Elite Media Dismiss Voter Suppression on Grounds That It’s ‘Complicated’
Most of the Super Tuesday coverage downplayed any suggestion that there might be voter suppression going on in 2020.
Julie Hollar
Do Media Really Care About Money in Politics?
Election Focus 2020: If media really cared, they would make some distinctions between the different kinds of money corrupting our elections, and their size and impact—context that’s been lacking in the “they all do it” coverage of the issue.
As Democrats Began to Vote, Pundits Hit the Panic Button
Election Focus 2020: The real Sanders attack machine isn’t the mythical machine run by Sanders to take down his opponents; it’s run by the establishment Democrats and their media counterparts to take down Sanders.
Debate Moderators Frame Questions to Define Acceptable Politics
Media debate hosts use their platform less to inform voters in an even-handed way than to define which positions—and candidates—are acceptable, and which are not.
Pundits Look to Bloomberg as Their Anti-Sanders Savior
Election Focus 2020: At the nation’s elite newspapers, it’s not hard to find pundits jumping on the Michael Bloomberg train as Joe Biden’s star plummets.
ABC Asking for Attacks Was a Lazy Way to Run a Debate
Election Focus 2020: The first half hour of the debate was almost entirely given over to non-policy sparring over electability (including the bogeyman of socialism) and experience.
Manufacturing Success: CNN’s Premature Parade for Buttigieg in Iowa
Election Focus 2020: Four days after the Iowa caucuses took place, no victor has been declared, and the vote remains mired in controversy and irregularities. But if you’ve been watching CNN for the last few days, you could be excused for imagining Pete Buttigieg had won.
Journalist/Politician/Corporate Coziness on Display at Snowflake Garden Brunch
Election Focus 2020: The Snowflake Garden Brunch opens a window onto the widespread nature of media/politician corruption.
NYT Tells Us Again—and Again—to Seek ‘Political Middle Ground’
So the paper recycled its poll to tell essentially the same story, about Democrats being too far left for the battleground states, in a different and more roundabout way, presenting it as if it were new.
Corporate Media Are the Real ‘Sanders Attack Machine’
Election Focus 2020: The real Sanders attack machine isn’t the mythical machine run by Sanders to take down his opponents; it’s run by the establishment Democrats and their media counterparts to take down Sanders.
Corporate Media Equate Sanders to Trump—Because for Them, Sanders Is the Bigger Threat
Election Focus 2020: If they were an absurd stretch in 2016, efforts to make a Sanders/Trump equivalence today are even more desperate and disingenuous.
The Big Loser in the Iowa Debate? CNN’s Reputation
Election Focus 2020: CNN’s blatant insertion of its own point of view into the presidential debate doesn’t reflect a mere personal dislike of Bernie Sanders, but rather a consistent ideological orientation.
Steady Hand Joe
Election Focus 2020: Despite Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s prominent role in leading the US into the disastrous Iraq War, and his recent stream of lies and equivocations about why he supported it and when he began to reverse his position, many pundits continue to uncritically paint Biden as “mature” or a “steady hand” on foreign policy.
Media Leave Yang Out of Candidate Conversations
Election Focus 2020: The whole point of the primaries is to let voters get to know the candidates and decide for themselves who is electable—the last thing people need is journalists narrowing the field for them.
PBS Decides What Debate Watchers Need Is More Talk From Pundits
Election Focus 2020: Debates are one of the few opportunities most voters outside of the early voting states have to hear directly from the candidates without being filtered by journalist spin. At least–they used to be.
For WaPo’s Centrist Sources, Progressive Politics Are ‘Purity Tests’
Election Focus 2020: The Washington Post rounds up a posse of centrist sources to accuse progressive candidates of imposing “purity tests,” and argue that a leftist turn by Democrats will hurt the party.
How Media Turn Support for Public Schools Into Opposition to Children of Color
Election Focus 2020: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic presidential candidates are rejecting the Obama administration’s embrace of charter schools, and media observers aren’t taking kindly to it.
We’re Still Waiting for ‘Early and Often’ Climate Debate Questions
Election Focus 2020: Across all the Democratic presidential debates thus far, questions on the climate crisis have accounted for only 7% of all questions, or 1 in every 14.
False Equivalence in the Age of Trump
Election Focus 2020: Even in the Trump era, corporate media, forever insistent on an “objective” approach that always hears out “both sides,” continue to exhibit a dangerous blindness to their own biases.
Sanders’ Plan to Fight Global Climate Disaster Too Ambitious, Says NYT
Election Focus 2020: It’s as if the New York Times can’t resist slipping in gratuitous digs at Bernie Sanders any chance it gets, even as the world burns.
