Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: How the Media Is Ruining This Election

[Uncle Joe]

97. The Editorial Board knows who their owner is and which candidate said owner supports.

Perhaps you will be able to find an editorial board for any paper bucking their owner's choice of candidate but I doubt it and if you can there certainly won't be many.

The Tyndall Report which tracks hours given of news coverage to the various candidate would take issue with your belief that Bernie wasn't hidden.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders has made big gains in Iowa, leads most New Hampshire polls and fares better than Hillary Clinton in general election matchups against Donald Trump and other Republican White House hopefuls.

But the insurgent campaign that has drawn the biggest crowds on the presidential campaign trail has been all but ignored on the flagship television network newscasts, according to Tyndall Report, which tracks nightly news coverage by NBC, CBS and ABC.

“The corporately-owned media may not like Bernie’s anti-establishment views but for the sake of American democracy they must allow for a fair debate in this presidential campaign,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager. “Bernie must receive the same level of coverage on the nightly news as other leading candidates.”

ABC’s “World News Tonight” has devoted 81 minutes to Donald Trump’s campaign so far this year compared to a mere 20 seconds on Sanders through the end of November. NBC’s “Nightly News” afforded 2.9 minutes of coverage to Sanders since January. The “CBS Evening News” provided viewers 6.4 minutes of coverage on the Vermont senator.

“The network newscasts are wildly overplaying Trump, who regularly attracts between 20-30 percent of primary voter support, while at the same time wildly underplaying Sanders, who regularly attracts between 20-30 percent of primary voter support,” according to a report Friday by the journalism watchdog group Media Matters for America analyzing the Tyndall report data.

Media Matters called the lack of coverage of Sanders a “rather stunning revelation.”

Writing for The Washington Post, media analyst Callum Borchers also looked at network news coverage. “If you’re not winning, saying outrageous things, or embroiled in an email scandal, it can be difficult to garner the attention,” he wrote.


https://berniesanders.com/press-release/why-the-bernie-blackout-on-corporate-network-news/

Bernie appeared on Sunday morning talk shows but was kept invisible when it came to nightly network prime time news broadcasts.

This is the fundamental problem with the corporate media conglomerate televised news, they don't even pretend to perform a public service, on the surface the excuse they use is that "outrageous statements" is newsworthy and therefor deserves coverage, "it gets ratings"

That in it self is a tragic statement in regards to the direction our nation is heading, turning Presidential campaigns into an extended "reality T.V. program," but I don't believe that's ratings to be their true motivation.

The corporate media conglomerates have an inherent conflict of interest against Bernie's message; which threatens them on multiple levels and this is their true motivation behind blacking him out and when he surged regardless in Iowa and New Hampshire why they preemptively began promoting frames as to where and with whom he couldn't/wouldn't win, "Hillary's firewall" they wanted to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This was an extended first class propaganda program and it greatly succeeded, this is also why the corporate media conglomerates love to cover the "horse race" but not the actual critical issues of day, the former can be controlled or manipulated, the latter might come back to bite them.

Whether it's being the candidate most aggressively advocating the repeal of Citizens United, eliminating or curtailing super-pacs, raising taxes on the mega-wealthy, being the least likely candidate to wage war, taking on Big Pharma, the for profit "health" insurance industry, fossil fuel industry because of anthropological climate change, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, all of these and more proposals by Bernie create an adverse condition for the corporate media conglomerates, their parent ownership, well paid upper management and pundits along with their major commercial sponsors.

There is no doubt that Bernie's message of equalizing the playing field gets under their skin, too many times I have seen their pundits cut in, interrupt or misdirect Bernie's surrogates just as they were making critical points during their discussions.

Thanks for the discussion and peace to you.