When the Washington Post‘s Paul Waldman (9/18/19) recently attempted to explain Elizabeth Warren’s rise in the Democratic primary polls, he attributed it in part to media:
Reporters on the campaign trail have said for some time that she is the one who generates the most enthusiastic response among voters on the ground. A rise in her poll standing inevitably produces stories about what she’s doing right, stories that get filled with the impressions those reporters have accumulated.
The resulting positive news coverage encourages more Democrats to feel favorably toward her, or at the very least give her a careful look. Which leads to poll numbers that continue to improve, which leads to more positive press coverage, and the cycle goes on.
It’s a logical path from enthusiastic crowds and rising poll numbers to news coverage about what a candidate is doing right. But it’s certainly not an inevitable one; media coverage is a product of editorial decisions, not laws of nature. And four years ago, when another Democratic primary candidate was drawing enthusiastic crowds and rising in the polls, it prompted a very different kind of coverage (e.g., FAIR.org, 7/1/15, 8/20/15, 8/21/15).
Why has Warren—who has positioned herself as Bernie Sanders’ closest ideological competitor, and a vocal crusader against corporate control over the political system—so far escaped the scathing and skeptical coverage Sanders has received? The answer has to do with both the differences in how the two candidates frame themselves, and the way major media cover elections.
Politico (6/19/19) reports that Warren’s “Democratic capitalist narrative” is “resonating with prominent moderate voices.”
As FAIR has shown over and over, corporate journalists’ rolodexes skew heavily toward establishment sources: party officials, strategists and operatives (Extra!, 7–8/14; FAIR.org, 6/1/17), and centrist and right-leaning think tank analysts (FAIR.org, 7/1/13).
Those sources are almost uniformly and vehemently anti-Sanders, and have been at least since his run against Hillary Clinton in the last election provoked their deepest antipathy (FAIR.org, 6/28/19, 8/15/19). But—no doubt in part because Sanders has helped shift the center of the party so much in recent years—many see Warren as a more acceptable alternative.
Even Third Way, the pro-corporate think tank that in 2013 warned in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/13) that Warren was leading Democrats “off a populist cliff,” has warmed up a bit to her (Politico, 6/19/19). Politico quoted an attendee at a Third Way conference—who says he likes Warren’s consumer protection policies and infrastructure plan—describing the shift: “People are taking a second look at her and saying, ‘Hmm. Some of her policies are good. Maybe she isn’t like Bernie.’”
“She isn’t like Bernie” seems to be the take thus far of much of the Democratic establishment, which, as the New York Times (8/26/19) reported recently, Warren has been working hard to convince she “is a team player who is seeking to lead the party—not stage a hostile takeover of it.”
The Washington Post (6/24/19) contrasts the “impassioned but reasonable” Warren with Sanders, “the ideological outlier in the race.”
By reassuring the kind of party insiders the media rely heavily on for framing their stories, Warren has largely avoided the kinds of aspersions—often anonymous—lobbed at Sanders. For instance, the Washington Post (6/24/19), under the headline “Sanders Faces a New Kind of Threat in Elizabeth Warren,” wrote that Sanders’ strategy of
doubling down on his ideological purity and socialist credentials carries risks for the senator from Vermont, other Democrats say. It’s enabled Warren to position herself as impassioned but reasonable, while Sanders holds down the leftward flank of the Democratic Party and serves as the ideological outlier in the race.
Later, in an article headlined “Bernie Sanders’ Supporters Find Anger Not as Compelling This Time Around,” the Post (8/30/19) wrote that Warren offered a new option for voters “who are turned off by his tenor.” After describing Warren and Sanders as “more similar than different when it comes to policy goals,” the Post explained that “where the candidates —Sanders a democratic socialist and Warren a proud capitalist—diverge is in the tenor of their campaigns.” To support this claim that “tenor” is the key difference between the “democratic socialist” and the “proud capitalist,” the paper turned to a Brookings Institution fellow who worked for Bill Clinton:
It’s not as though [Warren is] content to thunder against the evildoers like an Old Testament prophet. That’s much more his mode. Sanders sees [his campaign] as a revolutionary mass movement to upset the established order. While Senator Warren is obviously very dissatisfied with the status quo, she describes her campaign in very different terms, and terms that I think are less scary.
The question this raises, obviously, is who might be scared by those terms? Warren, who emphasizes that she is “a capitalist to my bones,” inspires less fear than Sanders, not just among the centrist party insiders who make up a large bulk of media sources, but also, no doubt, among the owners and sponsors of major news outlets.
Moreover, with Biden entering the race as the immediate frontrunner and Sanders as the clearest top rival, given his strong showing against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Warren has drawn less fire from competitors as well—which is beginning to change, as Politico (8/30/19) and the Post (9/18/19) have noted.
In opinion sections, Warren is accumulating a fan club among those meant to represent the left. (The right, unsurprisingly, is taking her as a serious threat—Vice, 9/12/19.) While it’s hard to find a columnist in a major newspaper who says positive things about Sanders, many have professed a fondness for Warren.
At the New York Times, the love has been particularly flowing. Nicholas Kristof calls her “serious” (6/26/19), Farhad Manjoo (6/6/19) finds her “impressive,” and Gail Collins (8/27/19), defending Warren against right-wing columnist Bret Stephens, pulled out the capitalist card: “Elizabeth Warren is a capitalist. She understands the economic system better than any other candidate.”
The LA Times‘ Virginia Heffernan (9/20/19) praises Warren for not “caterwauling about revolution” like Sanders.
For the LA Times‘ Virginia Heffernan (9/20/19), Warren offered a stark contrast to Sanders (and Biden):
At a time when Bernie Sanders is, with few details, caterwauling about revolution, and Joe Biden is turning to incoherent sentimentalism, [Warren’s] logic is a breath of fresh air.
Heffernan sees Sanders as antagonistic toward the middle class (“the bourgeoisie, the dread middle class to Democratic socialist Bernie”), whereas “Warren makes it clear she believes that what’s greatest about America is the bourgeoisie, and those striving to join it.”
And yet, many of Warren’s famous plans are still deeply worrying to journalists’ main sources (not to mention those news media owners and sponsors). So while Warren is often favorably contrasted to Sanders, she is at the same time the target of “gotcha” articles like the New York Times piece (9/9/19) attempting to paint her as hypocritical for swearing off “big-money” donations for her presidential primary run while still using leftover funds from her Senate race that had made no such vows.
“Admirers and activists praised her stand—but few noted the fact that she had built a financial cushion by pocketing big checks the years before,” the Times‘ Shane Goldmacher wrote. Who were Goldmacher’s sources for the premise of the piece? Not any Warren supporters he talked to, who seemed pleased that she had renounced such donations, but “some donors and, privately, opponents” who “are chafing at her campaign’s purity claims.”
Piling on, the Washington Post gave an op-ed column (9/11/19) to one Times source who seemed to take her new position particularly personally—former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who fundraised for Warren’s Senate race and then for Biden’s 2020 presidential bid, and pouted that where he once got a “glowing hand-written letter from her for my hard work,” he’s now being demonized:
It’s one thing to fashion a campaign that relies on grassroots fundraising, but it’s another to go out of your way to characterize as power-brokers and influence-peddlers the very people whose support you have previously courted.
The Washington Post (8/1/19) compares Warren’s support for Medicare for All to Prohibition and the Vietnam War.
Likewise, while the op-ed pages might make room for Warren praise, at some of the big papers the editorial board’s own stance is decidedly more antagonistic. After the CNN primary debate—in which Warren sharply defended her positions with the widely quoted line, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for”—the Post (8/1/19) pushed back against her “ideological grandiosity” under the snide headline, “Why Go to the Trouble of Running for President to Promote Ideas That Can’t Work?”
And, unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal editorial board (8/9/19) isn’t buying what Warren is selling: “She must have a strange definition of capitalism. Every policy she proposes would increase government control over the private economy.” (The New York Times editors have yet to weigh in directly on Warren.)
These kinds of takes heavily populate opinion pieces, news stories and debate questions that focus on the progressive policies Warren espouses, with an endless drumbeat of calls for “pragmatism” (FAIR.org, 8/21/19) and warnings against the “risk of political backlash” for moving too far to the left (FAIR.org, 7/2/19).
Moreover, Warren will unquestionably continue to face the same kinds of misogynistic coverage every prominent female politician has long faced about her looks (e.g., CBS This Morning, 7/31/19) and capability (Extra!, 3/01). “Is Elizabeth Warren a Serious Contender After All?” asked New York magazine (5/28/19). “Many Democrats Love Elizabeth Warren. They Also Worry About Her,” declared a front-page New York Times headline (8/15/19) over a lengthy article that, more than a year before the general election, highlighted “persistent questions and doubts” about whether Warren is electable, no matter her popularity.
But as long as Sanders is in the race, he will no doubt continue to draw the most intense fire. If Warren ever finds herself without media’s bête noire to draft off of—assuming her policy stances remain the same—the media headwinds can be expected to get much more intense for her.
Hedging bets in case Joe Dough goes belly up and Harris can’t handle the Obama drag act?
Warren is not only using leftover corporate money from her Senate race to help fund her primary campaign, she has said she will accept corporate donations in the general election if she wins the nomination:
https://twitter.com/TheYoungTurks/status/1100190585330323457?s=20
https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/elizabeth-warren-2020-big-donor-ban-bernie-sanders-corporate-money
This probably has a lot to do with the media’s newfound warmth towards her. Corporations don’t usually give money to a campaign if they’re not expecting favors or at least ready access in return.
Link to the CBS thing isn’t there, but anyway I’m not sure it would be misogyny regarding her looks. Deriding based on appearance is a bipartisan affair that applies to all genders. Orange, small hands Trump for example. George Bush the monkey. Chris Christie’s fatness. Or way back I remember Paul Simon being mocked and derided for his funny ears and bow-tie. Do women get it worse? Maybe, and maybe due to misogyny, but even if misogyny didn’t exist there’d be plenty of appearance-shaming/mocking.
Well, you’re right, though such attacks on a person are always an attempt to hijack the narrative.
Whenever Ive turned on CNN over the last five months, it’s another infomercial facading as news for Warren. It’s as if no one else is even running.
Warren has not only been using big donor money left over from her 2018 Senate race in the primary, she’s on record (in an interview with the Young Turks) as saying that if nominated she’d accept corporate contributions in the general election. And it was recently reported (on NBC News, of all places) that she’s been quietly courting Hillary Clinton’s support. It’s no wonder the media are suddenly infatuated with her.
What we need is Sanders AND Warren together.
The so called “liberal” media (CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Washington Post. NY Times, etc) hate Sanders as much as Trump.
Equating the two is their favorite pastime.
As FAIR articles go, I found this one very, very strange. Usually FAIR focuses on slants by highlighting factual inaccuracies. This article leaves a lot of inaccuracies unchallenged, such as the idea that Bernie Sanders’ plans are vague on details (quite the opposite) or that he is against the “bourgeoisie” / middle class, when in fact he rails against the “billionaire class.” Quite a different thing. Whether you like him or dislike him over at FAIR is irrelevant — that part should always be irrelevant at an organization such as yours. But please, at least, get the facts right. In one “article” you’ve destroyed for me a lot of the trust and credibility you’d built up over decades. Please do better.
I agree with you Barbara. I have been to many Bernie rallies and not once did I hear anything negative towards the middle class. Bernie is fighting FOR the middle class!! Corporate media is doing everything to get rid of Bernie because he represents a threat to their money gravy train!! They aren’t going to fight fair and they never have. People, all you have to do is follow the money. All the politicians fighting against Medicare for All are being bankrolled by, big surprise, BIG PHARMA! I can’t believe accepting lobbyist money is STILL LEGAL!! It is such an obvious conflict of interest!!
Even if we are to pretend that she is as progressive as Bernie and her plans are better, let’s just focus on the biggest threat facing the entire planet. The Climate Crisis. On this issue, the UN Secretary General recently said that there is only one presidential candidate whose GND meets the scientific imperative of cutting emissions by 45% by 2030, getting us carbon neutral by 2050, and acts globally by helping developing countries cut emissions. And that is Senator Bernie Sander’s GND. No other candidate comes close. Back in 2016 Bernie said the greatest threat to our nation was climate change (as did The Pentagon). You can see footage of Bernie decades ago speaking in classrooms and giving tv interviews where he discusses his concerns over the inactivity of warming temperatures, the fossil fuel industry, clean water, and factory farming. This is when Liz Warren was a republican. He hasn’t needed time to evolve and change his rhetoric, he has always been on the right side of this issue and many more while she was a Reagan Republican. She only put up a climate plan on her website 24 hours before the CNN climate town hall and she skipped the recent MSNBC climate forum hosted by Chris Hayes. Who cares what superdelegated endorsements by groups who don’t count their membership are given to Liz Warren. Who cares what the manipulated polling that depends more on landlines and older white people say. And why should we trust anyone the establishment and corporate media are backing- that should make us skeptical. They want a centrist who will capitulate to capitalism yet still speaks with elegant liberal language. They don’t want anyone who is really a threat to their power and privilege. But if you want to save the planet, and it sure sounds like the scientific community does and Green Peace and the EDF and Oceana and the rest of them, they all recognize that it’s either Bernie or extinction.
I can go on about her not co sponsoring his original (and several) wealth tax legislation before 2016 and he being the real champion of labor in the entire congress, and he being pro gay rights in the 70s and marching with MLK – when she was a republican and held opposite positions. Forget the selective and manipulated polling, the reckless and corrupt Corp media that has pushed every war in my lifetime and continues to manufacture consent, forget the rigged endorsements by party leaders — look at the candidates records!! Who is bought and flip flopped. And who has held a consistent set of principles and has established a consistent record of progressivism for decades. It’s Bernie! It’s only Bernie! No one can touch his record. This is what we actually need to base our voting on. Not whatever recent speeches these candidates give. And no matter what the issue is, breaking up the banks, ending regime change wars, education, immigration, the fight for 15, taxing the ruling class, Medicare for All, ending mass incarceration and for profit prisons, legalizing marijuana, student debt, affordable housing , etc etc, Bernie is stronger. This next election won’t be won by a centrist offering incrementalism. Or a fauxgressive. People want integrity and real solutions that are proportionate to our catastrophic problems. The next election won’t be won by white, liberal, professional and educated voters. It will be won by young people, the working class, and people of color. Bernie speaks their language best and always has. He has a record to prove it. And the overwhelming number of scientific experts tells us his plan effectively combats our climate crisis. No one else does. And it’s important to note that his 16 trillion dollar GND costs much less than it cost to bail out the reckless bankers who crashed our economy. And Bernie pays for it by cutting military spending, taxing billionaires and corporations, and cutting corporate subsidies. Of all the issues, and there are many that are crippling and killing the social mobility of millions of people, climate crisis is the most compelling. We can debate health insurance all day but if we don’t have clean air and water, if the oceans die and the bees go extinct, and we have massive migrations and food shortages, then we are done and nothing else matters. It’s Bernie or extinction. There is no other option. Register as a Democratic ASAP so you can vote for him in the Democratic Primary. Our very survival depends on it.
Bullshit.
Well, you are right. Such personal attacks are always meant to distract from the subject at hand, when a thorough examination of the subject would result in an undesirable outcome for the attacking party.