Article on Sanders' Complaints About Journalism Shows Why Sanders Complains
About Journalism
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/article_on_sanders_complaints_about_jour
nalism_20160521/
Posted on May 21, 2016
By Jim Naureckas / FAIR
Tony Webster / CC-BY-2.0
This piece first appeared at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
If the New York Times really were what the New York Times pretends to be,
when it or its industry was criticized, it would bend over backwards to make
sure it was being fair to the critics. That's the true test of
"objectivity," isn't it-how you act when it's your own ox being gored?
Instead, the Times typically reacts to criticism the way a cat typically
reacts to being given a bath.
Take, for example, a piece in the New York Times (2/23/16) that addresses
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' criticism of corporate media-or "the
'corporate media,' as he refers to it," as the Times' Jason Horowitz refers
to it.
The first thing the Times wants you to know about Sanders' media criticism
is that it's wrong: "As News Media Changes, Bernie Sanders' Critique Remains
Constant," is the headline. Horowitz's piece elaborates on this theme of
Sanders' failure to appreciate the brave new media world:
Despite the advent of the Internet, the diminishing of traditional news
media companies and the emergence of new media Goliaths like Facebook that
have helped fuel his rise, Mr. Sanders remains orthodox in his mass media
doctrine..
As Mr. Sanders sees it, the profit-hungry billionaire owners of news media
companies serve up lowest-common-denominator coverage, purposefully avoid
the income-inequality issues he prioritizes and mute alternative voices as
they take over more and more outlets.
Is that wrong? For example, aren't news media owners mostly billionaires
with a keen interest in profit? The largest stockholder of the New York
Times is Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who's a billionaire 77 times
over; he didn't get to be the second-richest person in the world without a
healthy appetite for return on investment.
Horowitz attempts to set Sanders straight by asserting that
there has been a proliferation of new media offering alternative voices, and
traditional news sources have shrunk in an Internet age of diminishing
advertising revenue.
Here's a chart of the top 10 online news sources, courtesy of Pew Research
Center.
Source: Pew
One thing you should notice is that most of them are traditional news
sources, now dominating online news. Of the ones that aren't, Yahoo is
partnered with ABC News (which is why they share a slot on the chart);
Huffington Post is owned by AOL, which in turn is owned by Verizon; and
Buzzfeed sold a $200 million equity stake to NBCUniversal, which is to say
Comcast. When people think of "alternative voices," they're not generally
thinking of giant cable and telecom companies. (Where's Facebook? Facebook
and other social media are not content producers; they direct content
generated elsewhere, and if those were largely "alternative voices," they'd
be showing up on this chart.)
Far from shrinking the reach of traditional media, the internet has allowed
them to reach vast new audiences. The Times is getting 57 million unique
visitors a month-compare that to its peak daily print circulation of 1.2
million. So maybe warnings about the power of corporate media aren't so out
of date after all?
And does corporate media, as Sanders says, avoid issues of income
inequality? FAIR has studied this repeatedly, and while a content analysis
can't discern whether it's on purpose or not, corporate media outlets do
show a persistent lack of interest in inequality and poverty. One FAIR study
(Extra!, 9-10/07) found that over a 38-month period, the three major nightly
newscasts did fewer stories on poverty than on Michael Jackson's legal
travails (58 vs. 69). Another study (Extra!, 5/12) found a short, sharp
increase in interest in inequality in 2011, coinciding with Occupy Wall
Street, that quickly subsided to the prior level of neglect. According to
our analysis of 2012 campaign coverage (Extra!, 9/12), "just 17 of the
10,489 campaign stories studied (0.2 percent) addressed poverty in a
substantive way." Our most recent study of the issue (Extra!, 6/14) noted
that four times as many network news stories mentioned billionaires (of whom
there were 482 in the US at the time) as addressed the 50 million Americans
living in poverty.
But the real point of the Times article is to respond to Sanders' complaints
about his own coverage, and his relationship with the journalists who follow
his campaign-his "antagonism" toward the press, which goes beyond "the
standard posture for politicians" and is actually "a pillar of his
anti-establishment, socialist worldview."
So what are his anti-establishment, socialist complaints?
In December, his campaign demanded that the "corporate network news" grant
him as much coverage as it does Mrs. Clinton (the "Bernie blackout," they
called it).
Sanders was referring to the study by the Tyndall Report (cited in
Washington Post, 12/7/15), the standard resource on how much time the
networks spend covering what. Tyndall found that in the first 11 months of
2015, Sanders had gotten roughly one-twentieth the coverage of Donald Trump,
one-tenth the coverage of Hillary Clinton and one-fifth the campaign
coverage of Joe Biden, who wasn't even running. (FAIR noted this phenomenon
as well-and documented it in print publications like the Times as well as on
TV.)
But rather than mentioning the rather persuasive data that Sanders was
pointing at, Horowitz ran a dismissive quote from Sanders' primary
opposition:
The Clinton campaign, however, argues that Mr. Sanders has benefited from
the superficial horse-race journalism he scorns, and that coverage has
largely focused on his avuncular style and cross-generational appeal rather
than thorough inspections of his proposals or record.
It's not clear where Clinton's spokesperson saw evidence of this focus on
Sanders' avuncular appeal. Was it the New York Times news story (5/31/15)
that reported that Sanders' platform "may eventually persuade Democrats that
he is unelectable in a general election"? Or the one (1/31/16) that lumped
Sanders in with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz as "candidates on the ideological
fringes" and "idol-smashing outsiders." Or maybe it was the news article
(2/15/16) that quoted economists associated with the Democratic
establishment-misidentified as "liberal-leaning economists who share his
goals"-comparing Sanders' agenda to "magic flying puppies with winning Lotto
tickets tied to their collars."
Here's a thought: Maybe Sanders' media critique remains constant because
media like the New York Times constantly need criticism?
________________________________________
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at
@JNaureckas.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Article on Sanders' Complaints About Journalism Shows Why Sanders Complains
About Journalism
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/article_on_sanders_complaints_about_jour
nalism_20160521/
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Posted on May 21, 2016
By Jim Naureckas / FAIR
Tony Webster / CC-BY-2.0
This piece first appeared at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
If the New York Times really were what the New York Times pretends to be,
when it or its industry was criticized, it would bend over backwards to make
sure it was being fair to the critics. That's the true test of
"objectivity," isn't it-how you act when it's your own ox being gored?
Instead, the Times typically reacts to criticism the way a cat typically
reacts to being given a bath.
Take, for example, a piece in the New York Times (2/23/16) that addresses
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' criticism of corporate media-or "the
'corporate media,' as he refers to it," as the Times' Jason Horowitz refers
to it.
The first thing the Times wants you to know about Sanders' media criticism
is that it's wrong: "As News Media Changes, Bernie Sanders' Critique Remains
Constant," is the headline. Horowitz's piece elaborates on this theme of
Sanders' failure to appreciate the brave new media world:
Despite the advent of the Internet, the diminishing of traditional news
media companies and the emergence of new media Goliaths like Facebook that
have helped fuel his rise, Mr. Sanders remains orthodox in his mass media
doctrine..
As Mr. Sanders sees it, the profit-hungry billionaire owners of news media
companies serve up lowest-common-denominator coverage, purposefully avoid
the income-inequality issues he prioritizes and mute alternative voices as
they take over more and more outlets.
Is that wrong? For example, aren't news media owners mostly billionaires
with a keen interest in profit? The largest stockholder of the New York
Times is Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who's a billionaire 77 times
over; he didn't get to be the second-richest person in the world without a
healthy appetite for return on investment.
Horowitz attempts to set Sanders straight by asserting that
there has been a proliferation of new media offering alternative voices, and
traditional news sources have shrunk in an Internet age of diminishing
advertising revenue.
Here's a chart of the top 10 online news sources, courtesy of Pew Research
Center.
http://www.fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/TopNewsWebsites.png
http://www.fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/TopNewsWebsites.png
Source: Pew
One thing you should notice is that most of them are traditional news
sources, now dominating online news. Of the ones that aren't, Yahoo is
partnered with ABC News (which is why they share a slot on the chart);
Huffington Post is owned by AOL, which in turn is owned by Verizon; and
Buzzfeed sold a $200 million equity stake to NBCUniversal, which is to say
Comcast. When people think of "alternative voices," they're not generally
thinking of giant cable and telecom companies. (Where's Facebook? Facebook
and other social media are not content producers; they direct content
generated elsewhere, and if those were largely "alternative voices," they'd
be showing up on this chart.)
Far from shrinking the reach of traditional media, the internet has allowed
them to reach vast new audiences. The Times is getting 57 million unique
visitors a month-compare that to its peak daily print circulation of 1.2
million. So maybe warnings about the power of corporate media aren't so out
of date after all?
And does corporate media, as Sanders says, avoid issues of income
inequality? FAIR has studied this repeatedly, and while a content analysis
can't discern whether it's on purpose or not, corporate media outlets do
show a persistent lack of interest in inequality and poverty. One FAIR study
(Extra!, 9-10/07) found that over a 38-month period, the three major nightly
newscasts did fewer stories on poverty than on Michael Jackson's legal
travails (58 vs. 69). Another study (Extra!, 5/12) found a short, sharp
increase in interest in inequality in 2011, coinciding with Occupy Wall
Street, that quickly subsided to the prior level of neglect. According to
our analysis of 2012 campaign coverage (Extra!, 9/12), "just 17 of the
10,489 campaign stories studied (0.2 percent) addressed poverty in a
substantive way." Our most recent study of the issue (Extra!, 6/14) noted
that four times as many network news stories mentioned billionaires (of whom
there were 482 in the US at the time) as addressed the 50 million Americans
living in poverty.
But the real point of the Times article is to respond to Sanders' complaints
about his own coverage, and his relationship with the journalists who follow
his campaign-his "antagonism" toward the press, which goes beyond "the
standard posture for politicians" and is actually "a pillar of his
anti-establishment, socialist worldview."
So what are his anti-establishment, socialist complaints?
In December, his campaign demanded that the "corporate network news" grant
him as much coverage as it does Mrs. Clinton (the "Bernie blackout," they
called it).
Sanders was referring to the study by the Tyndall Report (cited in
Washington Post, 12/7/15), the standard resource on how much time the
networks spend covering what. Tyndall found that in the first 11 months of
2015, Sanders had gotten roughly one-twentieth the coverage of Donald Trump,
one-tenth the coverage of Hillary Clinton and one-fifth the campaign
coverage of Joe Biden, who wasn't even running. (FAIR noted this phenomenon
as well-and documented it in print publications like the Times as well as on
TV.)
But rather than mentioning the rather persuasive data that Sanders was
pointing at, Horowitz ran a dismissive quote from Sanders' primary
opposition:
The Clinton campaign, however, argues that Mr. Sanders has benefited from
the superficial horse-race journalism he scorns, and that coverage has
largely focused on his avuncular style and cross-generational appeal rather
than thorough inspections of his proposals or record.
It's not clear where Clinton's spokesperson saw evidence of this focus on
Sanders' avuncular appeal. Was it the New York Times news story (5/31/15)
that reported that Sanders' platform "may eventually persuade Democrats that
he is unelectable in a general election"? Or the one (1/31/16) that lumped
Sanders in with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz as "candidates on the ideological
fringes" and "idol-smashing outsiders." Or maybe it was the news article
(2/15/16) that quoted economists associated with the Democratic
establishment-misidentified as "liberal-leaning economists who share his
goals"-comparing Sanders' agenda to "magic flying puppies with winning Lotto
tickets tied to their collars."
Here's a thought: Maybe Sanders' media critique remains constant because
media like the New York Times constantly need criticism?
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at
@JNaureckas.
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