Editor's note: this article originally appeared November 19th, 2019 on my Facebook page - if you're looking for source materials, check out the comments section of the original article. For my latest book review "Why You Should Read Thomas Frank", please click here.
In today's edition of our ongoing article analysis feature, we're
going to take a look at what I personally feel may be the most important
piece of political media analysis released so far in the 2020
Democratic Party nomination cycle.
Throughout this nomination
contest and the last Democratic Party primary season in 2016, supporters
of the Democratic Socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders have
argued that mainstream corporate media in America has not only purposely
avoided covering the Sanders campaign but what coverage they have
offered has been dishonest, disingenuous and highly slanted towards
negative (and often erroneous) conclusions about Bernie, his supporters
and his campaign.
Well, if this November 13th, 2019 article
about MSNBC's Democratic Party primary coverage by Branko Marcetic over
at In These Times is indicative of the larger industry, it's now
empirically possible to say Sanders supporters are *right* about the
#BernieBlackout
and it is instead the establishment media minions who called their
complaints a "conspiracy theory" who now have some explaining to do.
Drawing on the tradition of extremely granular media analysis
popularized by books like Manufacturing Consent and to a lesser degree,
data science websites like FiveThirtyEight, Marcetic conducts a detailed
examination of extremely blatant biases in MSNBC's coverage of the
three leading Democratic Party nomination candidates in August and
September across the network's top six prime time political shows; those
three candidates of course being Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie
Sanders.
As will likely come as no surprise to astute political
media observers in America, it turns out that not only do MSNBC's top
political analysts talk about Bernie Sanders less than Elizabeth Warren
and far less than Joe Biden, but also that coverage of Bernie Sanders on
MSNBC's flagship shows is far more likely to be negative than that of
the other two candidates - which is pretty remarkable when you realize
that one of the two months In These Times looked at featured a very real
Joe and Hunter Biden corruption scandal that ties into the ongoing
Trump impeachment and has itself driven an infinite number of whackjob
Republican-endorsed conspiracy theories in what passes for the
"mainstream" right wing media these days.
What really separates
Marcetic's analysis in this article from the work of "data guys" like
Nate Silver however, is his deep drilling into the specifics of MSNBC's
coverage above and beyond the raw numbers to examine precisely *what*
the network is saying about each of the three candidates, and the
picture is not pretty. Far from a mere bias against Sanders, these clip
by clip and argument by argument examples demonstrate that as a whole
MSNBC's flagship political shows, their hosts and the vast majority of
their guest pundits are actively campaigning against Bernie Sanders. Of
course while that conclusion may not come as much of a shock to American
leftists, it bears noting here that just a few months ago virtually
every corporate media outlet in America accused the Sanders campaign of
propagating Trumpian conspiracy theories when the Senator from Vermont
had the audacity to suggest he and his supporters weren't getting a fair
shake in the mainstream "liberal" media.
With meticulous
attention to detail, Marcetic has logged numerous smears,
misrepresentations and at times, even outright falsehoods disseminated
in the network's war against Bernie, all the while pointing out key gaps
in the coverage of any news events that could be perceived as somehow
positive for the Sanders campaign. Perhaps even more alarmingly, this In
These Times investigation clearly demonstrates that in MSNBC's quest to
shut out Sanders and draw Liz Warren to the center, the network has
largely abandoned coverage of policy proposals, agenda statements or
action plans presented by literally *any* of the candidates whatsoever -
as far as the network is concerned, this election is about an endless
wave of breaking primary polls and while they're happy to inform you
that Liz Warren "has a plan for that" they apparently have no intention
of telling you what that plan might be.
The simple truth is that
this is the "16 negative articles about Bernie Sanders in 16 hours on
the Washington Post webpage" of the 2020 nomination cycle and
unfortunately it appears to have slipped under the radar because
mainstream media has no interest in sharing coverage from a nominally
left wing media organization like In These Times.
Naturally
there will be those who complain about the narrow scope of the study,
and point to what they feel is "equally slanted" coverage in left wing
publications like Jacobin, or Current Affairs but as Marcetic's data
demonstrates, these people are being largely disingenuous. The numbers
don't lie and MSNBC not only has a dominant hold on the liberal cable
news market, but the network is particularly influential with age
sixty-five and older viewers who are far more likely to vote in
primaries than any other age demographic.
Due to its size and
ubiquity in the public discourse, MSNBC is driving national opinions
about the 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest on a scale that
dwarfs every outlet the American left has to access that same discourse -
and the network is openly and demonstrably driving those opinions
against Bernie Sanders. Try to keep that in mind the next time Chris
Mathews wants to lecture you on the need to respect your elders in the
party or Larry O'Donnell has opinions to share on the importance of a
"free and *fair* press."
As even famous American author Ernest
Hemingway eventually learned while trying to avoid relentless CIA
harassment during his retirement in Cuba - it's not paranoia if they
really are out to get you.
- nina Illingworth
Independent writer, critic and analyst with a
left focus.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t
You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog.
Updates available on Twitter, Mastodon and Facebook.
Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!
