-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Claims of biased media coverage on Bernie Sanders from his top campaign advisors
- Thread starter Troast
- Start date
Or perhaps what he said didn't accurately reflect the situation with regard to the conduct nor the hypothetical response.
Speaking of disingenuous. The point is that ERA loves to talk about how horribly compromised the media is on a fundamental level, but when Bernie does it people are suddenly willing to go to bat for them again
The usual suspects of course will either not respond to this or conveniently move the goalposts of course.
Lol the media is trying their absolute hardest to prove Bernie's point. Also kudos to Yglesias for not being shit for once
This is fucking stupid as fuck. If you know there's any degree of truth to it, why would you call them whiners?
instead of being inscrutable and confrontational you could have just told me what you meant. I don't really care anymore since it doesn't seem like you're interested in backing up your points with substance.
In my experience If you get an aggressively reductive take and disregard context and motivations you might get the answer you want but you're not really talking about issues productively anymore.
We don't need a study to see spin in front of our eyes. It turns out that in the social sciences the plural of anecdote actually is data.
The umpire is employed by the opposite team's owner. Also some umpires play for the other team. Others merely used to play for the other team. All the umpires are totally unbiased though.
Media can't be umpires when they're also players in the game.
We NEED corporate-owned media to protect us from radical socialist ideas like Medicare for all, ending private prisons, tuition-free college, etc etc. The center-left bourgeois pundit class knows what's best for us, that's why they tell it to us.
Only people who aren't worth arguing with.
People don't get to complain about the NRA's incestuous relationship with Fox News, big pharma's influence on every major network, or what have you only to turn around and say that those pointing out Bezos' influence on WaPo are being "conspiratorial", while ignoring heaps of clear evidence. They just don't. Selective brain activity isn't a thing you can fall back on in the realm of political discourse. They're simply showing their asses for what they really are: bad faith actors.
It's the same people everytime too, they'll sit in these threads all day picking fight and memeing. Then the threads end up being closed.
What clear evidence is there that Jeff Bezos directs the coverage at WaPo at all, nevermind negatively?
Ok, I'll go inform the media so they'll start acting like the umpires they're supposed to be. First stop: Chris Matthews. Second stop: Anderson Cooper. Third stop: Chuck Todd.
Like I just looked up washington post during the iraq war build up. Here's a piece telling everyone that the evidence is irrefutable
Here's one acknowledging reader's disdain for how many pro war op-eds WaPo has released before telling them to relax and love the bomb
My point is that just because they aren't full blown fox news doesn't mean they have our interests in mind.
Did you even read the tweet that started the analogy?
Because everyone's brains have rotted with the election of Trump and anything that "undermines" the institutions that are in place to criticize him is seen as a threat and highly discouragable, despite that those institutions constantly undermine themselves and have been somewhat rotten long before Trump's election.
The free press absolutely must exist and is an important institution, but I think a realignment of how the media functions is long overdue.
Every Bernie thread is such a sad read, some of you are so vindictive and now that's coming with complete bad faith arguing/purposeful ignorance. Shame
I agree with Bernie on most things, so when he lets me down it makes a strong impression. I expect this kind of behavior from the deplorables out there, not from him.
I'm sure that makes me look like I hate him from the outside, but he'll have my vote when he asks for it.
Heaps of evidence? What evidence? Some mean articles and opinion columns critical of Bernie? News flash, national newspapers have always run content critical of every high profile political candidate since the beginning of this country.
Where is this evidence that Martin Baron and Tracy Grant have thrown their integrity out the window? Grant has been at WaPo for 25 plus years, do you think she, as the head of the ethics and standards department at WaPo, would let her values fly out the window because Bezos gave the paper a landline? I've been reading WaPo long before 2013 when Bezos picked it up and the quality and slant of their stuff has remained the same.
It would be a huge story that would not stay contained if WaPo started explicitly running stories with a bias towards Amazon's pocketbooks. It would not stay a secret, it'd be blown wide open. WaPo's leadership are all incredibly devoted journalists who believe in the work that they're doing. They would not sit around to be corporate shills.
Last edited:
Making a claim of this caliber with zero actual evidence, as if a pulled headline quote from the NYTimes is enough to buttress Sanders's accusations of Bezos exerting editorial influence on the Washington Post, is what opens it up to accusations of conspiracy-mongering. So far there hasn't been any "clear evidence," that Bezos is colluding not only with WaPo's EIC but it's CEO to lie to the public about how much influence ownership has on the newsroom, just a lot of circular gesturing and unsupported mouth sounds about "patterns" when all the academically-researched patterns suggest Sanders is completely off-base. [1][2]
Bernie is not highlighting the issues with media coverage for any purpose than to accuse them of treating him unfairly.
We aren't defending the media. We are pointing out this is yet again a repeating conspiracy theory that Bernie is using to stole his supporters into believing and creating a narrative.
I don't even care.
Two editorials. Are you serious. Opinion pieces are not news reporting. Did you even read the second one
If your issue is that they had conseverative editors writing opinion pieces, well then, your issue is that you don't think credible newspapers should ever give a voice to conservative voices.
But in 2001 and 2002, conservative voices had not reached a point where they were just being thinly veiled fascists. It was a very popular political stance to be for the war, even among Democrats. What you're saying is that WaPo should have completely ignored the trends of the time and reject voices that spoke for millions and millions of people.
Yes, they ended up ultimately being wrong, but damn hindsight sure is a powerful thing and it's much easier to make those calls now then it was right after 9/11.
Did YOU read the article?
And there was a hell of a lot more than two editorials. Shit, the second one I linked was in response to all the people complaining about several op-eds.
And you know what. I DO think that a credible newspaper shouldn't publish conservative op-eds because they're consistently writing in bad faith. Here's a bad take from today
According to you, Washington Post shouldn't ignore the trends of the time and reject voices that speak for millions of people but that's exactly what they do to the left. The left is crucially underrepresented in WaPo despite being a large, up and coming movement which was primarily spearheaded by Bernie Sanders, who they seem to dislike.
The context is that political media has always been shit and Sanders has a right to criticize them. I don't care that he's doing a "conspiracy theory" around Bezos.
In other words, baseless accusations are cool as long as they're targeted at things you don't like.
The reason this is a headline today is 90% because this morning's headline was his quote about bezos and amazon.
I feel like there's been nothing but dishonesty in saying folks are blind to media bias or that we shouldn't be critical of both editorial and news coverage. That stuff is all fine! But a lot of things can be okay at the same time:
*It's okay to be critical of news coverage. Sometimes it's really bad!
*It's okay to question fairness, it's a sign of critical thinking!
*It's also okay to call out brainless demagoguery and conspiracy-mongering from a popular presidential hopeful, it's a sign of holding them up to the standard they claim to set for themselves!
It's kind of frustrating to see that last point in particular get trampled over by specious reasoning and irrelevant examples.
If it wasnt clear I agree with this.
People are being very transparent in this thread and it's a bad look.
so is the criticism that the revenue ad-focused infortainment cable news media sometimes generally really sucks or that it's just that they're negatively covering sanders? like i'm legit confused. would it suddenly be fine if they weren't negative and gave bernie heaps of attention??? idgi!
again, it seems to be the latter reflected by some in here, because if it were the former you should know that all candidates are affected by that sort of thing since the bill clinton days, and not just something that suddenly is reflected in bernie's coverage... or did you already forget about benghazi or those emails?
which is maybe the point most people are trying to make here. but i'm not sure if some don't get it... the world and wapo isn't out to personally get bernie, fyi. it's all in the game.
again, it seems to be the latter reflected by some in here, because if it were the former you should know that all candidates are affected by that sort of thing since the bill clinton days, and not just something that suddenly is reflected in bernie's coverage... or did you already forget about benghazi or those emails?
which is maybe the point most people are trying to make here. but i'm not sure if some don't get it... the world and wapo isn't out to personally get bernie, fyi. it's all in the game.
Last edited:
You mean the far left doesn't have representation in WaPo. Democrats and liberals are left leaning, and there's plenty of liberal voices at WaPo. As of 2019, the DSA has 56 thousand registered members.
If you think that entitles them a seat at WaPo's editorial board, then you are existing in an entirely different reality than myself.
And yes, I think today's conservative op-ed writers are pieces of shit and I do wish that WaPo would use more discretion in their hiring choices. But disagreeing with their picks on their conservative writers today is still a far cry from calling the entire newspaper garbage. Thiessen has no influence on how WaPo reports the news, him being there has zero impact on how well run the news reporting department of the paper is.
He called out a specific publication floating a conspiracy involving a specific person. That's a lot different than talking about media in broad generalities.
Retail campaigning is the hand shaking and individual kissing baby part as well as the touring. While I doubt Bernie didn't shake hands and kiss babies and while I agree that the media is complicit in creating horse races and drama out of nothing - that crowd image doesn't actually invalidate the tweet. I assume on the other hand that the NYT probably has loads of pics of the individual interactions it claims "almost" didn't occur.
I too like my info from a conspiracy theorist who believes Hillary ordered a hit on Epstein.
No you and others are ignoring that, when asked about the problem of incredibly wealthy people who own major media outlets having influence over narratives, he answered with a number of different wealthy owners running these institutions and how hes never been asked about how he plans to fix wealth inequality, etc. Instead you and others focus on the one ending line he said about WaPo and Bezos not writing very nice articles about him, a totally besides the point tongue and cheek comment to tie off what he was talking about. Watch the video, he specifically talks about the influence and biases of these outlets primarily before making one comment about himself.
How many people clearly didnt watch the speech in here but spewing this is hilarious and telling. Bezos and Wapo was like the third institution he mentioned in response to the question about billionaires owning news media.
We actually do have people in here saying this.
Yes. Exactly my point. Very good. I'm saying that I don't care because it's super fucking low stakes and Bezos shouldn't own a fucking newspaper anyway so w/e. The only problem I have with it is that it obscures the actual problem with political media but if he actually went in on that shit people would crucify him.
Damn dude that sucks. Maybe if you keep insisting that Sanders is a dangerous demagogue for implying that an extremely influential newspaper shouldn't be owned by a mega billioniare because it may lead to corporate bias, or maybe already has, then at some point I'm sure we'll start listening.
Ah gotcha no worries.
I'm not calling the entire paper garbage, only the op-eds and some of the political coverage. Which is most of it. However I do very much enjoy their investigative stuff.
You know as well I as I that the leftists make up a hell of a lot more than people than the DSA membership. Look at the explosion of interest around AOC. Look at the poll numbers when you combined Bernie and Warren together. Not all of those people are "leftists" but the majority is far to the left of "normal Liberal". WaPo should be giving the left an equal amount of time as conservatives. Especially since they're already left leaning.
Anyway I'm not replying to any more of you all unless you got something good to say because my posts are going to start looking like the dinosaur fish guy's.
Even worse, he spoke about it directly after talking about Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, trying to directly tie a line between the two.
This "oh I guess the media can't be criticized huh?" response is a complete strawman. No one has ever suggested the media can't be criticized. The issue is not that Bernie is criticizing the media. The issue is specifically that instead of arguing why particular coverage is wrong or misleading, he assigned a conspiratorial motivation to it all to poison the well and have people reject negative coverage out of hand. It's like responding to someone arguing against the moonlanding conspiracy with "oh so I guess NASA is perfect then, huh?"
Lol, if you're satisfied with such an awful perspective you stick with it I guess.
Lol, if you're satisfied with such an awful perspective you stick with it I guess.