Why
Isn’t the Media Feeling the Bern?
Polls show that Bernie Sanders would trounce Donald
Trump, but you’d never know that from watching TV
news.
By Jim Hightower
January
02, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" -
Let’s
go to the scoreboard to see who’s winning the
exciting presidential election media coverage game.
The Tyndall Report,
a non-partisan media monitoring firm that has been
tracking the nightly news broadcasts of ABC, CBS,
and NBC, found that Trump is tromp, tromp, tromping
over the airtime of everyone else.
From last
January through November, these dominant flagship
news shows devoted 234 minutes of prime-time
coverage to the incessant chirping of the
yellow-crested birdbrain, with no other contender
getting even a fourth of that.
Take Bernie
Sanders, who’s stunning the political establishment
with a fiery populist campaign that’s drawing record
crowds. Indeed, Sanders’ upstart campaign is
commanding a
comparable share of support within the
Democratic Party’s voting base to what Trump is
enjoying from the Republican electorate.
And — get
this — polls also show Bernie
trouncing The Donald if they face each other in
November’s presidential showdown. So surely he’s
getting a proportional level of media coverage by
the networks on our public airwaves, right?
Ha, just
kidding! The big networks’ devotion of 234 minutes
to all-things-Trump was “balanced” by less than 10
minutes for Sanders. Most egregious was ABC, the
Disney-owned network. ABC’s World News Tonight
awarded 81 minutes of national showtime to Trump
last year — and for Bernie: 20 seconds.
How
self-serving of the media moguls. The one candidate
who is effectively rallying large numbers of voters
to oppose the rise of corporate oligarchy —
including in the media — has the plug pulled on him.
Of course,
this only amplifies the truth of what Sanders is
saying about the villainy of corporate profiteers,
and it fuels a greater determination by his millions
of grassroots supporters to end the reign of greed
in America.
OtherWords
columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator,
writer, and public speaker. He’s also the editor of
the populist newsletter, The
Hightower Lowdown, and a member of the Public
Citizen board. OtherWords.org |
