RUDGLEY: Bernie Sanders, Rand Paul and media bias
Recent coverage of presidential campaigns highlights how the interests of the political establishment, corporations and the press have become increasingly intertwined. Betraying a blatant disregard for journalistic integrity, the mainstream media — from print publications like The New York Times to cable news — takes it upon itself to effectively choose the winners and losers of an election that is almost 18 months away. I have little regard for the half-baked logic behind most conspiracy theories, but it is just as lazy to digest what you read without question as it is to believe the unorthodox without sufficient evidence. With this in mind, I believe a thorough examination of presidential campaign coverage uncovers a disturbing reality: that many in the media forgo their duty to the public (to provide reliable information on all major party candidates) and instead unethically diminish unconventional candidates whose ideas and positions represent a departure from the status quo.
You might not know it from the sparsity of coverage but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was the first declared challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. The media’s coverage of him has been unforgivably biased and disdainful. The Washington Post began its profile on Sanders by describing him as “an unlikely presidential candidate — an ex-hippie, septuagenarian socialist from the liberal reaches of Vermont who rails, in his thick Brooklyn accent, rumpled suit and frizzy pile of white hair, against the ‘billionaire class’ taking over the country.” While every other major party presidential candidate who has declared an intent to run has been featured on The New York Times’ front page, Sanders’ declaration of his candidacy was shunted to A21. Steve Hendricks, of the Columbia Journalism Review, pointed out how “ABC’s World News Tonight gave his announcement all of 18 seconds, five of which were allotted to Clinton’s tweet welcoming him to the race” while Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson, neither of whom have ever held elected office, were spared “the long-shot treatment.”
The media’s disparaging treatment of Sanders is a direct corollary to his candidacy’s emphasis on income inequality and America’s “slide into economic and political oligarchy.” His unabashed repudiation of a nation where “99 percent of all new income [goes] to the top 1 percent” and Super PACs run amok understandably scares economic elites who are using the mainstream media to pull out all the stops to delegitimize Sanders and his message.
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/06/rudgley-bernie-sanders-rand-paul-and-media-bias
