NYT Endorsement of Hillary Not Surprising Since It Buried Bernie's Presidential Bid

[Jefferson23]

Bio

Jeff Cohen is a media critic and lecturer, founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he is an associate professor of journalism. Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.


Transcript

SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome back to the Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. And I'm speaking with Jeff Cohen. Jeff is a director for the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, and he was the founder of the media watchdog FAIR. He's also the co-founder of RootsAction.org. And in segment one I was speaking with Jeff about the Iowa primaries, the results, and what the various candidates, actually the two Democratic candidates, had to say last night. And we were unpacking that. So if you didn't see that, go watch that.

And on this segment we're going to deal with the media, how media covered the Iowa primaries, as well as the endorsements that media is--many of them are giving to Hillary Clinton, like the New York Times. So Jeff, welcome back.

JEFF COHEN: Nice to be with you.

PERIES: So Jeff, let's dig right into this. The New York Times came out on Sunday endorsing Hillary Clinton, that is the editorial board of the New York Times. What do you make of that?

COHEN: Totally expected. What we've had at the New York Times, and most of the corporate mainstream media, is the traditional Gandhi quote, attributed to Gandhi. It's also been said by early feminists and labor leaders. First, they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they attack you. Then you win.

And you know, at first it was ridicule--at first it was ignoring. And you might remember that when Bernie Sanders announced he was running for president, the announcement in the New York Times was on a back page, very small, page A-21. And when a lot of these Republicans one after another was announcing for president, they got big, front-page coverage in the New York Times. In Iowa, Bernie's 50-50. And he was on the back page of the times. These Republicans who walked away with one, two percent of the vote in Iowa, they got front-page treatment.

So I think what's happened is it started as ignoring, it went to ridicule, and now the New York Times is going to come out for Hillary editorially. The Washington Post ran two editorials in two days attacking Bernie. And the first editorial was an utter doozy, basically defending Wall Street status, and saying that the big banks are now safely regulated, suggesting that Bernie is a demagogue when he talks about Wall Street. So we're definitely moving into this state where you can expect the corporate mainstream media to be on the attack.

The important thing for activists, and the kinds of people that get their news from the Real News, to understand is that this problem plaguing Bernie, the bias against Bernie, well, it's long-standing that in mainstream media you've had a narrow spectrum of views, political views, among the punditocracy. It goes from the center to the right, from corporate centrist Democrats to the far right. It's a spectrum no broader than from General Electric to General Motors. A corporate spectrum.

So in all of these discussions in the week leading up to Iowa, we're going to see it in the week leading up to New Hampshire. You have a lot of these people on the panels that are big supporters of Hillary Clinton, like [inaud.] who's associated with one of Hillary Clinton's superPACs. But they have panel after panel on CNN, on MSNBC, on the Sunday politics shows, where there are supporters of the right wing, supporters of Hillary Clinton and corporate centrism, but there's no one who's an unabashed supporter of Bernie Sanders. And if I were an activist seeing that, I would immediately go and protest to these media outlets, now that it's a 50-50 campaign in the Democratic party, you can't have defenders of Hillary and no defenders of Bernie. But that's what mainstream TV news has been doing.

in full: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=15577

Reminder from 2015: Television News Network Lobbyists Are Fundraising for Hillary Clinton
Another example of money in politics and its influence.

in full: https://theintercept.com/2015/10/29/media-fundraisers-presidential/

[SamKnause]

1. Thanks for posting.

FEEL THE BERN

[KoKo]

2. Recommend!

[KoKo]

3. And...This from Jeff Cohen at the "Intercept" Article

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/29/media-fundraisers-presidential/

Tony Podesta, the brother of Clinton’s campaign chairman and a lobbyist who has raised at least $55,600 for the Clinton campaign, is registered to lobby on behalf of the National Association of Broadcasters. In 2010, his firm helped defeat dark money disclosure legislation on behalf of his corporate media clients.

Another arguable political media bias is in favor of the status quo. Critics have complained that corporate news networks have promoted establishment candidates at the expense of outsiders. FAIR, a media watchdog group, reported in June that “Meet the Press,” NBC’s marquee political program, mentioned Clinton 16 times in the first 17 episodes of the year while failing to invite or discuss Bernie Sanders once. Sanders has no lobbyist bundlers and no Super PAC supporting his campaign.

“It’s clear that establishment politicians get softer treatment, in general, than outsider candidates,” says Jeff Cohen, an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College.

The “coziness of the media industry with elite politicians of both parties,” he adds, “has never been cozier.”

During the third Republican debate on Wednesday, candidates repeatedly lashed out at moderators from CNBC for questions they said were designed to promote a horse race among the contenders rather than a substantive discussion of the issues.

[Jefferson23]

4. Thanks for the kick and highlighted piece, KoKo.