CNN shows Trump’s empty podium. (screen grab: Laila Al-Arian)
The March 15 primary elections handed five victories to Hillary Clinton, giving the former secretary of State a 1,094-to-774 pledged delegate lead, by the New York Times‘ count, heading into the second half of the primary season.
Bernie Sanders, while well behind, is still a viable candidate and is very much staying in the race. One wouldn’t know this, however, from watching last night’s cable news coverage, because the three major 24-hour news networks—CNN, MSNBC and Fox News—cut away from Sanders’ speech. As the Huffington Post reported late Tuesday night:
Fox News, CNN and MSNBC all declined to carry Sanders’ speech, instead offering punditry about the evening, with the chyrons promising, “AWAITING TRUMP” and “STANDING BY FOR TRUMP.”
Hillary Clinton last week got similarly dissed by the networks in favor of Trump.
The New York Times (3/15/16) charted which candidates got the most media attention.
This pecking order follows a similar pattern: The media prioritizes Trump, then Clinton, and, if there’s time left over, Sanders. This tracks with a recent study by the New York Times showing the overwhelming amount of “free media” that Trump has gotten compared to the two Democratic candidates, particularly Sanders. (All Republican candidates combined got almost three times as much free media as the Democratic candidates—$3 billion vs. $1.1 billion.)
Sanders’ major sin appears to have been choosing to discuss policy rather than dishing out the typical hoorah platitudes. His hour-long speech which, according to Talking Points Memo, wasn’t carried even in part, focused on issues like campaign finance reform and the barriers to mass political change. You can watch the whole thing here, courtesy of C-SPAN.
NPR, in its recap of Tuesday night’s events, provided some insight as to why Sanders’ speech didn’t merit airplay. After airing soundbites from Clinton and Rubio, the public radio service explained that Sanders “delivered what was largely his standard stump speech for nearly an hour in Arizona on Tuesday night, but made little reference to the night’s results.”
In ignoring the process story of “the night’s results” and instead focusing on substance (what NPR dismisses as a “standard stump speech”), Sanders all but assured that the networks would cover more urgent matters, like b-roll of an empty podium waiting for Trump and idle speculation as to how the results would “play” over the next few days.
Critiques of corporate media choosing horserace over substance are evergreen, but remain as urgent as ever. Political discourse that focuses on the meta, discussing perceptions or gaffes or polls rather than material issues, will inherently serve the Donald Trumps of the world. His latest “outrage” is specifically calibrated to exploit these news instincts. The corporate media didn’t create Trump, but they did pave and light the road for his candidacy’s unconstrained acceleration.
The Sanders campaign has been as much an indictment of the media as of the political establishment they prop up. Progressive media, including FAIR, have noted from the beginning the lack of coverage Sanders was afforded—an omission that’s demonstrable and quantifiable. The reasons for the scarcity and negative tone of Sanders’ media coverage are debatable, but Tuesday night showed once again that their existence isn’t.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
“The corporate media didn’t create Trump,…”
That is the ONLY inaccurate phrase in the post. Trump is a corporate media creation going way to the 1980s, at least.
Here is a blast from the past: http://www.nytimes.com/1983/08/07/business/the-empire-and-ego-of-donald-trump.html?pagewanted=all
Note the breathless and awed tone of the article, the genuflection before the business titan that has long since been standard fare in corporate media. Trump’s real-estate mogul/tv reality-show star/Presidential candidate is very much a media creation. Remember, this schlub was so famous he could take out an advertisement in a major New York newspaper (the New York Post, if I recall) that called for the death penalty for teenagers found guilty of the crime of rape due to police and judicial misconduct and thus served full sentences, and only much later found to have all been completely innocent.
Why would anyone care what some racist blowhard had to say unless he was a media created celebrity will millions of dollars to burn?
How does Chris Hayes look at himself in the mirror, these days? When I stopped watching MSNBC a couple of years ago, he was the only on-screen person for whom I had any hope. Now, he seems just another part of the machine, convivially pumping out the Good News–as determined by Comcast, his altruistic and public-spirited owner.
I hope he makes a ton of money.
My family and I will NEVER GIVE ANOTHER PENNY TO CORPORATE OWNED AND BIASED NPR, NATIONAL PROPAGANDA RADIO.
Where’s the “Liberal Media” that all these fossils are frothing about?