The New York Times (3/1/19) depicts Bernie Sanders making decisions for his own presidential campaign as a “desire for control.”
While the New York Times has been sandbagging Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.–Vermont) for years (Rolling Stone, 3/15/16), last weekend’s headline: “Bernie Sanders Is Making Changes for 2020, but His Desire for Control Remains” (3/1/19) is a particularly overt example.
Unless one reads past the headline, which most Americans don’t, one is left wondering about what exactly Sanders desires to “control.” Is it the country? The media? When one actually digs into the Times’ article, written by Sydney Ember and Jonathan Martin, one quickly discovers that what Sanders desires to control is his own campaign, and that his oppressed victims were his highly paid media consultants, who quit because Sanders was “not willing to empower them.”
Left unreported by the Times were statements by the consultants themselves (CNBC, 2/26/19) claiming that they were leaving on a “very positive note” over “differences in a creative vision,” and that they would be happy to assist his campaign again in the future. In the Times version, instead, we’re given anonymous sources described as “Democrats directly familiar with the episode” who give the impression the consultants were “enraged” over their “humiliation.”
It is difficult to see what the problem is here. Are campaigns controlled by media consultants necessarily better than those controlled by the candidates themselves? Why should bending to “the wishes of his current advisers” be considered a good thing? The Times doesn’t explain, perhaps hoping readers will just take away the hint that Sanders’ “controlling” nature might itself be deemed disqualifying.
Funny–Wall Street does not seem to have any trouble distinguishing between Bernie Sanders and most of his 2020 competition (Politico, 1/28/19).
Another theme throughout the Times report is the implied notion that Sanders’ candidacy is redundant. When the corporate media aren’t busy undermining Sanders’ popular political agenda by claiming that it’s too “radical” and “expensive,” they also try to undermine his candidacy from the opposite angle, claiming that Sanders is now hard to distinguish from other candidates because numerous other Democratic candidates “support the same policies that made him unique in 2016.” The financial industry, though, doesn’t seem to have much difficulty distinguishing Sanders from most other Democratic candidates, as reported by Politico (1/28/19):
Wall Street executives who want Trump out list a consistent roster of appealing nominees that includes former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California. Others meriting mention: former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, though few really know his positions.
Bankers’ biggest fear: The nomination goes to an anti-Wall Street crusader like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Sanders. “It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders,” said the CEO of another giant bank. “It has to be someone centrist and someone who can win.”
Though some other Democratic contenders have endorsed some of Sanders’ proposals, such as Medicare for All, it’s not always clear what such endorsements mean. A report in The Hill (2/7/19) noted that while Booker and Warren are co-sponsors of Sanders’ Medicare for All bill, they are “also touting less drastic alternatives.” Harris as well said “she also supports smaller steps,” though Medicare for All is her “preference.”
While several candidates, including Sanders, have declared that they would not take corporate PAC money, most of these candidates are still heavily reliant on wealthy contributors: 62 percent of Gillibrand’s funding over a five-year period came in donations 0f $200 or more, as did 65 percent of Harris’s and 72 percent of Booker’s. In contrast, only 17 percent of Sanders’ campaign chest (and 30 percent of Warren’s) came from such large donations (Intercept, 4/27/18).
Perhaps we should worry less about Bernie Sanders’ “desire for control” over his own campaign, and worry more about corporate media’s desire for control over our political perceptions.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Oh NY Times, this could be fun. Here’s some new headlines for you now to show your snarky and undermining ways :
“Will the voters ever understand the needs of our 21st century military ?” ( Diss the voters right off!)
“DEMS are getting confusing now—what would Scalia do?” ( as if Mr Constitutionalist’s brain is set in stone—- with the answer!)
“Joe, ” is not just Biden his time!” ( who would , no doubt be run over and squashed in a Trump face-off)
“AOC–when will the DEMS look at experience?” ( oh the arrogance of fossils writing the news)
“Is it possible that women have ruined Congress?” ( NY Times couldn’t state that directly—-but implying works too)
‘Citizens United does Unite” ( of course it unites the people against this travesty like never before, but let’s just go with our positive.)
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REMEMBER NY TIMES ( to paraphrase Shakespeare in Hamlet .) NEVER a wallower nor a truth bender be! : )
So true!
Money owns the media… is it any wonder that the media speaks for money?
I don’t say this lightly, but Sydney Ember and Jonathan Martin (of the NYT) are both broadly stupid people.
Ember is new to ignorant Sanders invention, but Martin just spewed it back in 2016 and 2015.
Martin competed with Patrick Healy (now the NYT’s politics editor) for lying about Sanders.
So meet the new team, same as the old team, but this time the old team (“Hillary’s gonna win–we’re 84% sure”) has even less credibility than the low level it had in 2016.
I wish you were right that their credibility is low, but I know many democrats who look to the Times & PBS to grant legitimacy to candidates. I believe both played a crucial role in Trump’s win, especially the Times. Here we go again!
We have to stop watching it. I saw a distorted story about college tuition on Fox ( duh ) CNN told story more fully as did the NYT. But my local ( antenna ) NBC told the story just like FOX did ! Then I come to FAIR and see NYT on Bernie! ! I am so angry I feel I have to walk away for my own health ! I don’t have cable, only the internet. I get my info from many different sources. I said that once on RT and they took that comment down while leaving my others up! I think they all do it. Confirm everything. “They” are betting the bank, you won’t.
Well-written and informative article Joshua. Thank you. With the NYT’s dominating one end of the spectrum (broadly speaking), and FOX News the other… what does one need to worry about?
Thanks for the truth and support for Omar. She has to hang in there to at least encourage others to question Israel’s slow progress in their genocide of the Palestinians…just check out the maps of the area since 1948….it should be very frightening to Americans to learn about another dictator who is really managing to fulfill his and his party’s agenda….complete occupation of the land.
There is no mystery about Israel’s Zionist’s actions…..it is just so painful to have to learn how the USA continues to use our tax dollars to continue the domination. For me….not in my name
Honestly, we have to ask ourselves why NY Times is publishing click-bait, misinformation titles:
–> “Bernie Sanders Is Making Changes for 2020, but His Desire for Control Remains.”
Since the obvious clear title of the article would be “Sanders Asserts Control over 2020 Campaign Messaging,” we have to ask ourselves why NY Times chooses to describe Sanders as “desiring control.” Two obvious reasons come to mind: (1) portraying Sanders as having a controlling personality is good for clicks and (2) helps to damage Sanders campaign. It is actually pretty hard to do both of these in one short title, but NY Times seems to be putting all that titling experience to use here; you can actual see how tough it was to come up with title because of how multivalent — and obscure — the meaning is (and how easy my clear substitute is, took me all of 20 seconds to come up with it). Note, I’ve had numerous comments on titles of NY Times articles rejected yet almost all other (regarding content) accepted. The sacred cow at NY Times is to criticize their editorializing via the titles of articles — you comment on that, and you get on their hit list, because you’re pulling back the curtain and exposing the wizard.
. . . and there’s even a very liberal commenter on NY Times who started posting inside his comments when he submitted his comment so you can see how NY Times delays publishing of his comments far longer than other comments — so it gets less readership in the comment chain. So, you can see one of the main methods of media manipulation is to manipulate the timing of content appearance (to favor those whose positions congrues with editorial position of paper and delay publishing those that don’t) and also to frame using titles in hidden ways so readers don’t actually believe they’re being manipulated.
Excellent points. Long ago Jacques Lacan referred to this as “university discourse” — by which he meant erecting a “neutral” technocratic facade to depoliticize highly ideological maneuvers. And Slavoj Zizek has written about this (1990) in relation to Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of law: “The illegitimate violence by which law sustains itself must be concealed at any price, because this concealment is the positive condition of the functioning of law. Law functions only insofar as its subjects are fooled, insofar as they experience the authority of law as ‘authentic and eternal’ and do not realize ‘the truth about the usurpation’. That is why Kant is forced, in his Metaphysics of Morals, to forbid any question concerning the origins of legal power: it is by means of precisely such questioning that the stain of this illegitimate violence appears which always soils, like original sin, the purity of the reign of law.” And it isn’t just the NYT with its coverage of political figures that does this. I read a book called “How to Write About Music” and a pervasive sentiment was that music editors are completely helpless (and blameless) in the actions they take, and that everything is really up to the individual writers (to conform to editors’ wishes of course). Systematically exposing the systematic reproduction of hierarchies of power (through journalism) is what these FAIR articles should strive to do.