Instead of covering the primary election returns, CNN went with a 2,000-year-old story.
Over the past week, Bernie Sanders racked up six wins out of seven primary contests, winning 92 delegates more than his rival Hillary Clinton to chip into her pledged delegate lead. While not an existential shift in the race, the momentum has changed in Sanders’ favor, especially since he won the last three primaries—Hawaii, Washington state and Alaska—with between 70 and 82 percent of the vote.
You, however, would hardly have noticed had you been watching cable news the night of the Saturday primaries. Both MSNBC and CNN forwent live election coverage on arguably Sanders’ biggest night of the year, instead deciding to air a normally scheduled prison reality show and a “documentary” on Jesus. As The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel noted Saturday night:
Sanders wins big tonight, on calendar organized by DNC (natch, a weekend) & CNN has Jesus doc & MSNBC doing Lockdown/Up? Take back airwaves!
— Katrina vandenHeuvel (@KatrinaNation) March 27, 2016
The networks cared so little for Saturday’s primary results that the Hawaii results, which in fairness came in around 2:30 am, were totaled by online volunteers and revealed to the public using a Google Doc.
The race is far from over, yet most of the major cable networks have all but moved on. Clinton’s lead, while considerable, is far from insurmountable. Indeed, the netting of 66 delegates Saturday night pulls Sanders to within 268 pledged delegates of the former secretary of State—with 2,073 delegates yet to be awarded.
The Republican primary race, which Trump has led with little or no suspense, has received A-list treatment throughout the race, despite having far less drama than the Clinton/Sanders battle. This is consistent with a New York Times study that showed the Republicans receiving three times as much coverage as the Democratic primary—most of which was handed, entirely for free, to the showy frontrunner, Donald Trump.
The Democratic party has 57 primary contests, 22 of which haven’t chimed in this election. There is no law of reporting that gives more weight to ones that come early, other than the horserace drama networks seek. If cable networks are going to follow the early contests like Woodstock, they could at least give some token coverage to Sanders’ recent string of victories.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
The New York Times website couldn’t take the news about those victories down fast enough. They were up for, what, twelve hours? Compare that to the charts showing the outcomes of previous caucuses and primaries, which seemed to stay at the top of the page for days. Right now the only article about Sanders on the front page is titled “Covering Bernie Sanders, as He Keeps His Spirited Campaign Alive”, which alone firmly pushes the “quixotic campaign” meme.
What Sanders’ surge? Hillary wasn’t even involved. In Washington caucuses, Sanders got a total of 19,000 votes. He didn’t win by 19,000 votes, he got a total of 19,000 votes. Surge? Are you joking, in a State with nearly 7,000,000 people? Less people voted in the Washington caucuses, than in the Alaska vote. Some surge. No wonder Sanders also, wasn’t even there. I thought that it was just right-wing, (i.e. 95% of it) media that falsified and exaggerated Sanders’ vote, FAIR is apparently equally deceptive. When Hillary won 5 States, including Illinois, did she “surge.” Hardly. Right wing news, and Fair, were equally silent. What the hell are you doing?
As Republicans own/fund all of mainstream media, they being among the richest of the rich, does this article serve any kind of useful purpose?
And ABC blocked out 5 hours of prime time on Dismal Friday, what the Christians refer to as Good Friday, the day their savior was savagely murdered as a blood sacrifice the innocent for the guilt-worthy, extending right through the 10 central local news time slot, to show the incredibly hilarious farce film, Exodus, with Charleton Heston.
@johncpol:
Individuals’ vote counts aren’t usually recorded in caucuses.
The WA delegates aren’t entirely assigned yet. But most will go to Sanders.
Oh, and Hillary leads Sanders by more like 230 delegates, not 268.
So try not selling the fake narrative.
Hillary lost big in the last 7 days.
Of course they covered Jesus instead of Bernie when he was winning. The neocons controlling the coverage probably checked out his political positions, discovered that he wanted to share the bread and wine more equally AND did not sell out to Wall street for 30 silver coins. Of course they were so overwhelmed by emotions of Jesus that they simply had to watch a movie of Jesus and so they did not remember Bernie. But hey! Both Jesus and Bernie will forgive their sins, because they do not know or do not want to see that they work for the “opposite forces”.
I wonder if this has to do with his message to AIPAC. Isn’t he looking to be more evenhanded between Israel and the Palestinians? They will now try to do to Bernie what they did to Ron Paul -ignore him to death.
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