In a campaign event in New Hampshire (8/12/19), Bernie Sanders told the crowd:
We have pointed out over and over again that Amazon made $10 billion in profits last year. You know how much they paid in taxes? You got it, zero! Any wonder why the Washington Post is not one of my great supporters?
The next day, he returned to the same point:
And then I wonder why the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why.
The Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, immediately retorted (CNN, 8/12/19) that Sanders was spouting a “conspiracy theory,” insisting that “Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest.”
Many others in corporate media were incensed as well. NPR’s All Things Considered (8/13/19) accused Sanders of “echoing the president’s language,” and CNN (8/13/19) said he was using Trump’s “playbook”; CNN’s Poppy Harlow warned ominously, “This seems like a dangerous line, continuous accusations against the media with no basis in fact or evidence provided.”
FAIR is happy to provide the evidence CNN and the Post complain is lacking.
We could start with the 16 negative stories the Post ran in 16 hours (FAIR.org, 3/8/16), and follow that up with the four different Sanders-bashing pieces the paper put out in seven hours based on a single think tank study (FAIR.org, 5/11/16).
Or you could take the many occasions on which the Post’s factchecking team performed impressive contortions to interpret Sanders’ fact-based statements as meriting multiple “Pinocchios” (e.g., FAIR.org, 1/25/17, 3/20/17). For example, the Post “factchecked” Sanders’ claim that the world’s six wealthiest people are worth as much as half the global population (FAIR.org, 10/3/17). It just so happens that one of those six multi-billionaires is Bezos, which would make an ethical journalist extra careful not to show favoritism.
Instead, after acknowledging that Sanders was, in fact, correct, the paper’s Nicole Lewis awarded him “three Pinocchios”—a rating that indicates “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions”—because, the paper explained, “It’s hard to make heads or tails of what wealth actually means, with respect to people’s daily lives around the globe.”
Post factcheckers returned to defend their owner against the charge that he is extremely wealthy after Sanders pointed out (6/27/19) that “three people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America.” “The numbers add up,” the Post fact squad (6/28/19) acknowledged, but it’s “apples to oranges” :
People in the bottom half have essentially no wealth, as debts cancel out whatever assets they might have. So the comparison is not especially meaningful.
The Post editorial page makes no secret of its anti-Sanders position (FAIR.org, 1/28/16, 5/11/16), nor do some of its prominent opinion columnists, like Dana Milbank (FAIR.org, 2/11/16) and Fareed Zakaria (FAIR.org, 9/6/16).
But even in the occasional straight news reporting that manages to acknowledge Sanders’ success, the paper’s reporters still slip in digs at the candidate, such as a news report by Karen Tumulty claiming that Sanders’ strong Iowa caucus showing in 2016 indicated that voters were “looking for qualities beyond experience and electability.” (With eight years as Burlington mayor, 16 years in the House and a Senate tenure that began in 2007, Sanders has more political experience than most presidential candidates, whether in 2016 or 2020, and electability, rather obviously, ought to be determined by voters, not journalists—FAIR.org, 2/2/16.)
And sometimes the digs are clearly deliberate, as when a Post political correspondent essentially admitted to trolling the Sanders camp by intentionally choosing a “provocative” headline—“Bernie Sanders Keeps Saying His Average Donation Is $27, but His Own Numbers Contradict That”—over a piece that revealed the scandalous deception that the actual number was $27.89 (FAIR.org, 4/24/16).
There’s an underlying dismissal of San-ders as a serious candidate in stories saying Sanders’ large campaign crowds “don’t matter much” (FAIR.org, 8/20/15), or accusing him of lacking political “realism” (FAIR.org, 1/30/16). And there’s a clear antipathy at the paper to many of Sanders’ signature policy plans, like Medicare for All (FAIR.org, 3/20/19, 6/25/19).
As Hill TV (and former MSNBC) journalist Krystal Ball (8/14/19) trenchantly responded to the media pushback against Sanders’ critique, reporters know which stories will endanger their access to the establishment sources so valued by their employer, and which will earn them praise and access. Those inclined to pursue those establishment-friendly stories rise up in the ranks, while most of those with more critical perspectives eventually move on. So, no, they don’t need Bezos to tell them what to do—their worldview is neatly aligned with his already. ■
