A companion piece to my recent post Beware the Emergency State.
Read on.
JANUARY 15, 2019
Mainstream Media Bias on 2020 Democratic Race Already in High Gear by Jeff Cohen
After having been a mainstream TV news pundit, I’m unfortunately addicted to cable news (mostly MSNBC and CNN) and all the blather and repetition – laughably overhyped as “breaking news.” Even when it’s the same news that’s been breaking . . . and breaking . . . for hours or days.
But I’m more bothered by the repetition of pundits and the narrowness of discussion, resulting in a number of unexamined clichés. Although the Democratic race for president has barely launched, mainstream media bias is already in orbit.
As everyone in politics knows – and mainstream pundits acknowledge – the Democratic Party is seriously divided in two. The conflict today may be as intense as during the 2016 primary battle:
* On one side is the party establishment, allied with corporate donors – preaching pragmatism, caution and incrementalism.
* On the other side is much of the party’s activist base, animated by issues and allied with elected officials like Bernie Sanders and a young crop of insurgent Congress members – calling for transformative change to protect the planet and people from corporatism and greed.
Strange thing: only the corporate Democratic side is regularly represented on MSNBC and CNN, and in mainstream media at large.
(Actually it’s not so strange, given the powerful economic forces that own and sponsor mainstream news: Comcast, Time Warner, Jeff Bezos, etc.)
The now daily MSNBC and CNN discussions of the Democratic 2020 race – which usually include mainstream print reporters and Democratic operatives singing the same tune – feature a chorus of corporate Democratic talking points (standards like “go moderate”), while the progressive wing of the party is often alluded to but rarely heard from.
—snip—
The absence of pundits firmly allied with the progressive wing of the party leads to un-rebutted establishment clichés, like: “Democrats who are too progressive can’t win the votes of moderate and swing voters.” This line persists despite Hillary Clinton, the candidate of supposed moderation and realism, having lost the White House to the most disliked candidate in the history of polling. And despite Clinton’s narrow losses in Michigan (by 11,000 votes), Wisconsin (23,000 votes) and Pennsylvania (44,000 votes) – with survey data indicating that the number of voters who supported the unabashedly progressive Sanders in primaries and then voted for Trump in the general was far larger than Clinton’s margin of defeat: 48,000 voters in Michigan, 51,000 in Wisconsin and 117,000 in Pennsylvania.
It’s not hard to find these swing voters. I coproduced a soon-to-be-released documentary, The Corporate Coup D’Etat, and our film team easily located and interviewed working-class people in Ohio who’d voted for Obama and Bernie . . . and then chose Trump over Hillary in November 2016.
—snip—
If genuinely progressive pundits were present in mainstream media, they’d argue that anti-corporate, populist candidates are often better positioned to win a large portion of swing voters. By definition, swing voters are not heavily political, partisan or ideological; they are assuredly not activists for feminism or Black Lives Matter. But in 2016, Bernie never shrank from his strong support of civil rights, abortion rights and gay rights (arguably stronger than Hillary on those issues), and he was capable of winning swing votes that Hillary could not.
Yet in major news outlets, the truism remains that “moderate Democrats” (meaning corporate-cozy, non-populists) have a better chance of winning in swing states or districts.
Let’s be clear: One reason mainstream journalists were so wrong about the 2016 election is because they are largely divorced from poor and working-class voters of all races. They seem especially clueless about “non-college-educated whites.” Which may explain their obsession with a group of swing voters they can better relate to: “moderate Republicans in the suburbs.”
—snip—
When it comes to assessing which Democrat is “electable” in a general election, the last group I’d rely on would be the current narrow array of mainstream pundits who dominate the TV networks. If they were reliable, we’d now be awaiting Hillary Clinton’s second State of the Union address.
Remember the runup to the “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq?
Same same here.
Bet on it.
Supersaturation media tactics.
It worked then.
It worked on Bernie Sanders.
It has…albeit slowly, like the death of a thousand cuts…worked on Donald Trump, who is still in power only because Fox News etc. has managed to put a band-aid on some of the cuts.
Will it work now?
I dunno.
There are no major media…again, reminiscent of the Iraq runup debacle and the blanket media dissing of Bernie Sanders…loudly pulling for the new progressive Dems.
Has social media become strong enough…and is it not itself being successfully “leaned” by corporate and foreign influences…to defeat the mainstream media this time?
I doubt it, myself.
But…stay tuned.
It’s a brave new world now.
Shakespeare in The Tempest…the isolated and innocent Miranda when she first sees people from somewhere else:
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!.
Stay tuned.
After many and various adventures, it worked out OK for Miranda, et al.
Let us pray it so for us as well.
Later…
AG