Senator Bernie Sanders is tired of corporate media blatantly excluding him from press coverage, despite the fact that he often garners the same poll numbers as Donald Trump among primary voters.
While Senator Sanders continues to hold a sizable percentage in a match-up against Hillary in all recent polls, the mainstream media continues to diminish and ignore the dark horse candidate.
From a press release on the Bernie Sanders website:
“The corporately-owned media may not like Bernie’s anti-establishment views but for the sake of American democracy they must allow for a fair debate in this presidential campaign,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager. “Bernie must receive the same level of coverage on the nightly news as other leading candidates.”
ABC’s “World News Tonight” has devoted 81 minutes to Donald Trump’s campaign so far this year compared to a mere 20 seconds on Sanders through the end of November. NBC’s “Nightly News” afforded 2.9 minutes of coverage to Sanders since January. The “CBS Evening News” provided viewers 6.4 minutes of coverage on the Vermont senator.
By refusing to talk about the polls where Sanders preforms well, the corporate media is misleading its audience about the success Sanders is having. If people do not hear information about Sanders regularly in the news, they may assume he is under-preforming and doesn’t have a chance.
This level of omission is worse than negative press. As we have seen in Trump’s campaign, keeping your name in the news, for good or horrible reasons, can have a huge effect on keeping relevant in the polls and in the minds of undecided voters.
Even something as innocuous as a sketch on Saturday Night Live can have an effect on convincing voters that a candidate is viable. If the mainstream corporate-owned media were forced to give equal representation to all candidates, or at least slacked off on TrumpWatch 24/7 a bit in order to cover Sanders, there would surely be a surge in the polls from people who are still unsure of what Sanders stands for.
In the meantime, we encourage our readers to move on from corporate media and locate alternative sources like those at The Ring of Fire to gain a different view of the news seldom seen on your television each night.
