Boardman writes: "The front page story is about such issues as 'work force
anxieties,' 'shrinking middle class,' 'stagnant wages,' and a growing income
gap at pre-Depression levels. The candidate who has been raising these
issues longer and louder than any others is Bernie Sanders. Yet the New York
Times story about these issues does not even mention Bernie Sanders."
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Reuters)
Bernie Sanders Blindsided by New York Times Blackout
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
16 July 15
Media bias: sometimes it's invisible until you look for it
The front page story is about such issues as "work force anxieties,
"shrinking middle class," "stagnant wages," and a growing income gap at
pre-Depression levels. The candidate who has been raising these issues
longer and louder than any others is Bernie Sanders. Yet the New York Times
story about these issues does not even mention Bernie Sanders, although it
mentions others with less credibility.
That is the level of intellectual dishonesty actually achieved by the Times
in its July 13 page one story headlined "Growth in the 'Gig Economy' Fuels
Work Force Anxieties." Two of the most relevant words excluded from the
1700-word story are "Bernie Sanders," even though it includes two Republican
and Hillary Clinton.
It's intellectually dishonest to write about these issues without mentioning
the Independent senator from Vermont now running for the Democratic
nomination for president as a Democratic Socialist. It is also deceitful and
would be journalistic malpractice for anyone purporting to practice actual
journalism.
But the Times has long since ceased to be "the paper of record" in this
country, which no longer has a paper (or any media) of record. The Times
still serves, as it always has, as the voice of the establishment. That
explains the paper's "balanced" view here of the "gig economy" and the two
generations of economic suffering it represents. Reporter Noam Scheiber's
anecdote-ridden story shimmers with an upper income bias, as befits any
ambitious Times reporter looking with disdainful sympathy at lesser earners
driven increasingly into jobs that are variously part-time, short-term,
temporary, or freelance but almost universally more insecure and
lower-paying than people could expect from the American economy 50 years
ago.
Hillary Clinton takes on "the vision thing" in a Bushlike manner
Bernie Sanders has railed against such economic injustice for almost as
long, but Scheiber and/or his editors lack the integrity to mention that,
even when they quote a supporter of Hillary Clinton saying: "People know
things are changing. They don't feel like anyone has a handle on it. There's
a yearning for a political vision that addresses that."
Well, yes, that seems to be true. That also seems to explain why Bernie
Sanders continues to surge in the polls since declaring for president in
May. Though Clinton still holds a formidable lead, it has been shrinking,
and her total support has been shrinking for several months.
The Clinton supporter who spoke of vision, Neera Tanden of the Center of
American Progress, also demonstrated the essential deceit required to turn
Clinton into the desired visionary. She said, "Whether America will be
America or not hinges on whether we have a downward spiral around wages."
That sort of sounds good until you break it down. Then it's apparent it's a
necessary lie for the Clinton campaign. It's a lie because it suggests the
"downward spiral" is a future threat, not a 50-year reality. And it's a
necessary Clinton campaign fiction because Hillary Clinton has not been
there for the 99% for most of her career as she amassed a reported fortune
of some $300 million. Clinton needs to have an effective marketing campaign
to persuade enough voters that she has this imaginary "vision," as the Times
noted obliquely:
On Monday [July 13], Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to give a speech outlining
her vision for improving the economic fortunes of the middle class. Leading
Republicans, like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have framed their policy ideas
as an attempt to solve economic insecurity and the erosion of middle-class
incomes.
Nice touch by the Times, using the "vision" language of the candidate's
sales pitch. As it turned out, Clinton's "economic fortunes" speech was a
tortured balancing act promising some help to those with less while trying
not to offend those with actual economic fortunes. This was the perfect
point for an honest reporter to mention Bernie Sanders, who has spent his
whole career deliberately offending "millionaires and billionaires" while
calling for economic justice for the rest of America.
In the Times, reality turns out to be a variable to be manipulated
But the contrast between Clinton and Sanders was apparently too stark for
the Times, and too unflattering to Clinton, who has no record showing her
having the courage of her convictions, or even of having identifiable
convictions. Instead, the Times refers to two establishment-friendly
Republicans whose economic views are less just than Clinton's, but who have
similar marketing campaigns for their "visions." Bush and Rubio aren't even
the current leading contenders for the Republican nomination for president,
even though they pose no threat to the present oligarchic status quo.
In recent polling published July 14, Bush was second with 14% and Rubio was
fifth with 5% in a nine-candidate field. Tellingly, the Times omitted the
leader and two others ahead of Rubio. Running first, with 17%, was Donald
Trump. Scott Walker at 8% was third and Ted Cruz at 6% was fourth. The Times
bias among Republicans seems pretty clear, albeit unstated.
The Times bias among Democrats is stark. The Times presents a picture in
which Clinton has no opposition, even though Sanders at 20% or more is
polling better in his chosen party than any Republican in the Republican
Party. In polling published July 10, Clinton is at 55%, Sanders at 24%. Tied
for third, with 8%, are Joe Biden and Undecided. Clinton still leads by
30-plus points, but when Sanders entered the race on May 26, her lead was
50-plus points.
Whatever those numbers may mean, and however they may change, they were a
present reality that the Times chose to ignore in order to present a false
reality.
In another slippery paragraph, Scheiber falsifies reality in a subtler way.
Discussing the non-job jobs of the "gig economy," he writes:
The decades-long shift to these more flexible workplace arrangements, the
venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and the labor leader David Rolf argue in the
latest issue of Democracy Journal, is a "transformation that promises new
efficiencies and greater flexibility for 'employers' and 'employees' alike,
but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class
America was built."
Is it an existential crisis if you're a millionaire or billionaire?
Then there's no more about this, despite the threat to "the very foundation"
of once-basic American values. It's as if the Times is assuring its readers:
never mind, these are just "flexible workplace arrangements," not a half
century business policy to take money and peace of mind from millions of
American families. You'd never know from the Times reference that the
article in Democracy Journal begins by describing a very different reality:
The American middle class is facing an existential crisis. For more than
three decades, declining wages, fraying benefits, and the rising costs of
education, housing, and other essentials have stressed and squeezed
middle-class Americans. But by far the biggest threat to middle-class
workers - and to our economy as a whole - comes from the changing nature of
employment itself.
Gone is the era of the lifetime career, let alone the lifelong job and the
economic security that came with it, having been replaced by a new economy
intent on recasting full-time employees into contractors, vendors, and
temporary workers. It is an economic transformation that promises new
efficiencies and greater flexibility for "employers" and "employees" alike,
but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class
America was built. And if the American middle class crumbles, so will an
American economy that relies on consumer spending for 70 percent of its
activity, and on a diverse and inclusive workforce for 100 percent of the
innovation that drives all future prosperity.
The dilemma for the Times (and most mainstream media) is that if the
"existential crisis" is as real as the vast evidence supporting it, then
there's only one candidate in the race facing reality, and it's not Hillary
Clinton. It's Bernie Sanders. But he's an outsider challenging longstanding
establishment policy carried out with remarkable consistency by both major
parties for 50 years. Or, as Hanauer and Rolf put it more clearly and
bluntly than the mystifiers at the Times will allow:
This crisis is not unfolding in a vacuum. For more than 30 years, the
Democratic Party has suffered from a crisis of identity, leadership, and
vision on issues of political economy that has left it unable to either
articulate or defend the true interests of the middle class. Democrats might
tinker around the edges, arguing for more economic justice and fairness, but
for the most part they have largely accepted, or at least failed to counter,
the fictitious trickle-down explanation of what growth is (higher profits)
and where it comes from (lower taxes and less regulation). And so, through
Republican and Democratic administrations alike, corporate America has seen
less regulation, lower taxes, and higher profits, while middle-class America
has gotten the shaft.
The rest of this long article is a devastating critique of the present
American economic order - or as many experience it, economic disorder
without reliable quality, accountability, or fairness. You wouldn't know it
from the Times, but the recommendations from Hanauer and Rolf overlap
significantly with the Sanders Economic Agenda published December 2014. Nor
would you know from the Times that Nick Hanauer, a billionaire by way of
Amazon.com, is at least a philosophical supporter of Bernie Sanders. One of
Hanauer's post comments is: "The business lobby has been resisting labor
standards since child labor. Overtime is no different." (He posted the Times
article with a cryptic "Very interesting" comment.)
Clinton bobs and weaves and delivers ringing ambivalence
On July 14, the Times covered Clinton's economic speech on page 13, not page
one, but still managed to give it a pimping-for-Hillary headline: "Clinton
Offers Her Vision of a 'Fairness Economy' to Close the Income Gap" even
though the paper reported no evidence of anything like an actual "vision."
In essence, Clinton said she'd like to see things stay pretty much the same,
just not quite so bad for so many.
According to Times reporter Amy Chozick, "incomes for the vast majority of
Americans whose wages have remained virtually stagnant for 15 years," which
gets the time-frame wrong by 35 years. This error is consistent with her
reporting the "widespread feeling that the economic recovery has not
benefited large parts of the population" [emphasis added], which is not a
feeling at all, but demonstrable fact. Then Chozick offers this false choice
as a central challenge for the Clinton campaign: ". devising an agenda that
addresses income inequality without vilifying the wealthy.."
This is the Times elitist zeitgeist showing through. First, the issue is not
just "income inequality" but the staggering, growing "wealth disparity" -
which is best left unmentioned. As far as "income inequality" goes,
vilification is irrelevant. The simple solution is to tax large incomes. The
wealthy may "feel" that as vilification, but it's just economic balancing.
And the Times approvingly, but falsely, quotes Nobel laureate economist
Joseph Stiglitz, who advises Clinton, saying: "the speech showed a clear
understanding that our economy is not working for most Americans" and that
"we need to fundamentally rewrite the rules." The false part is that Clinton
has never come close to seeking a fundamentalrevision of any rules. Only
Sanders does that. And the Times made clear that Clinton "did not embrace
the fiery populism of Senator Bernie Sanders.. And she stopped short of
endorsing policies championed by Mr. Sanders and others in the liberal wing
of the party.."
Times sets up straw man argument, then defeats its own unreality
Also on July 14, on page 3, the Times ran a denigrating piece about Sanders,
in which Nate Cohn snidely and dismissively ridicules Sanders' chances of
winning anything. His argument centers on the past losses of centrist
liberals like Howard Dean and Bill Bradley. At the same time, Cohn ignores
the substance as well as the style of the Sanders campaign, its apparent
growing appeal to voters, and the distinction that Sanders makes: that his
democratic socialism in not ideology but about class-based justice. As
Sanders put it: " I'm not a liberal. Never have been. I'm a progressive who
mostly focuses on the working and middle class."
Clinton criticized Republicans for their "trickle down" economic theories,
which is fine as far as it goes. With Clinton, it doesn't seem to go very
far. What is her touted "profit-sharing" but a form of "trickle down"
economics? Sharing profits is a manageable shibboleth. It's not sharing
ownership.
Trickle down is also a way to describe the infusion of chemo treatment to
fight cancer. Current American economics are a form of economic cancer for
the majority of Americans. With human cancer, an infusion is frequently
blocked by an "upstream occlusion." Treatment continues when the upstream
occlusion is cleared. The American economy has suffered from an upstream
occlusion for half a century. Clinton has benefitted greatly from this
blockage of treatment for the country's economic cancer. So far she has
shown no sign of unblocking any cure.
Bernie Sanders has always been all about serious treatment for a sick
economy. Bernie Sander is getting to be a bigger and bigger elephant in the
room where denial of the cancer remains powerful. Eventually perhaps the
Times and the rest of mainstream media will begin to talk about him
honestly. But they are all part of the cancerous system and benefit from it.
So perhaps a more radical infusion will come through other channels.
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Reuters)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Bernie Sanders Blindsided by New York Times Blackout
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
16 July 15
Media bias: sometimes it's invisible until you look for it
he front page story is about such issues as "work force anxieties,
"shrinking middle class," "stagnant wages," and a growing income gap at
pre-Depression levels. The candidate who has been raising these issues
longer and louder than any others is Bernie Sanders. Yet the New York Times
story about these issues does not even mention Bernie Sanders, although it
mentions others with less credibility.
That is the level of intellectual dishonesty actually achieved by the Times
in its July 13 page one story headlined "Growth in the 'Gig Economy' Fuels
Work Force Anxieties." Two of the most relevant words excluded from the
1700-word story are "Bernie Sanders," even though it includes two Republican
and Hillary Clinton.
It's intellectually dishonest to write about these issues without mentioning
the Independent senator from Vermont now running for the Democratic
nomination for president as a Democratic Socialist. It is also deceitful and
would be journalistic malpractice for anyone purporting to practice actual
journalism.
But the Times has long since ceased to be "the paper of record" in this
country, which no longer has a paper (or any media) of record. The Times
still serves, as it always has, as the voice of the establishment. That
explains the paper's "balanced" view here of the "gig economy" and the two
generations of economic suffering it represents. Reporter Noam Scheiber's
anecdote-ridden story shimmers with an upper income bias, as befits any
ambitious Times reporter looking with disdainful sympathy at lesser earners
driven increasingly into jobs that are variously part-time, short-term,
temporary, or freelance but almost universally more insecure and
lower-paying than people could expect from the American economy 50 years
ago.
Hillary Clinton takes on "the vision thing" in a Bushlike manner
Bernie Sanders has railed against such economic injustice for almost as
long, but Scheiber and/or his editors lack the integrity to mention that,
even when they quote a supporter of Hillary Clinton saying: "People know
things are changing. They don't feel like anyone has a handle on it. There's
a yearning for a political vision that addresses that."
Well, yes, that seems to be true. That also seems to explain why Bernie
Sanders continues to surge in the polls since declaring for president in
May. Though Clinton still holds a formidable lead, it has been shrinking,
and her total support has been shrinking for several months.
The Clinton supporter who spoke of vision, Neera Tanden of the Center of
American Progress, also demonstrated the essential deceit required to turn
Clinton into the desired visionary. She said, "Whether America will be
America or not hinges on whether we have a downward spiral around wages."
That sort of sounds good until you break it down. Then it's apparent it's a
necessary lie for the Clinton campaign. It's a lie because it suggests the
"downward spiral" is a future threat, not a 50-year reality. And it's a
necessary Clinton campaign fiction because Hillary Clinton has not been
there for the 99% for most of her career as she amassed a reported fortune
of some $300 million. Clinton needs to have an effective marketing campaign
to persuade enough voters that she has this imaginary "vision," as the Times
noted obliquely:
On Monday [July 13], Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to give a speech outlining
her vision for improving the economic fortunes of the middle class. Leading
Republicans, like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have framed their policy ideas
as an attempt to solve economic insecurity and the erosion of middle-class
incomes.
Nice touch by the Times, using the "vision" language of the candidate's
sales pitch. As it turned out, Clinton's "economic fortunes" speech was a
tortured balancing act promising some help to those with less while trying
not to offend those with actual economic fortunes. This was the perfect
point for an honest reporter to mention Bernie Sanders, who has spent his
whole career deliberately offending "millionaires and billionaires" while
calling for economic justice for the rest of America.
In the Times, reality turns out to be a variable to be manipulated
But the contrast between Clinton and Sanders was apparently too stark for
the Times, and too unflattering to Clinton, who has no record showing her
having the courage of her convictions, or even of having identifiable
convictions. Instead, the Times refers to two establishment-friendly
Republicans whose economic views are less just than Clinton's, but who have
similar marketing campaigns for their "visions." Bush and Rubio aren't even
the current leading contenders for the Republican nomination for president,
even though they pose no threat to the present oligarchic status quo.
In recent polling published July 14, Bush was second with 14% and Rubio was
fifth with 5% in a nine-candidate field. Tellingly, the Times omitted the
leader and two others ahead of Rubio. Running first, with 17%, was Donald
Trump. Scott Walker at 8% was third and Ted Cruz at 6% was fourth. The Times
bias among Republicans seems pretty clear, albeit unstated.
The Times bias among Democrats is stark. The Times presents a picture in
which Clinton has no opposition, even though Sanders at 20% or more is
polling better in his chosen party than any Republican in the Republican
Party. In polling published July 10, Clinton is at 55%, Sanders at 24%. Tied
for third, with 8%, are Joe Biden and Undecided. Clinton still leads by
30-plus points, but when Sanders entered the race on May 26, her lead was
50-plus points.
Whatever those numbers may mean, and however they may change, they were a
present reality that the Times chose to ignore in order to present a false
reality.
In another slippery paragraph, Scheiber falsifies reality in a subtler way.
Discussing the non-job jobs of the "gig economy," he writes:
The decades-long shift to these more flexible workplace arrangements, the
venture capitalist Nick Hanauer and the labor leader David Rolf argue in the
latest issue of Democracy Journal, is a "transformation that promises new
efficiencies and greater flexibility for 'employers' and 'employees' alike,
but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class
America was built."
Is it an existential crisis if you're a millionaire or billionaire?
Then there's no more about this, despite the threat to "the very foundation"
of once-basic American values. It's as if the Times is assuring its readers:
never mind, these are just "flexible workplace arrangements," not a half
century business policy to take money and peace of mind from millions of
American families. You'd never know from the Times reference that the
article in Democracy Journal begins by describing a very different reality:
The American middle class is facing an existential crisis. For more than
three decades, declining wages, fraying benefits, and the rising costs of
education, housing, and other essentials have stressed and squeezed
middle-class Americans. But by far the biggest threat to middle-class
workers - and to our economy as a whole - comes from the changing nature of
employment itself.
Gone is the era of the lifetime career, let alone the lifelong job and the
economic security that came with it, having been replaced by a new economy
intent on recasting full-time employees into contractors, vendors, and
temporary workers. It is an economic transformation that promises new
efficiencies and greater flexibility for "employers" and "employees" alike,
but which threatens to undermine the very foundation upon which middle-class
America was built. And if the American middle class crumbles, so will an
American economy that relies on consumer spending for 70 percent of its
activity, and on a diverse and inclusive workforce for 100 percent of the
innovation that drives all future prosperity.
The dilemma for the Times (and most mainstream media) is that if the
"existential crisis" is as real as the vast evidence supporting it, then
there's only one candidate in the race facing reality, and it's not Hillary
Clinton. It's Bernie Sanders. But he's an outsider challenging longstanding
establishment policy carried out with remarkable consistency by both major
parties for 50 years. Or, as Hanauer and Rolf put it more clearly and
bluntly than the mystifiers at the Times will allow:
This crisis is not unfolding in a vacuum. For more than 30 years, the
Democratic Party has suffered from a crisis of identity, leadership, and
vision on issues of political economy that has left it unable to either
articulate or defend the true interests of the middle class. Democrats might
tinker around the edges, arguing for more economic justice and fairness, but
for the most part they have largely accepted, or at least failed to counter,
the fictitious trickle-down explanation of what growth is (higher profits)
and where it comes from (lower taxes and less regulation). And so, through
Republican and Democratic administrations alike, corporate America has seen
less regulation, lower taxes, and higher profits, while middle-class America
has gotten the shaft.
The rest of this long article is a devastating critique of the present
American economic order - or as many experience it, economic disorder
without reliable quality, accountability, or fairness. You wouldn't know it
from the Times, but the recommendations from Hanauer and Rolf overlap
significantly with the Sanders Economic Agenda published December 2014. Nor
would you know from the Times that Nick Hanauer, a billionaire by way of
Amazon.com, is at least a philosophical supporter of Bernie Sanders. One of
Hanauer's post comments is: "The business lobby has been resisting labor
standards since child labor. Overtime is no different." (He posted the Times
article with a cryptic "Very interesting" comment.)
Clinton bobs and weaves and delivers ringing ambivalence
On July 14, the Times covered Clinton's economic speech on page 13, not page
one, but still managed to give it a pimping-for-Hillary headline: "Clinton
Offers Her Vision of a 'Fairness Economy' to Close the Income Gap" even
though the paper reported no evidence of anything like an actual "vision."
In essence, Clinton said she'd like to see things stay pretty much the same,
just not quite so bad for so many.
According to Times reporter Amy Chozick, "incomes for the vast majority of
Americans whose wages have remained virtually stagnant for 15 years," which
gets the time-frame wrong by 35 years. This error is consistent with her
reporting the "widespread feeling that the economic recovery has not
benefited large parts of the population" [emphasis added], which is not a
feeling at all, but demonstrable fact. Then Chozick offers this false choice
as a central challenge for the Clinton campaign: ". devising an agenda that
addresses income inequality without vilifying the wealthy.."
This is the Times elitist zeitgeist showing through. First, the issue is not
just "income inequality" but the staggering, growing "wealth disparity" -
which is best left unmentioned. As far as "income inequality" goes,
vilification is irrelevant. The simple solution is to tax large incomes. The
wealthy may "feel" that as vilification, but it's just economic balancing.
And the Times approvingly, but falsely, quotes Nobel laureate economist
Joseph Stiglitz, who advises Clinton, saying: "the speech showed a clear
understanding that our economy is not working for most Americans" and that
"we need to fundamentally rewrite the rules." The false part is that Clinton
has never come close to seeking a fundamentalrevision of any rules. Only
Sanders does that. And the Times made clear that Clinton "did not embrace
the fiery populism of Senator Bernie Sanders.. And she stopped short of
endorsing policies championed by Mr. Sanders and others in the liberal wing
of the party.."
Times sets up straw man argument, then defeats its own unreality
Also on July 14, on page 3, the Times ran a denigrating piece about Sanders,
in which Nate Cohn snidely and dismissively ridicules Sanders' chances of
winning anything. His argument centers on the past losses of centrist
liberals like Howard Dean and Bill Bradley. At the same time, Cohn ignores
the substance as well as the style of the Sanders campaign, its apparent
growing appeal to voters, and the distinction that Sanders makes: that his
democratic socialism in not ideology but about class-based justice. As
Sanders put it: " I'm not a liberal. Never have been. I'm a progressive who
mostly focuses on the working and middle class."
Clinton criticized Republicans for their "trickle down" economic theories,
which is fine as far as it goes. With Clinton, it doesn't seem to go very
far. What is her touted "profit-sharing" but a form of "trickle down"
economics? Sharing profits is a manageable shibboleth. It's not sharing
ownership.
Trickle down is also a way to describe the infusion of chemo treatment to
fight cancer. Current American economics are a form of economic cancer for
the majority of Americans. With human cancer, an infusion is frequently
blocked by an "upstream occlusion." Treatment continues when the upstream
occlusion is cleared. The American economy has suffered from an upstream
occlusion for half a century. Clinton has benefitted greatly from this
blockage of treatment for the country's economic cancer. So far she has
shown no sign of unblocking any cure.
Bernie Sanders has always been all about serious treatment for a sick
economy. Bernie Sander is getting to be a bigger and bigger elephant in the
room where denial of the cancer remains powerful. Eventually perhaps the
Times and the rest of mainstream media will begin to talk about him
honestly. But they are all part of the cancerous system and benefit from it.
So perhaps a more radical infusion will come through other channels.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
