The approximate ratio of Donald Trump to Bernie Sanders corporate media think you need in your campaign coverage. (Trump photo: Gage Skidmore)
The two big surprises of the 2016 presidential race so far are Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Two dark horse candidates opposed by party insiders, each began a substantial surge in campaign polls around the beginning of July. In Real Clear Politics‘ average of polls, Sanders has gone from 12.7 percent to 25.0 percent since July 1, while Trump has gone from 6 percent to 22 percent.
Yet corporate media show a fascination with just one of these characters. Is it the self-described socialist senator from Vermont, who has focused his campaign on combating the US’s rising inequality? Or is it the billionaire real-estate developer who blames America’s economic troubles on foreigners and calls for massive deportations?
Unsurprisingly, corporate media are mainly interested in Cinderella stories when they don’t question the wealth of the class that owns and advertises in media outlets.
Stories mentioning Bernie Sanders as a percentage of those mentioning Donald Trump in selected news outlets (7/1/15-8/21/15)
We used the Nexis database to see how often various news outlets had mentioned Sanders and Trump since July 1. The biggest gap we found was in the medium that reaches the most voters: broadcast network TV. On average, ABC, CBS and NBC named Sanders in their news stories 17 percent as often as they named Trump—roughly one story that included the senator for every six with the developer.
Leading newspapers—the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, LA Times and USA Today—ran three times as many Trump stories as Sanders stories: Sanders was mentioned 34 percent as often as Trump in these papers. (The Journal‘s articles are available as abstracts, not full text, on Nexis.) The New York Times had the highest ratio of Sanders to Trump mentions, at 49 percent; the Journal had the lowest, with 22 percent.
All the cable news channels talked about Trump more often than Sanders—even MSNBC, which often caters to a progressive audience. MSNBC did come closest to parity of any outlet we looked at, however, with 67 percent as many Sanders as Trump stories. Fox News also had relatively frequent references to Sanders, 53 percent as many as its Trump references. CNN was the most Trump-heavy of the cable networks, mentioning Sanders only 33 percent as often. Overall, cable news referred to Sanders an average of 51 percent as often as Trump.
Public broadcasting didn’t pay more attention to Sanders than did for-profit cable. On NPR, Sanders came up 39 percent as often as Trump on NPR, and 56 percent as frequently on PBS NewsHour—averaging to 48 percent.
On average, the 13 outlets we surveyed had 36 percent as many references to Sanders as to Trump. While these candidates are backed by roughly as many voters in their own parties, among the general public Sanders is far more popular; in recent polls, 59 percent express a negative opinion of Trump, with about half as many liking him, whereas Sanders is one of the rare politicians who is viewed more often favorably than unfavorably. On the rare occasions when pollsters match up Republican hopefuls with anyone besides Clinton, Sanders trumps Trump.
So why should news outlets think voters need to hear about Trump about three times as often as they hear about Sanders?
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Research assistance: Michael Tkaczevski
This is the kind of story I like to see on FAIR.
This is the kind of thing that we need to understand
how it affects our country’s politics and think about in
order to change.
Bernie wants public financing of elections, and I agree
with him. It’s not an ideal solution, but there is nothing
else that will work.
The same with his redistribution of wealth scenarios
due to the huge expanding and self-reiniforcing power
that money and existing power have in our society.
We must act and act decisively to keep ourselves from
becoming like Russia of China, and oligarchy, or return
us back to the democratic republic we were from whatever
we are today.
Trump has already shown that he does not have the
temperament or ability to be President. He can rabble
rouse and behave like a self-proclaimed tyrant, but
this guy should not and will not become President
unless the country has truly gone crazy.
I confess to agreeing with Trump on the immigration
issue, and the talk or repealing the birthright to
citizenship – I think it is wrong and senseless – but
I would never consider voting for Trump, or not voting
for Bernie for opposing a change in the laws on
immigration, where I think he is wrong.
The major problem in the US is as Bernie Sanders
tells it every day, income inequality and the fact that
average Americans are not being represented in their
government at all … how American is that.
Somehow I don’t think billionaire Donald Trump is
going to really represent the common man as he
says he will, this is basically another trickle-down
ploy.
For the media, this 18 month freak show means big profits. Just as Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore openly celebrated the arrival of Trump and the rest of the ego-infused contestants in the Republican circus as the certain promise of months of absurd racist, sexist and nativist hogwash served up for the crypto-fascist requirements of the reactionary primary and straw vote season. Every night one hears jokes that simply write themselves.
Whatever one might think of Bernie’s politics, they ain’t funny, scandalous or absurd. He’s not trying to explain a career of dubious achievement and frequent screw-ups as is Hillary. He’s trying to address issues in a serious manner. And where the hell are the ratings in that?
It’s a stretch to say that MSNBC caters to a progressive audience.
@Brux:
Have you looked into Sanders on immigration? The type favored by the Koch brothers?
I know you were striving for clarity in describing proportions, but I’m a bit confused. I think that may stem partly from your mixing percentages and proportions. Maybe.
Let me take a shot at this. “Sanders was mentioned 34 percent as often as Trump in these papers.” Does this mean, for every 100 Trump mentions, Sanders got 34? Your photo-graphic seems to indicate it: three pics of Trump, one of Sanders.
If true, I think it would have been clearer to say, “Out of all mentions of Trump and Sanders in these papers, three out of four went to Trump.” Or, “…75 percent went to Trump. Only 25 percent were about Sanders.” Or, out of every hundred mentions, 75 were about Trump and only 25 about Sanders.
The same problem — expressing proportions and percentages — continues throughout the piece. I know you were trying to stick with a consistent frame of reference but, as noted, the frame itself may have been less than helpful.
“The New York Times had the highest ratio of Sanders to Trump mentions, at 49 percent…” Why not just say the Times had twice as many mentions of Trump, compared with Sanders? That’s assuming I’m interpreting the numbers correctly — not a given.
Broadcast media? “On average, the 13 outlets we surveyed had 36 percent as many references to Sanders as to Trump.” That seems pretty close to the overall study outcome: about three out of four for Trump. If true, you could have just said so.
Again, perhaps I am simply (or not so simply) getting your numerical frame of reference wrong.
Further: given the margin of error in opinion polls, instead of saying Trump scored about 59 percent negative, why not just round it off to 60 percent? You essentially did so anyway by saying that only about half as many people liked Trump, when the actual ‘like’ percentage was somewhat higher in the poll you linked to.
My point is not to nitpick, but to ask you to do a truly difficult thing: communicate proportions a little less wonkily. It would help lay readers like me. You can always link to sources (as you did) for those inclined to dive deeper.
I tremendously appreciate the work that went into figuring out all this stuff about media mentions, and in fact all the work FAIR does. I rely on it, week-in, week-out. For many of us out there, you’re a treasured resource.
Thanks for listening.
As you say it is no surprise that the media will not mention Bernie nearly as much as Trump. Trump is one of them, a multi-Millionaire/Billionaire sociopath with delusions of grandeur, and the last thing the Media or the people in charge of the elections want is any real populist messages being presented to the people as viable options.
The only reason they mention Bernie (or Hillary) is if they don’t then it will obvious to most casual of observers they are not doing their jobs and can be called to account for that. The facts of the matter are, if the Media Moguls had their way they would tell the American people to “Eff off, this ( E.g. T-Rump) is going to be your president” and then run commercials 24/7 for their choice, until we got it into our heads who they want and we have to vote for.
TASS must weep in envy over the direction the U.S. Medias have taken. In it’s heyday TASS couldn’t match the total, absolute propaganda spewed by the U.S. Media, nor it’s ability to turn anything remote disliked by them, on it’s head and not show the slightest bit of shame or remorse for being thugs.
This is what comes of allowing Sociopaths into leadership positions, Corporate Officer’s positions and board room memberships. The political process of American is once again broke and the supposed Corporate Media’s ‘Pedigreed Poodles’ guarding the process are really little more than simple “Junk yard curs” guarding the trash.
As you say, no surprise there.
I watched CNN Saturday morning. They had a headline about how Trump and Sanders were drawing the biggest crowds, but then the political pundits spoke only about Trump. Nowhere in the discussion was any factual information about Trump’s background nor how he was going to accomplish anything he claims–particularly since his assertions are without Constitutional authority.
If you wonder why Trump has so many supporters, it’s because they’re all in Fantasyland. Meanwhile, Bernie supporters know exactly where he stands and how he will accomplish his aims.
The fact that media mentions Trump more than Sanders is not because there is a conspiracy against Sanders to promote Trump. Media mentions Trump more because he is a clown.
If anything, Trump did way more for progressives in this election than Sanders. Sanders just spews safe populist tripe while hiding his staunch pro-Israeli position. Trump basically said: “I buy politicians”
I think a lot of the reason for the disparity of coverage is as you suggest — socialism is something of which we do not speak. It took a long time for the media even to acknowledge that the Sanders campaign existed, and it must kill them to have to recognize that apparently a whole lot of Americans want to hear him & support him.
But in fairness, Trump does represent a more compelling news story. At its most superficial, here is a great blundering oaf, a walking embarrassment, who is making the entire cohort of Republican hopefuls (the largest set of prospective candidates in living memory) look irrelevant. That is bizarre, and therefore newsworthy.
Looking a little more deeply, Trump — with his bluster, his empty phraseologizing, his racist policies, his big sweeping simple-mindedness, and his personalism — is a kind of Mussolini-lite. The fact that he has attracted such fervent minority support is a very worrying sign for American democracy, and in that sense could be seen as more significant than the Sanders campaign. The further fact that half of the other Republican hopefuls find it expedient to hop on his extremist bandwagon — on birthright citizenship, for instance — suggest that too-clever-by-half politicians could end up helping the man into power, just as they did with his forerunners in the 20th century.
Why would we need to see more about Trump? Is the media now about my needs? Is the media in a fetal position over the Hillary implosion? Am I to be subjected to more mass hysteria over the democrats losing the presidency? Obviously yes. Bernie the commie can’t be elected president. Deal with it.
What did Bernie do like for a real job before being a politician? Anybody?WTF does Bernie know about anything? Maybe he knows that there’s a lot of money out there and he knows how to spend it to do good. Yeah. Do good. Huh huh
Lots of folks believe that NPR has the best, fairest news coverage available, but not so much anymore.
Trump fascinates the newsmedia but not the investigative newsmedia. Where are the stories of the bankruptcies, the Mob connections, the immigrants he hired, the workers he stiffed by not paying, etc? Where are the stories about the actual issues?
What saddens me about the lack of support by the Democratic Party for Sanders, is the Democratic-Party crowning of Hillary, in spite of what the people want. Howard Dean was running a good campaign and doing well, when he excitedly yelled about taking other states, etc. By cutting out the background noise, his yelling sounded unbalanced and crazy. Did this get explained to the general public? Did the Dems stand up for Howard? No! He was thrown to the wolves. The Democratic leadership is interested in winning, in controlling and interested in not offending any corporate contributors. Now they are behind Hillary who called anyone ignorant that didn’t believe in the safety of GMOs…say what? The Clinton foundation took large amounts of money from countries that she negotiated with while Secretary of State and she has millions in her election coffers. She told Stevens to go to Ben Benshazi, even though he reportedly reported trouble brewing there and there was no real protection. Ben Ghazi Port was shipping our US arms to Syria and it was a hotbed. It was reportedly known ten days prror to the embassy attack that the attack was planned and the embassy asked for help. This is treason comparable to the USS Liberty?! What would Sanders have done?
Sanders is taking no money from corporations and relies on itty bitty donations from people like me. Oh, the sweet freedom of telling it like it is because you don’t depend on money from the big boys and girls, and you aren’t beholden to your party. Go, Bernie, Go!
NBC made no passing mention whatsoever of Bernie Sanders or his candidacy on Meet The Press on the Sunday show following his announcement that week.
The major media have failed to demand that Citizens United be overturned. This is because they receive ads from oil companies. Therefore, any presidential candidate for office who doesn’t get campaign contributions from oil companies is not likely to get much coverage from the media.