and Kamala at 48%. Sanders however, was listed as being in fourth place. A similar sequence error was made on MSNBC on March 15 with Sanders in a third place order despite being in second numerically. On May 24, Chuck Todd of Meet The Press reported a Quinnipiac Poll that found Sanders had gone up by 5 points between April 30 and May 21 whereas Todd signed it as if Sanders had gone down by 5 points. On April 29, Velshe and Ruhle of MSNBC inaccurately displayed the data of a Monmouth poll that put Sanders at 27% polling with white voters and Biden at 25%. The MSNBC graphic showed Biden at 28%; a three point difference not in accordance with the poll. In a segment by Rachel Maddow on April 29, she showed a graphic with candidates leading with female donations. Kirsten Gillibrand was highest at 52% with women while Sanders was at the bottom at 33%. Maddow failed to mention that the data was only based on donations of $200 or more. The data was taken from an open secrets report that made it clear that the report focused only on large donations. Sanders first quarter reported that 46% of his donations were from women. Lastly, Halper documented the MSNBC analyst Zerlina Maxwell claiming that Sanders, "did not mention race or gender until 23 minutes into the speech" in his kickoff speech. She later retracted her statement when she realized that he mentioned within the first five minutes. Glen Greenwald from The Intercept detailed the occurrence and considered it a blatant lie stating,

"Indeed, as is almost always true for MSNBC, all of these pleas that they correct their false claim have been steadfastly ignored — no correction issued — because, as I’ve repeatedly documented, lying about adversaries of the Democratic establishment is not merely tolerated or permitted at MSNBC, but is encouraged and rewarded. That’s why they purposely had the very first person to comment on Sanders’s kickoff campaign speech be a paid Clinton 2016 campaign official highly embittered toward Sanders, and it’s why MSNBC does not correct lies no matter how loudly, clearly, or indisputably you document those lies to them."

August

Sanders along with various members of his campaign have spoken out directly about the media bias. After Sanders led the movement to pressure Amazon to pay its employees $15 an hour, "I talk about [Amazon’s taxes] all of the time... And then I wonder why The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn't write particularly good articles about me. I don't know why." According to CNN, Sanders said, "We have pointed out over and over again that Amazon made $10 billion in profits last year. You know how much they paid in taxes? You got it, zero! Any wonder why The Washington Post is not one of my great supporters, I wonder why?" He added, "New York Times not much better". An executive editor of Washington Post stated in response, "Contrary to the conspiracy theory the senator seems to favor, Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest."

Around the same time, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told CNN,

"In about, you know, a minute or so or two minutes or so you’re going to cut to commercial breaks and you’re going to see some pharmaceutical ads. You’re going to see a lot of ads that are basically paying your bills and the bills of the entire media enterprise. And what that ends up doing is incentivizing you and others to make sure that you’re asking the questions and driving the conversations in certain areas and not in certain areas."

Sanders responded to the entire discourse in the end by stating,

"So this is not into conspiracy theory. We are taking on corporate America. Large corporations own the media in America, by and large, and I think there is a framework, about how the corporate media focuses on politics. That is my concern. It’s not that Jeff Bezos is on the phone every day; he’s not."

Chris Cillizza from CNN opined that Sanders and Shakir,

"have zero evidence to back up these big claims is beside the point for many supporters of the independent senator from Vermont. They believe deeply in Sanders and see anyone who disagrees with them as a corporate shill or part of the Big Bad Establishment. Which is their right. But it doesn't make these claims true."

Domenico Montanaro from NPR opined that, "the remark [by Sanders] sounded an awful lot like the kind of criticism leveled by someone else" indicating that Sanders mimicked Trump's criticism of the media. However, in the same interview where Bernie Sanders criticized The Washington Post, he explicitly stated that Trump was undermining American democracy and that, "There are some really great articles out there, like investigations, which we use, so I don't think media is fake news."

New Hampshire polling reports

Sanders' speechwriter David Sirota wrote in the campaign's Bern Notice newsletter,

"In the last week, a wave of polls has emerged showing a genuine, full-on Bernie surge — but you might not know that if you tuned into cable TV or read the headlines from the national press corps. In fact, you might not even know Bernie is running for president. As Bernie gains big momentum heading into the final 100 days until the Iowa caucuses, we see that the divide between The Actual Polls and The Media’s Manufactured Narrative is getting wider. In fact, the situation has gotten so obvious and laughable that The Onion decided to call it out and lampoon it..."

At the time of the newsletter, Sander's polling average had increased from 17% from a month prior to 18% according to poll aggregator RealClearPolitics. Sirota went on to list three different examples of misreporting of poll numbers by CNN and the New York Times. Ryan Grim from The Intercept noted similar headlines on his Twitter feed on October 29. Common Dreams detailed the controversy after it unfolded. The headline at the satirical newspaper, The Onion, that Sirota referenced was entitled "MSNBC Poll Finds Support For Bernie Sanders Has Plummeted 2 Points Up," poking fun at the alleged media bias.

In These Times analysis

In November 2019, the Chicago left-wing magazine In These Times published an in-depth article analyzing the coverage of the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary by MSNBC between August and September 2019. They focused primarily on Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joe Biden. The analysis covered The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, All In with Chris Hayes, The Beat with Ari Melber, Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and The Rachel Maddow Show while categorizing positive, neutral, and negative discussion of the candidates. The analysis found that Sanders was discussed 36% of the time, compared to 43% for Warren and 64% Biden. The author notes that part of this discrepancy may be attributed to the Trump-Ukraine scandal. As for positive and negative mentions, 12.9% were positive towards Sanders, while 20.7% were negative—the most likely of the three. Most of the negative mentions came from Hardball and the 11th Hour. In comparison, 11.4% of comments towards Biden were negative, with 23.3% positive. The analysis found numerous inaccurate claims made by various political commentators regarding all candidates. Almost all the coverage discussed polls.

December

On December 2, 2019, PBS News Hour hosted a segment discussing a presidential primary election. Supporters of Sanders allege that it focused unevenly on minor candidates. Left leaning magazine Current Affairs wrote that even though the segment "found time to talk about Joe Sestak and Steve Bullock, plus plenty of candidates struggling to get out of single-digit poll numbers" it did not include "even a photo of Bernie Sanders." This article later was cited in an article by Common Dreams which levied the same accusation, describing it as part of the supposed "Bernie Blackout".

Criticism of accusations of bias

Various commentators have responded, criticized, or offered explanations of the various accusations of media bias.

Politico put forth the idea that the bias may be an artifact of Sanders propensity to turn down interviews and press gaggles. Sanders has admitted that he does not feel that the media wants to focus on what he considers as important. He said on NBC that, “When the poor get richer and the rich get poorer, when all of our people have health care as a right, when we are leading the world in the fight against climate change, you know what? I will change what I am saying.” Dan Pfeiffer of Crooked Media, quoted by Politico, questioned the effectiveness of critiquing the media coverage by the press over the Sanders campaign. "Unfortunately for the Sanders campaign, the press too often considers complaints from the left as validation of their objectivity and complaints from the right as something worth addressing to prove their objectivity" Pfeiffer said when comparing the accusations with the technique of the right-wing having, "unbelievable success working the refs by calling the mainstream media biased against them".

Vox proposed a similar explanation stating that the "media circus" is not something that Sanders and his campaign prefer to participate in. They also contend that the media may find his position in the polls and his popularity as "boring" because it "doesn't fit into the horserace" like some of their other candidates campaigns do.

The Washington Post has had mixed responses from various journalists. Marty Baron called the accusations a conspiracy, whereas Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote that Sanders was making a smart case of media bias that was uniquely different from Trump's explicit criticism; indicating that,

"...the gatekeepers of established opinion no longer hold as much sway, when new forms of communication and independent media challenge the old. It’s not surprising that the corporate media gives Sanders bad press. Thankfully, though, that matters less and less."

A controversy arose between the Sanders campaign and the Post in late August concerning fact-checking. The Post gave Sanders "Three Pinocchios" (meaning mostly false) for his claim on medical debt. Sanders has consistently maintained that, “500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills”. Journalists disputed the article's finding and said that the claim was true. The Post then claimed that the paper was not peer-reviewed. Upon inspection it was found that the paper was peer reviewed. Paul Heintz of the Post suggested that Sanders' solution to his concern about media bias would be complete, verbatim coverage of his pronouncements.

Emma Specter at Vogue doubted that there was a conspiracy against Sanders. However, she listed several examples of bias and interpreted lack of coverage of Sanders on certain issues and events as slightly unfair.

Domenico Montanaro of NPR claimed that Sanders sounded like Trump in his criticism of the media, quoting Trump's tweet, "...[T]he failing New York Times and the Amazon Washington Post do nothing but write bad stories even on very positive achievements - and they will never change!" In 2015, Elizabeth Jensen of NPR responded to an influx of emails regarding a "Morning Edition" segment. Jensen said that she does not "find that NPR has been slighting his campaign. In the last two days alone, NPR has covered the Democrats' climate change stances and reactions to the Republican debate and Sanders has been well in the mix." NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik responded to criticisms of bias against Sanders in April 2016 by stating that some of the unbalanced coverage came from Sander's scheduling compared to Clinton's and that NPR saw a Sanders win as a "long shot" due to Clinton's strong name recognition in comparison.

In March 2019, a preliminary study by Northeastern University's School of Journalism found that Sanders was receiving the most positive coverage of any major candidate in the Democratic primary, while an expanded, updated analysis in April placed him third out of eight candidates; a further update for June–September 2019 found that Sanders's positive coverage ranked fourth out of eight major candidates.

External links

• Berniesandersfacts.com - A website dedicated to documenting alleged bias against Bernie Sanders.
• Towardsdatascience.com - An article that discusses media bias in the democratic primary.
• Status Quo Bias in the Mainstream American Media Coverage of Senator Bernie Sanders - A peer-reviewed journal article that discusses media bias in the context of Bernie Sanders.
• BernieBlackout.com - A website dedicated to documenting alleged media bias against the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns.