I know, right?
I mean, they’re so open and honest about everything else – American imperialism, our racist criminal justice system, our gargantuan military budget, the failure of so many corporations to pay any fucking taxes at all, the sickness that is wealth hoarding. It’s just wonderful to live amidst such well-informed fellow citizens!
The funny thing is, the publishers and owners don’t really have to say one word to the rank-and-file editorial employees to get these outcomes. If a clever and creative and educated person wants to make a career in the American media-industrial complex*, she quickly learns what will and won’t help her up the corporate ladder and how to make sure that the biases you describe aren’t obvious.
This is why Bezos and Murdoch and Redstone and the others feel so comfortable saying “I don’t dictate what my newsroom people say or do”: it’s the truth, mainly because 90% of the time they don’t have to do that. [ETA: there are parallels to be drawn with how Putin has managed to get so many Russia outlets and publishers to self-censor without heavy-handed Soviet tactics.]
[* and, to be clear, such people are usually white and from at least a middle-class background, since it’s expensive to start out a career in high-profile journalism these days]
Pointing out that the article you provided doesn’t pass muster as evidence for the claim at hand is not ad hominem. Ad hominen would be attacking you or claiming FAIR is run by reptilians.
So how about this. That article does not allege a “media blackout”. That article alleges that negative coverage of Sanders at The Washington post is rooted in ulterior motives and the dictates of Jeff Bezos. Which is entirely possible.
But the existence of that or of negative coverage of Sanders, does not indicate a broad effort to disadvantage Sanders. Coverage of Bernie Sanders does not indicate a lack of coverage of Bernie Sanders, or a coordinated effort across the media to do so. Or to cover him negatively.
You will find such things for every candidate. In the sort of broad, objective assessments of the media in total I have seen (as with the simple one I provided). Nothing about the coverage of Sanders looks materially different then the coverage of any other candidate, excepting Biden. He does not seem to be particularly disadvantaged in any specific way. And the existence of bad coverage of him, or negative coverage of him. Or the fact that he isn’t covered as frequently as people with more support. Isn’t evidence of that.
Please explain what you mean by “bad ideas”.
She is fond of conspiracy theory and dictators, and has demonstrated her fondness for idiotic fights over nothing.
Here’s PBS doing a 12 minute “overview” of the democratic-primary race, and they don’t mention Sanders once. That anyone could truly thing Sanders has gotten fair coverage is pathetic.
I don’t see how anyone who believes in progressive policies can keep supporting Warren. If we get to the convention and it’s Warren vs. Sanders, it will go to a second ballot and the super-delegates will pick a corporatist. Disaster for progressives.
It’s time to get behind the strongest progressive candidate. Do I really have to enumerate a long list of reasons why that is clearly Sanders?
I’ll paraphrase Gracchus to avoid implying we’re on the same page with Gabbard–I speak for me. Do you mean to tell me that corporate-owned media outlets might bear a special animosity toward the only candidate openly hostile to Endless War and the profits of Imperialism?
Ideas change the landscape as much or more than the people who end up championing them. It’s hard to deny the impact Bernie has had on American politics after being squelched in 2016. If 2020 follows suit, his legacy will be that he brought his ideas–anathema to the oligarchy–out of the fringes into mainstream discourse. Someone else may bring them to fruition, but he opened the door. In this sense, if one values a voice against imperialism for profit and reallocating those trillions of military dollars to our infrastructure, health care, education, etc, let the woman speak! She’s going nowhere, but that message matters, even if none of the mainstream candidates dare speak it.
Bernie says everything Gabbard says while being an actual human and not a creepazoid. If I can choose a progressive human being over a reptiloid who parrots good ideas, I’ll take the human.
Gabbard isn’t being shunned for her ideas. Bernie raises huge amounts of money and interest with those ideas. She’s shunned because she’s low-polling, and she’s low-polling because she’s a no-charisma drone from the smallest state in the union.
Gabbard’s problem isn’t her being overlooked by the media. The ‘peoblem’ is her being overlooked by the voters, and for good reason. She’ll be propped up by RT and some right-wing money as a useful idiot, and her arrogance will overlook that and see it as support.
I don’t feel a need to stop asking questions about someone if they say things I agree with. You should try it.
I’m a big fan of Ryan Grim, but I’m not sure I’m with him on this one. Trump was attacked by media from every direction, and it only seemed to help him.
The Bernie Blackout is all the corpo media really has against Sanders. As soon as they start talking about his ideas, he wins.
The problem with Gabbard’s approach is that she takes her message beyond the standard progressive standpoint of reducing military spending and military adventurism on behalf of large corporations (so far so good) into the darker right-wing populist territory of disengagement from the international scene and shirking treaty obligations. This position isn’t too far removed from the current regime’s revival of “America First” isolationism, and has consequently earned her praise from some unsavoury elements, including Putin surrogates, alt-right social media types, and white nationalists.
Combine that with her continuing associations with her father’s anti-LGBTQ looney-tunes cult and her perpetually low poll numbers, and I can be somewhat more sympathetic to the corporate press not talking about her than I am toward their blacking out Sanders (with his more progressive approach against militarism and imperialism).
Does everyone else have to explain why Sanders will not, and will never be, the Democratic nominee?Yes, we can argue that we need a third party or whatever (not that that has worked as anything other than a spoiler in the past), but that’s another issue. We can all complain about Warren’s faults. But she actually has a chance – not a great one, admittedly, and frankly I suspect that Uncle Joe will get it because the establishment will see him as the way to get the mythical “undecided” voters on their side. Which won’t work, I’ll bet.
I lost interest in Warren once she showed she only talks the talk. Sanders has been walking the walk for decades.
ETA: Of course, I’d be behind someone like Constance Rice if she’d run.
Regurgitating corporate media spin is a sad excuse for an argument.
This is what a genuine argument looks like:
In 2016, Sanders won in 23 contests.
Just glancing at RCP, Sanders is currently polling 2nd overall, 1st in the latest California poll, 1st in a recent NH poll, and is in the top 3 in just about any state poll you look at. (And that’s before we even get into how the polls tend to under-represent Sanders voters.)
Sanders policies are hugely popular, polling over 50% support.
But yes, do help manufacture the consent about what “everyone” thinks.
Bernie deserves praise for pushing the Overton Window and all that. But we live in a country with an Electoral College, as much as we might wish we didn’t. What people in California and New Hampshire think don’t really matter. We need to focus on the actual swing states.
Gabbard is problematic as fuck, yes. She is much too far to the right on a whole host of issues…as are most of the other Democrats.
Even on foreign policy, her main schtick is that she actually took the War on Terror propaganda seriously. She wants to turn the Forever War into a serious attempt to exterminate political Islam, rather than just continue to use it as a corrupt and cynical excuse for the usual murderous imperial bullshit.
However, that is not why Gabbard has faced universal hostility from the liberal press. She was attacked because she revealed liberal complicity in the crimes of empire.
There is no virtue in running 3rd or 4th. Pretending that there is, for example that you get to avoid the scrutiny of being the frontrunner, is wishful thinking. It is also bizarre wishful thinking on the part of Sanders supporters, since (a) Sanders has already proved that he can certainly stand up to this scrutiny better than any candidate on the dais, and (b) his supporters, as supporters, should be confident of this.
Whether the lack of Sanders coverage is real or not, or whether it is a corporatist plot or not, is pretty irrelevant; even if true, complaining about it isn’t going to help Bernie. At best it will make people feel vindicated if he does badly, which won’t help us out of our national predicament.
Bernie is polling 2nd in some national polls, which is excellent news for him since Biden is unlikely to go the distance. However, he really needs to do well in Iowa. He’ll do well in New Hampshire, but that will be dismissed since he’s a neighbor, and and will probably do badly in South Carolina because Biden is running so strong there. (There’s also Nevada, where he has a good chance, but that hardly has any impact.)
Sanders has a good shot in Iowa, where his near-tie in 2016 gave legs to his campaign, and if he wins he’ll start getting better press coverage again, but if he comes in 3rd or worse there his campaign will probably be in real trouble.
Meanwhile, oh good, I see Tulsi is being mentioned again:
Alas, not where I live. Trust me, not getting covered is probably good for Tulsi.
Please explain what you mean by “bad ideas”.
For example, putting acolytes of the Jagad Guru into key positions in her campaign.
So now your argument is that Sanders will never be the Democratic Party nominee because of the electoral college? Maybe you’re just driving trollies here and I should ignore you. Consider that done.
