Bernie Scores Historic Upset : Proves Mainstream Media is a Joke
All the pundits, pollsters, & papers had it wrong. Bernie Sanders took Michigan From Hillary Clinton 50 to 48. The statisticians tried to find a similar upset in modern political history and they couldn’t, most of them were predicting Hillary in a landslide, a victory by 25 points. Nobody’s ever been that wrong. It’s not tremendously surprising that the media got it wrong, they’ve been not so subtly undermining the Bernie Campaign for months. Last Saturday, while Michigan was getting ready to vote in the Primary, the Washington Post managed to run 16 negative stories about Bernie Sanders in 16 hours. Here they are:
- March 6, 10:20 PM: Bernie Sanders Pledges the US Won’t Be No. 1 in Incarceration. He’ll Need to Release Lots of Criminals
- March 7, 12:39 AM: Clinton Is Running for President. Sanders Is Doing Something Else
- March 7, 4:04 AM: This Is Huge: Trump, Sanders Both Using Same Catchphrase
- March 7, 4:49 AM: Mental Health Patients to Bernie Sanders: Don’t Compare Us to the GOP Candidates
- March 7, 6:00 AM: ‘Excuse Me, I’m Talking’: Bernie Sanders Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Repeatedly
- March 7, 9:24 AM: Bernie Sanders’s Two Big Lies About the Global Economy
- March 7, 8:25 AM: Five Reasons Bernie Sanders Lost Last Night’s Democratic Debate
- March 7, 8:44 AM: An Awkward Reality for Bernie Sanders: A Strategy Focused on Whiter States
- March 7, 8:44 AM: Bernie Sanders Says White People Don’t Know What It’s Like to Live in a ‘Ghetto.’ About That…
- March 7, 11:49 AM: The NRA Just Praised Bernie Sanders — and Did Him No Favors in Doing So
- March 7, 12:55 PM: Even Bernie Sanders Can Beat Donald Trump
- March 7, 1:08 PM: What Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Get About Arguing With Hillary Clinton
- March 7, 1:44 PM: Why Obama Says Bank Reform Is a Success but Bernie Sanders Says It’s a Failure
- March 7, 2:16 PM: Here’s Something Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders Have in Common: And the Piece of the Argument That Bernie Doesn’t Get Quite Right.
- March 7, 3:31 PM: ‘Excuse Me!’: Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know How to Talk About Black People
- March 7, 3:54 PM:
- And the Most Partisan Senator of 2015 Is … Bernie Sanders!(comondreams.org)
Now, as an editor myself (of a small, disreputable, and potty mouthed site I admit) I still know that this kind of assault on one man the weekend before a primary, is not an accident. An editor does not look at 16 headlines about to be published in his paper, and say, “well, by golly, 16 headlines, and they are all negative towards one candidate, oops!”
Furthermore a dozen writers don’t just write a dozen negatively slanted articles in one night, against one guy, on a whim. At least some, (if not all) were instructed to do so.
Months ago the Bernie campaign had to openly complain about media bias. In November, the major television networks were not giving equal airtime to candidates. Now, it’s certainly not the law to force media outlets to cover candidates fairly, of course not. But when you’re giving 96% more air time to Donald Trump than you are to Bernie Sanders, when Bernie is polling the same amongst voters, it’s pretty clear. The corporate owned outlets want to make money, and they don’t want the public listening to Bernie. They would prefer you watched the guy people are calling the ‘crypto-Nazi’: Donald J. Trump. (and by ‘people’, I mean me, and Gore Vidal, if he were still alive).
In the month of November, ABC’s “World News Tonight” devoted 81 minutes to Trump’s campaign, compared to just 20 second for Sanders. That’s just one example, there were 234 total network minutes (NBC CBS ABC etc.) given to Trump compared to just 10 network minutes for Sanders. (Full Tyndall Report at mediamatters.org)
It’s simple. We get it. The corporations are for Hillary, they’ve been working with her since the 1990’s. The big insurance companies, the big banks, and the big energy companies are perfectly comfortable with Hillary. They know she will not rock the boat, they know everything she is going to do, because they’ve done it together for the last 25 years.
Bernie might actually change things, he might actually speak truth to power, he may actually stand up for the environment and for the underpaid workers of this country, and that is very scary to those in power. Meanwhile, the pundits still have Hillary winning in Illinois and Ohio next Tuesday. They’re saying a 99% chance of victory just like in Michigan. How long will it take them to change their tune?
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