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Washington Post Ran 16 Negative Stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 Hours

moral_victory

moral_victory

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Jan 21, 2014
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In what has to be some kind of record, the Washington Post ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours, between roughly 10:20 PM EST Sunday, March 6, to 3:54 PM EST Monday, March 7—a window that includes the crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, and the next morning’s spin:

  • March 6, 10:20 PM: Bernie Sanders Pledges the US Won’t Be No. 1 in Incarceration. He’ll Need to Release Lots of Criminals
  • March 7, 12:39 AM: Clinton Is Running for President. Sanders Is Doing Something Else
  • March 7, 4:04 AM: This Is Huge: Trump, Sanders Both Using Same Catchphrase
  • March 7, 4:49 AM: Mental Health Patients to Bernie Sanders: Don’t Compare Us to the GOP Candidates
  • March 7, 6:00 AM: ‘Excuse Me, I’m Talking’: Bernie Sanders Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Repeatedly
  • March 7, 9:24 AM: Bernie Sanders’s Two Big Lies About the Global Economy
  • March 7, 8:25 AM: Five Reasons Bernie Sanders Lost Last Night’s Democratic Debate
  • March 7, 8:44 AM: An Awkward Reality for Bernie Sanders: A Strategy Focused on Whiter States
  • March 7, 8:44 AM: Bernie Sanders Says White People Don’t Know What It’s Like to Live in a ‘Ghetto.’ About That…
  • March 7, 11:49 AM: The NRA Just Praised Bernie Sanders — and Did Him No Favors in Doing So
  • March 7, 12:55 PM: Even Bernie Sanders Can Beat Donald Trump
  • March 7, 1:08 PM: What Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Get About Arguing With Hillary Clinton
  • March 7, 1:44 PM: Why Obama Says Bank Reform Is a Success but Bernie Sanders Says It’s a Failure
  • March 7, 2:16 PM: Here’s Something Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders Have in Common: And the Piece of the Argument That Bernie Doesn’t Get Quite Right.
  • March 7, 3:31 PM: ‘Excuse Me!’: Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know How to Talk About Black People
  • March 7, 3:54 PM: And the Most Partisan Senator of 2015 Is … Bernie Sanders!
All of these posts paint his candidacy in a negative light, mainly by advancing the narrative that he’s a clueless white man incapable of winning over people of color or speaking to women. Even the one article about Sanders beating Trump implies this is somehow a surprise—despite the fact that Sanders consistently out-polls Hillary Clinton against the New York businessman.

There were two posts in this time frame that one could consider neutral: “These Academics Say Bernie Sanders’ College Plan Will Be a Boon for African-American Students, Will It?” and “Democratic Debate: Clinton, Sanders Spar Over Fracking, Gun Control, Trade and Jobs.” None could be read as positive.

While the headlines don’t necessarily reflect all the nuances of the text, as I’ve noted before, only 40 percent of the public reads past the headlines, so how a story is labeled is just as important, if not more so, than the substance of the story itself.

The Washington Post was sold in 2013 to libertarian Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is worth approximately $49.8 billion.

Despite being ideologically opposed to the Democratic Party (at least in principle), Bezos has enjoyed friendly ties with both the Obama administration and the CIA. As Michael Oman-Reagan notes, Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department the last year Clinton ran it. Amazon also has over $600 million in contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization Sanders said he wanted to abolish in 1974, and still says he “had a lot of problems with.” FAIR has previously criticized the Washington Post for failing to disclose, when reporting on tech giant Uber, that Bezos also owns more than $1 billion in Uber stock.

The Washington Post’s editorial stance has been staunchly anti-Sanders, though the paper contends that its editorial board is entirely independent of both Bezos and the paper’s news reporting.
 
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A. Negative stories about Sanders just kind of write themselves.

B. Imagine that, a business and a politician benefiting politically from a business deal involving a government agency and said business.
 
The press is just now starting to give Bernie a good hard going over and they are finding a lot of his proposals and numbers just don't add up. Bernie's people call this negative, of course, but the rest of the world calls it basic political reporting.
 
"billionaire libertarian Jeff Bezo's"

what? liberals think this guy is a libertarian? ha ha ha
 
moral_victory said:
In what has to be some kind of record, the Washington Post ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours, between roughly 10:20 PM EST Sunday, March 6, to 3:54 PM EST Monday, March 7—a window that includes the crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, and the next morning’s spin:

  • March 6, 10:20 PM: Bernie Sanders Pledges the US Won’t Be No. 1 in Incarceration. He’ll Need to Release Lots of Criminals
  • March 7, 12:39 AM: Clinton Is Running for President. Sanders Is Doing Something Else
  • March 7, 4:04 AM: This Is Huge: Trump, Sanders Both Using Same Catchphrase
  • March 7, 4:49 AM: Mental Health Patients to Bernie Sanders: Don’t Compare Us to the GOP Candidates
  • March 7, 6:00 AM: ‘Excuse Me, I’m Talking’: Bernie Sanders Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Repeatedly
  • March 7, 9:24 AM: Bernie Sanders’s Two Big Lies About the Global Economy
  • March 7, 8:25 AM: Five Reasons Bernie Sanders Lost Last Night’s Democratic Debate
  • March 7, 8:44 AM: An Awkward Reality for Bernie Sanders: A Strategy Focused on Whiter States
  • March 7, 8:44 AM: Bernie Sanders Says White People Don’t Know What It’s Like to Live in a ‘Ghetto.’ About That…
  • March 7, 11:49 AM: The NRA Just Praised Bernie Sanders — and Did Him No Favors in Doing So
  • March 7, 12:55 PM: Even Bernie Sanders Can Beat Donald Trump
  • March 7, 1:08 PM: What Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Get About Arguing With Hillary Clinton
  • March 7, 1:44 PM: Why Obama Says Bank Reform Is a Success but Bernie Sanders Says It’s a Failure
  • March 7, 2:16 PM: Here’s Something Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders Have in Common: And the Piece of the Argument That Bernie Doesn’t Get Quite Right.
  • March 7, 3:31 PM: ‘Excuse Me!’: Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know How to Talk About Black People
  • March 7, 3:54 PM: And the Most Partisan Senator of 2015 Is … Bernie Sanders!
All of these posts paint his candidacy in a negative light, mainly by advancing the narrative that he’s a clueless white man incapable of winning over people of color or speaking to women. Even the one article about Sanders beating Trump implies this is somehow a surprise—despite the fact that Sanders consistently out-polls Hillary Clinton against the New York businessman.

There were two posts in this time frame that one could consider neutral: “These Academics Say Bernie Sanders’ College Plan Will Be a Boon for African-American Students, Will It?” and “Democratic Debate: Clinton, Sanders Spar Over Fracking, Gun Control, Trade and Jobs.” None could be read as positive.

While the headlines don’t necessarily reflect all the nuances of the text, as I’ve noted before, only 40 percent of the public reads past the headlines, so how a story is labeled is just as important, if not more so, than the substance of the story itself.

The Washington Post was sold in 2013 to libertarian Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is worth approximately $49.8 billion.

Despite being ideologically opposed to the Democratic Party (at least in principle), Bezos has enjoyed friendly ties with both the Obama administration and the CIA. As Michael Oman-Reagan notes, Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department the last year Clinton ran it. Amazon also has over $600 million in contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization Sanders said he wanted to abolish in 1974, and still says he “had a lot of problems with.” FAIR has previously criticized the Washington Post for failing to disclose, when reporting on tech giant Uber, that Bezos also owns more than $1 billion in Uber stock.

The Washington Post’s editorial stance has been staunchly anti-Sanders, though the paper contends that its editorial board is entirely independent of both Bezos and the paper’s news reporting.
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I just came here to post about this. Thanks for saving me the trouble.

As much as I benefit from Amazon and enjoy Jeff Bezos's space adventures, the direction the Post has taken since he assumed control is disturbing.

WaPo has long been more of a mainstream paper of record than the lefty bogeyman the right propagandizes it to be. So it's no surprise that it leans toward Hillary in the Dem race. What is a surprise is how ham-fisted it has become. They aren't just casting Hillary in a favorable light. No, they are distorting Bernie's positions.

You can see this with the NY Times, too, but not yet in such a heavy-handed manner.

This is a trend I have pointed out before. It's not merely that the corporatocracy is taking over our "press" but that they seem to feel so sure of their control that they aren't even being subtle about it any more.
 
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soybean said:
The press is just now starting to give Bernie a good hard going over and they are finding a lot of his proposals and numbers just don't add up. Bernie's people call this negative, of course, but the rest of the world calls it basic political reporting.
Click to expand...

Let's say that what you wrote is true...does it concern you at all then that Sanders has been a tier 1 candidate for the office of POTUS for what, 8-10 months now, and at least a dozen states have already held their primaries/caucuses and the press is just now beginning to nose around some to figure this guy out? LOL.
 
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soybean said:
The press is just now starting to give Bernie a good hard going over and they are finding a lot of his proposals and numbers just don't add up. Bernie's people call this negative, of course, but the rest of the world calls it basic political reporting.
Click to expand...
You need to read more closely.

They aren't "finding" that his proposals don't add up. They are saying that his proposals don't add up. But it turns out that they are not supporting that with serious analysis. They are supporting it with opinion pieces and blogs, not real data.

There's a difference.
 
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The OP should check out CNN. They have a daily barrage against Trump. Mostly opinion pieces. It is what it is.
 
unIowa said:
I hope the democrat followers start to wake up and realize how "in the bag" our MSM is for the establishment powerbrokers of both political parties.
Click to expand...

Always love thoughts like this. Like a bunch of publishers are sitting in a smoke filled room talking about who to prop up and who is gonna tell the staff what to do.
 
ANYCHawk said:
Always love thoughts like this. Like a bunch of publishers are sitting in a smoke filled room talking about who to prop up and who is gonna tell the staff what to do.
Click to expand...

You can't smoke in work places anymore so no I don't think that however I do think orders come down from the top on how to write about each candidate. We have long known that the press and our political leaders are all too comfortable with one another.
 
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iammrhawkeyes said:
The OP should check out CNN. They have a daily barrage against Trump. Mostly opinion pieces. It is what it is.
Click to expand...

I know it. A couple days back I posted the number of of times each candidate was listed on the front page of a site. Another poster mentioned that all of the Trump articles were probably negative. I went back and confirmed. The negative rate was probably somewhere between 80-90 percent.
 
Old_wrestling_fan said:
Let's say that what you wrote is true...does it concern you at all then that Sanders has been a tier 1 candidate for the office of POTUS for what, 8-10 months now, and at least a dozen states have already held their primaries/caucuses and the press is just now beginning to nose around some to figure this guy out? LOL.
Click to expand...
The Clinton campaign was worried that any Bernie successes after the NH primary could tarnish her image so they decided to go dirty. That signaled the MSM that they could do the same.

Bernie turned in unexpectedly good showings in Iowa - which just a few weeks earlier was still supposed to be a cake walk for Hillary but turned out to be a dead heat - and New Hampshire - where Bernie was expected to win, but not by that much.

It's easy to imagine some in the Hillary camp - including herself - panicking with flashbacks to the 2008 race.

The problem with the Sanders campaign wasn't "figuring it out." He has been very clear about what he wants to do and more up front than any other candidate about how he hopes to get there. Everything he has proposed is being done by other nations with less money than the US has to work with. If you think they are pie in the sky and can't be afforded, someone has conned you.

So how do you drag down a guy who is talking sense? You lie.

It's that simple.

Look, I understand that some people don't like his policies. That's fair. But this sort of death by 1 dirty cut per hour is not the honest way to decide which policies America should pursue.
 
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What Would Jesus Do? said:
You need to read more closely.

They aren't "finding" that his proposals don't add up. They are saying that his proposals don't add up. But it turns out that they are not supporting that with serious analysis. They are supporting it with opinion pieces and blogs, not real data.

There's a difference.
Click to expand...

I agree with your analysis here WWJD. Just curious...have you ever noticed the same techniques applied to any other stories or topics of discussions? :D
 
The Tradition said:
Editorial boards clearly try to prop-up candidates. It's called an "endorsement."
Click to expand...
And if WaPo had endorsed Hillary and were using honest articles to distinguish their policies and show hers to be better, that would be fine. Disappointing, but fine. But they haven't done either of those.

If this were a sporting event we'd say that the player named WaPo was talking trash. We might like it or hate it, but we'd know what we were seeing.

This sort of sleazy behavior by a respected paper of record is not just improper, but also degrades the brand.
 
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What Would Jesus Do? said:
And if WaPo had endorsed Hillary and were using honest articles to distinguish their policies and show hers to be better, that would be fine. Disappointing, but fine. But they haven't done either of those.

If this were a sporting event we'd say that the player named WaPo was talking trash. We might like it or hate it, but we'd know what we were seeing.

This sort of sleazy behavior by a respected paper of record is not just improper, but also degrades the brand.
Click to expand...

Look, everyone is in a race to the gutter. Call it, "The Trump Effect".
 
Old_wrestling_fan said:
I agree with your analysis here WWJD. Just curious...have you ever noticed the same techniques applied to any other stories or topics of discussions? :D
Click to expand...
Not so much the Post in particular, but I see a similar posture toward Trump. More mockery than analysis - while giving other candidates a free pass, even when their positions aren't all that different or are occasionally worse.

In the past WaPo has been basically pro-administration. It's what papers do if they want to be considered a newspaper of record. They always present the administration position, and tend to defer to it's representatives. Unless the administration screws up enough to give them something juicy, that is. That routine deference can be seen in the well-documented (and mind-boggling) 100:1 ratio of support for entering the Iraq war vs arguments against that war.

So, again, it's no surprise that WaPo would lean toward centrist neocon Hillary. It's more how they are doing it than that they are doing it.
 
The Tradition said:
Look, everyone is in a race to the gutter. Call it, "The Trump Effect".
Click to expand...
Actually, no. Not everyone. Bernie, Kasich and Jill Stein aren't playing that game.

Most of the major media, though.

This is a big part of the reason I think we need a national conversation about just what this "press" industry is or ought to be if it is going to be the only industry in America singled out for protection in our constitution (unless you call religion an industry, in which case it's 1 of 2, and we ought to be talking about both).
 
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hawkeye54545 said:
The newspaper industry is a far cry from what it used to be. In that respect it's much like TV news.
Click to expand...
It kind of has to be. TV news had to go with a whole bunch of fluff just to fill airtime. Now with the internet, articles have to do the same. Turnover is just minutes now. If you're only updating you're site once a day, you're probably not doing too well.
 
unIowa said:
You can't smoke in work places anymore so no I don't think that however I do think orders come down from the top on how to write about each candidate. We have long known that the press and our political leaders are all too comfortable with one another.
Click to expand...

So naive. Oh someone must be pulling the strings!
 
Old_wrestling_fan said:
Let's say that what you wrote is true...does it concern you at all then that Sanders has been a tier 1 candidate for the office of POTUS for what, 8-10 months now, and at least a dozen states have already held their primaries/caucuses and the press is just now beginning to nose around some to figure this guy out? LOL.
Click to expand...

Yes, it does concern me. Even Trump, Rubio and Cruz have been getting the microscope treatment lately...its Bernie that can't take the heat.
 
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