When one ponders the various biases of American cable news networks it is difficult to imagine progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) having any problem with far-left MSNBC.
It turns out, however, that Bernie and his campaign staffers aren’t feeling the love they want to feel from Maddow and Co.
The Daily Beast reports that Sanders and his people seem to be noticing for the first time just what the nature of cable news is:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and MSNBC have always had a complicated relationship. Sanders, a top-tier contender for the Democratic nomination, has long questioned the news media’s biases, while pundits have taken fresh shots at the Vermont senator this cycle. But officials in Sanders’ campaign contend that leading up to the 2020 election, the network is one of several cable news outlets directly contributing to a media climate where false claims go unchecked and requests for progressive voices on-air are frequently turned down.
“More often than not these commentators are injecting their opinion without any policy discussions,” Nina Turner, the national co-chair of Sanders’ campaign, told The Daily Beast. “They’re not there to tell the gospel truth.”
Ya think?
That, of course, has always been the case with all of the three cable news outlets. There are two components to the cable news model, neither of which have anything to do with deep exploration of policy.
The first component is having a friendly host interviewing a subject that he or she won’t challenge at all — as when anyone at MSNBC talks to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
The second — and most common — component is to pick a hot-button topic from the day’s news cycle and have anywhere from two to four (sometimes five at CNN) yell over each other about it.
Bias favoring Bernie in the past was so strong that it is entirely possible that he and his staff are genuinely surprised that cable news — especially the shrill group at MSNBC — can be rather awful to politicians for whom they no longer have use.
It seems that he and the gang have some hurt feelings after some comments made about him last Sunday:
The backlash from Sanders-world reached a new high on Sunday, when MSNBC analyst Mimi Rocah, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and occasional contributor to The Daily Beast, launched a personal critique of Sanders during a segment with host David Gura, saying that he makes her “skin crawl” and that he’s not a “pro-woman candidate.”
Sanders didn’t face this kind of harshness in 2016. Then he was the upstart palate-cleansing alternative to Hillary Clinton, aka the least likable candidate in modern presidential history. And, thanks to the DNC’s superdelegate rigging of the primaries, nobody viewed Bernie as a threat.
It’s all up for grabs this time around and Sanders has been polling in third place recently, as his progressive counterpart Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been getting stronger.
Bernie loses that diversity checklist battle every time.
The youth voters who never really show up on election day may still love Bernie’s “free stuff” platform but he’s now running against a host of others promising the same.
The mainstream media still feel cheated out of having our first female president. They’ll have to begin rallying around someone soon, and one more good debate from Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), or both might give Bernie even greater cause for resentment at how the formerly-friendly press is treating him.
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