Easy Money: The Left Bites on the Wiki/DNC Scandal

[stopbush]

Whew! That was a close one!

After spending the better part of a year ginning up anticipation that one of Hillary's "many scandals" would finally bring her down, the media must be chortling with glee that finally, FINALLY they've been able to whip up a scandal that cost the Ds a pound of flesh, as DWS steps aside after a story that ran, for what, all of 24 hours?

Imagine the frustration felt by the media over the past year. Imagine all of the man hours wasted in putting together the set pieces that they anticipated running once Hillary finally came up a cropper for her many evils.

First, there was the threat of the Sanders campaign actually beating her in the primaries. When it became clear that wouldn't happen, the focus shifted to how unpopular Hillary was compared to her rival. Forget the fact that she was getting more votes than him, a lot more votes. But by March it was pretty clear things weren't going to work out there.

Benghazi! Surely there was something there. The Rs had kept it grinding for years, and - clutch my pearls! - they were going to announce their damning findings just as the primary season wound up, maybe sooner. We were assured by the pundits and the RWNM that this time, there was a "there" there, even though a plethora of earlier investigations exonerated Hillary. Well, didn't work out that way. More "Hillary's evil proven" stories shelved and who knows how many gofers laid off at the networks.

But not to fear, because EMAILGATE was up next!! Yes, this would be the one that did it! Hours were spent putting together the B Reel to accompany the news stories that recapped the decades, DECADES of evil practiced by Clinton Inc, from Whitewater to Travelgate to Emailgate. But then - horror of horrors - the FBI exonerated Hillary, again! Not only that, even though Director Comey went out of his way to unprofessionally characterize what Hillary DIDN'T do as being somehow suspicious, he showed up at the expected post-exoneration RW witch hunt to take away even the small smidgen of "Hillary evil" seed he had planted during his news conference.

Well, shit! All those great stories that never ran because there was no there there. Pretty slim pickins. But wait - there's always something: Trump will miraculously triumph at his convention, and he'll suddenly look all presidential. Oops, didn't happen. Wait again - word is Hillary is going to pick the BORING Tim Kaine as VP. Wow, what a safe and boring choice! That'll piss off the lefties who want Warren as the pick. And just wait until they roll out Kaine and he gives that boring acceptance speech that will prove our point...wait...oh, fuck! Not at all boring! In fact, quite brilliant.

Well, shit...again! We're out of ammunition...wait...what's that you say? People at the DNC used bad language talking about Sanders during the primaries? Do we have a couple of sources on that? Just one? Well, it is Hillary after all, who needs sources at all? Run it up the flagpole and let's see what happens. Hey, it worked! And we didn't even have to waste resources this time! No one is screaming louder than the lefties, even though there hasn't been enough time to thoroughly verify everything that's being alleged.

Amazing! Who says persistence doesn't pay off? Look, we know the right hates Hillary. The trick is getting the left to hate her as well.

[Seahawks]

1. Perspective please....

My first post here.

At the end of all this strife, let's remember, the other side is still nominating a racist who refers to Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers, along with a running mate who passed a law forcing women who have miscarriages to hold funerals for their dead fetuses.

Perspective, friends

[stopbush]

2. Welcome to DU.

[Rhiannon12866]

17. Thank you!

And welcome to DU! Go Seahawks!

[CentralMass]

3. Based on their reactions, the DNC and the party took a bite as well.

[Land Shark]

4. We could expect people should be mollified, if only Hillary hadn't hired her as Hom. Chair

If the reward for breaking rules was honor, people would be honored on DU for breaking rules, not banned.

[stopbush]

8. Well, DWS was the person who had to give the OK for Sanders to run in the

D primaries:

The DNC defines a presidential candidate as someone who "has accrued delegates in the nominating process and plans to seek the nomination, has established substantial support for his or her nomination as the Democratic candidate for the Office of the President of the United States, is a bona fide Democrat whose record of public service, accomplishment, public writings and/or public statements affirmatively demonstrates that he or she is faithful to the interests, welfare and success of the Democratic Party of the United States, and will participate in the Convention in good faith."

Some would say that the rules were bent in Sanders favor as he identified as an Independent and could not be called "a bona fide Democrat," especially if one considers his many, many PUBLIC statements in the past where he said unequivocally that he was not a Democrat.

Bending or breaking the rules is in the eyes of the beholder.

[Land Shark]

9. Anything goes then, hey? All in the eyes of the beholder?

[stopbush]

10. Perspective. The Wiki story is a minor bump in the road

compared to all the other things happening right now. As far as "scandals" go, it's not even much of a scandal.

[Land Shark]

25. Looks like your wishful thinking will not be borne out. More legs on this than a minor bump.

The Russians angle. Nobody has yet read all the emails. Etc.

[JRLeft]

5. This won't bring Hillary down calm down.

[Scuba]

6. Yeah, how dare those dirty hippies be pissed off at the DNC's bad behavior?!?!

[Thinkingabout]

7. Just another stone on the road, it does not dimish Hillary's abilities nor does

This change the results of the primaries. It is time to turn our backs and face forward towards the General election.

[Jim Lane]

11. Your hallucination of a media conspiracy is laughable.

The corporate media were all hoping for Sanders to beat Clinton, you say? Well, they sure as hell had an odd way of showing it. Sanders got almost no attention even when it became clear that, although still the underdog, he was doing much better than anyone had expected.

[bettyellen]

14. It was widely reported that he had much more time in the air waves

It's interesting how aggrieved people are when he was treated really really well.

[stopbush]

18. Exactly. Sanders got incredible coverage. More important, his coverage

was overwhelmingly positive while Hillary's was overwhelmingly negative.

Amazing how these memes seem to live on, despite all evidence to the contrary.

"The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic. For her part, Hillary Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her “bad news” outpaced her “good news,” usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase in her unfavorable poll ratings in 2015."

Here: http://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016-trump-clinton-sanders/

[BlueMTexpat]

19. +1! eom

[uponit7771]

20. +1

[Jim Lane]

21. That was one of the citations I found to prove MY point.

In a passage you choose not to boldface, the report stated, "Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months...."

The OP strongly insinuated that the corporate media wanted the democratic socialist to win. Aside from its facial implausibility, the claim is laughable because, in the critical early months, Sanders received very little coverage. The corporate media did not act the way they would have acted if the OP's hypothesis were true.

It's true that Clinton got negative coverage. One important reason is that there were developing stories about the Benghazi hearings and her email. The former shows that, even after umpteen investigations, the Republican noise machine has the power to generate headlines, which of course was their purpose in holding the latest hearings. As to the latter, she herself had admitted to having made mistakes. It wasn't just a made-up GOP scandal, as some Clinton supporters loudly proclaim. Unbiased media would not have simply ignored such stories. Reporting something that makes your candidate look bad doesn't show bias. Another factor was that Trump, who received outlandishly disproportionate coverage, was attacking Clinton more than he was attacking Sanders.

Let's look at the early coverage, bearing in mind how many Clinton supporters here were loudly proclaiming "IT'S OVER" after Super Tuesday in early March. Coverage thereafter was, on that common pro-Clinton viewpoint, irrelevant.

In this report from December 2015, which analyzed the ABC-CBS-NBC flagship newscasts, the emphasis was on the grotesque favoritism toward Trump, but buried further down was this nugget:

Democratic favorite Hillary Clinton is the second-most-covered candidate, at 113 minutes.

Two other things stand out: First, Vice President Joe Biden, who flirted with a run but ultimately stayed out of the Democratic race, got far more coverage (56 minutes) than Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont (10 minutes), who actually is running and polled well for much of the summer and fall.

Note that Clinton got more than ten times as much coverage as Sanders. One progressive who commented on this study gave the obvious explanation:

The networks are ignoring Bernie Sanders because his anti-corporate message is dangerous to their well being. The broadcast and cable networks both have a habit of ignoring stories that can hurt their bosses’ bottom lines.

Sen. Sanders is trying to inform the electorate, but the broadcast networks would rather focus on keeping voters ignorant by focusing on Trump. (Source: "ABC, CBS, And NBC News Made An Intentional Decision To Ignore Bernie Sanders")

One might hope for better from NPR. One would be wrong. A MoveOn petition, "Tell NPR to stop ignoring and minimizing Bernie Sanders", gives data (apparently through the end of 2015) showing much more coverage of Clinton. Furthermore, the mentions of Sanders were most often only in the context of his being Clinton's opponent:

Of NPR's recent coverage of Hillary, 80% of it excludes Bernie Sanders. Of NPR's coverage of Bernie Sanders, only 20% of it excludes Hillary Clinton.

The result is that tailored searches give these results:
Includes "Hillary Clinton", excludes "Bernie Sanders": 188.
Includes "Bernie Sanders", excludes "Hillary Clinton": 13.


One general summary from April 7:

Living and working here in Oakland, I get some gruff from Bernie Sanders folks about how the media ignores him. I don’t see it, but I don’t have cable TV, so there’s a lot I don’t see.

It turns out they do have a point. Click here for a neat website that tracks television airtime for all of the presidential candidates going back to last year.

Of course, Trump has gotten way more coverage than everybody else. But over the entire campaign, Clinton has gotten lots more media attention Sanders.

If you don’t want to click on the graphic, it shows Clinton with more than double the number of mentions as Sanders. Of course, some of those mentions pertain to her email scandal, corporate speeches and the Benghazi hearing.

(from "Bernie Sanders catching up to Hillary Clinton in TV exposure")

Incidentally, it's not as if Clinton was the only one getting negative coverage. FAIR noted one particularly egregious example, just before Super Tuesday: "Washington Post Ran 16 Negative Stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 Hours"

Finally, you quoted a Shorenstein Center study about 2015. The Center's follow-up study for the primary season (January through June, 2016) is very informative and detailed. One notable conclusion is that the supposed preponderance of negative coverage of Clinton wasn't all that great. Clinton's coverage was 47% favorable to 53% unfavorable, but Sanders was only 54% favorable to 46% unfavorable. Before you complain about even that difference, bear in mind the context here. We're assessing the OP's insinuation that the media were bent on favoring Sanders to defeat Clinton. If that had been the case, we would have expected to see a much greater gap. In fact, in the seven-week period after Super Tuesday, the balance shifted, with Clinton benefiting from a 51%-49% positive split while the Sanders coverage was negative by 46%-54%.

Let's also remember the question of the amount of the coverage, especially important to a candidate who, like Sanders, began with much lower name recognition:

Sanders in particular struggled to get the media’s attention. Over the course of the primary season, Sanders received only two-thirds of the coverage afforded Clinton. Sanders’ coverage trailed Clinton’s in every week of the primary season.

Here again, the facts don't fit the OP's hypothesis of a corporate conspiracy to help Sanders.

[Jim Lane]

22. I never saw any such thing reported. Might you provide links?

The analyses I linked in #21 show precisely the opposite.

I do know that Clinton acquired a reputation for avoiding open-ended situations such as press conferences. I would find it credible that Sanders had much more time on the Sunday panel interview shows because Clinton rejected many such invitations. With that possible exception, I haven't seen any basis for your assertion, and I'd certainly be interested, given that you state it was "widely reported".

[bettyellen]

23. I found it easily last time, so not going to fetch it for you, nope. Lol.

But if you're getting up, I'd love a sandwich.

[Jim Lane]

24. Oh, well, that settles it, then.

I'll certainly take the word of a pseudonymous internet poster over the several detailed and published analyses that I previously cited.

[Cha]

12. Now putin's in on it.. hacking is a crime and this needs to be investigated thoroughly..

Joy Reid is talking about it tomorrow.

Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump

The DNC said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_story.html

Thank you, stop

[Rex]

13. +1

[Cha]

15. I was just looking for this to post it to you on that

other thread!

Yeah, it's real alright.. nice hacking job, putin.

Thank Goodness the DNC starts tomorrow and all the positivity that will come out of that.

[Rex]

16. I am glad to see DU up on the news! We always seem to be ahead in information.

The DNC will bring hope to all the people Trump alienated, he is a moron that should go live with Snowden and Putin. Birds of a feather.

I am heading over to some friends house tomorrow to watch the convention, I cannot wait to hear the speakers. It will be nice to hear rational people talking about policy after 4 days of rhetoric and hyperbole from the RNC.

Trump needs to be investigated for conspiring with Russia, I bet he needs the money and took a lump of cash from Putin.