WHINING DEMONIC-RATS HAVE NO IDEA ABOUT THE ENEMY MEDIA!
EACH ONE OF THEM JUST WANTS TO BE THE FAVORITE ... THE MEDIA "DARLING"
Posted on 08/14/2019 7:06:04 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
The Democratic presidential contenders are letting loose with a barrage of attacks against the news media, ripping national outlets for what they view as biased coverage of their campaigns or unfair double-standards in covering President Trump.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is leading the way, making his grievances with “corporate media” central to his anti-establishment campaign.
The Sanders campaign took it up a notch this week, calling out CNN and NBC by name, and making the case that The Washington Post is covering Sanders negatively because he’s been critical of the newspaper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos.
Top media personalities are firing back at Sanders and accusing him of taking a page from Trump, who routinely attacks major outlets such as The New York Times and CNN as "fake news."
But Sanders is far from the only Democratic candidate to vent frustration with the media’s campaign coverage.
A top surrogate for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign lashed out at reporters this week for giving outsized coverage to the former vice president’s recent verbal gaffes.
And former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro have both blasted the press for what they describe as applying too light of a touch with Trump on issues pertaining to race.
The criticism of the media comes after Democrats have spent years warning that Trump’s attacks against the press have undermined trust in an institution they describe as a pillar of a functioning democracy.
But Democrats say their own critiques don’t remotely approach the president’s “enemy of the people” rhetoric. Rather, they say it’s the result of frustration from individual candidates that their messages are not cutting through the noise of a 24-person field.
“Democrats are not trying to completely tear down the Fourth Estate and they’re not putting journalists in danger, like the president is doing,” said Andrew Feldman, a Democratic strategist with a focus on media relations. “But the ultimate goal for a campaign is to get their message across and it can be very frustrating when that doesn’t happen.”
The Sanders campaign stands apart for its direct attacks on individual outlets and for making its grievances against the press a core component of its election strategy.
Sanders’s allies have long believed that the elite news organizations hate both the candidate and his anti-establishment message. The campaign has sought out alternative media platforms, such as the popular podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” to get around the mainstream media and to allow Sanders to speak at length about his policy proposals.
Recently, the Sanders campaign accused the press of burying polls that show Sanders doing well and amplifying those in which he struggles.
“The better Bernie’s standing in the poll, the less coverage it receives and the worse he does, the more he receives,” Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver said in a phone call with reporters on Monday.
Weaver also rattled off a slew of negative headlines about Sanders that he said were biased, and he pointed to the chyrons that CNN and MSNBNC run at the bottom of the screen as intentionally worded to ensure voters don’t take Sanders seriously.
But Sanders’s attack against Bezos and The Washington Post struck a nerve in Washington and was met with blowback from members of the press.
“Contrary to the conspiracy theory the senator seems to favor, Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest,” Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron said in a statement.
CNN anchor Dana Bash went further, calling Sanders’s attacks “dangerous.”
“It is very similar to what Donald Trump is doing … [Sanders] is continuing to undermine the institution of the press by suggesting to people that we can’t make editorial decisions for ourselves because the corporate leaders, owners dictate for us,” Bash said Tuesday on CNN. “It is incredibly dangerous.”
Democrats say the strategy will energize Sanders’s base of supporters, many of whom view themselves as outsiders who have been shunned by the establishment.
Republican strategist Andy Surabian said he was sympathetic to Sanders’s claims, calling him “consistent and sincere” in his grievances against the press.
But the direct hits against the media have angered some Democrats.
“The Sanders campaign has become a paranoid phantasmagoria,” said Democratic strategist Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist. “They’re running second only to Trump in trafficking in conspiracy theories and it reeks of desperation.”
Team Biden, meanwhile, is beating back at the notion that the former vice president is prone to embarrassing misstatements as it seeks to tamp down questions about whether he is the strongest candidate to take on Trump.
There was an avalanche of coverage over the weekend of two verbal gaffes Biden made at the Iowa State Fair, such as mistakenly saying he was still vice president when he met with survivors from a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla, last year.
Biden’s allies are frustrated by the media coverage, believing the press is creating a false equivalence between run-of-the-mill misstatements and Trump’s myriad scandals.
Biden spokeswoman Symone Sanders, a former CNN contributor, chastised the national media in a testy exchange on CNN over what she described as an obsession with minor miscues.
"I want to be very clear - this is a press narrative, not a voter narrative,” Symone Sanders said about coverage of Biden’s gaffes. "If you were to look at the coverage in Iowa this weekend and juxtapose the local newspapers and local television coverage to national media coverage, you would have thought these reporters were at two different events.”
Meanwhile, O’Rourke and Castro are pressuring the media to be more aggressive with Trump after a mass shooting in El Paso in their home state of Texas that appears to have been racially motivated.
Democrats have blamed Trump’s rhetoric on immigration for inspiring the alleged shooter, and some candidates, such as O'Rourke, have pushed news organizations to explicitly call Trump "a racist."
“Members of the press, what the f---,” O’Rourke said in a gaggle with reporters last week. “Connect the dots about what he’s been doing in this country, he’s not tolerating racism, he’s promoting racism.”
The criticism has sparked conversations in newsrooms over how to cover Trump’s racial controversies, particularly after The New York Times was criticized for a front-page headline that described a speech by Trump as an attempt to heal racial divisions after the El Paso mass shooting and a separate one in Dayton, Ohio.
“American journalism and American journalists are so steeped in a ‘both sides’ dynamic that they find it difficult I think to address this moment,” Castro said in Iowa over the weekend. “It’s especially hard for news reporters who feel like they can’t break out of character.”
Republicans are rolling their eyes, believing that the media is snapping to attention to respond to criticism from Democrats, who they see as softened by the expectation of favorable coverage, compared to what they believe conservatives endure.
“If they had to withstand what Trump goes through with the media on a daily basis they’d probably have to go find a safe space to sit in,” Surabian said.
The mainstream media is biased and full of fake news.
Another win for our President.
I didn’t see the part where Democrats admitted anything of the kind.
“Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence”
Really? Let’s find out who Bezos favors as the candidate and then see how “independent” “his” newsroom is.
Dems: We just found out this morning the MSM is not evenhandedly and honestly practicing fair journalism to all sides. We are shocked to the core.
Non Dems: We have a little talk to have with you that we were putting off. It’s about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and what storks can and can’t do.
I have an idea. For “fairness,” let’s give every candidate the same treatment that the media gives Trump. Roughly 90% of all coverage is negative, like this. Let’s see how they like them apples at that tiem.
A BS attempt to push the “both sides criticize us so this proves we are objective” narrative. MSM always does this during primaries then immediately goes full throttle to help the rats during the general. Too many still fall for this crap.
Biden knows that the MSM was planning to pick the Dem candidate. He’s not going to let them get away with that without a fight. Gotta give him credit for that.
Good grief!
Given how much the media supports and pushes LEFT WING causes, the sheer hutzpah of these mental midgets is amazing!
The press has been anti-Trump like no other president before, and this has been absolutely documented.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/media-trump-hatred-coverage/
Good point. Also it causes me to assume that Bezos’ and his minions want someone other than Biden to be the nominee.
Biden got spoiled by years of the Obama coverage.
Now that the “Obama shield” has been lifted he is seeing a whole new world.
The elites who own the major media outlets _will_ pick the Democratic nominee. They are poised to do that because the stupid Democratic caucus goers and primary voters actually pay attention to the lying mass media outlets.
If Joe wants to be the nominee he better find out what he needs to do to please his masters.
Fetch, Joe, fetch.
Well of course he does...But he knew you were all radical left wing maniacs when he hired you...That's why you got the job...
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