Media coverage of Bernie Sanders has been the subject of controversy, with sources variously describing the coverage as biased or unbiased, particularly regarding his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Allegations of bias typically reference the amount of coverage Sanders has received or the content of the coverage.

Studies of media coverage have shown that the amount of coverage of Sanders during the 2016 election was largely consistent with his polling performance, except during 2015 when Sanders received coverage that exceeded his standing in the polls.^[1] Analysis of the language used also concluded that media coverage of Sanders was more favorable than that of any other candidate, whereas his main opponent in the democratic primary, Hillary Clinton, received the most negative coverage.^[1][2][3] All 2016 candidates received vastly less media coverage than Donald Trump, and the Democratic primary received substantially less coverage than the Republican primary.^[3]

During the 2020 Democratic primary, Sanders renewed his criticism of the culture of corporate media with a "plan for journalism" meant to curb the consolidation of media he sees as responsible for the paucity of substance on network news.^[4] Allegations of unfair coverage of Sanders included claims that journalists at MSNBC had distorted data.^[5][6] Sanders himself became involved in a dispute with The Washington Post. He charged that it treated him inequitably due to the influence of its owner, Jeff Bezos,^[7][8] a claim that has been disputed by the Post and others.^[9] Studies by Northeastern University's School of Journalism found that Sanders initially received the most positive coverage of any major candidate in the primary and later the third and then fourth most favorable of eight candidates.^[10][11]

Background

Sanders is a self-styled democratic socialist^[12] and the longest serving independent in U.S. congressional history, having avoided party affiliation^[13] throughout his political career. In the U.S. two party system, Sanders is ideologically closer to the Democratic Party,^[13] which considers itself primarily ranging from centrist to liberal and even progressive, depending on regional political landscape. While serving in the Congress, Sanders has caucused with the Democrats,^[13] which has made him eligible for participation in congressional committees as if he were a member of the Democratic Party. In addition, Sanders received support from Democratic party organizations in Vermont^[13] as well as from the Vermont Progressive Party, which also endorses some Democratic candidates in the state.

In November 2015, David Brock, the founder of American Bridge 21st Century set up a Delaware company to buy Blue Nation Review and turn it into a vehicle for the Clinton campaign. According to Lloyd Grove, the blog was "a comfortable venue for negative Sanders stories that Brock wasn’t successful in placing with mainstream news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post".^[14] In 2017, Brock apologized to Bernie Sanders for his aggressive support of Clinton during the 2016 campaign,^[15][16] but in 2019 was criticizing him again in NBC News for having given Trump talking points.^[17]

2016 primary campaign

Academic analyses of media coverage

A 2018 book cowritten by three political scientists said that the amount of news coverage he received exceeded his share in the national polls at that time. Throughout the campaign as a whole, their analysis showed that Sanders "media coverage and polling numbers were strongly correlated." They write, "media coverage brought Sanders to a wider audience and helped spur his long climb in the polls by conveying the familiar tale of the surprisingly successful underdog."^[1]

In her 2018 book, Rachel Bitecofer writes that even though the democratic primary was effectively over in terms of delegate count by mid-March 2016, the media promoted the narrative that the contest between Sanders and Clinton was heating up.^[18] Matthew Yglesias of Vox made a similar point, arguing that the media was biased in favor of Sanders because it had an interest in exaggerating how close the democratic primary was.^[19] According to Bitecofers's analysis, Trump received more extensive media coverage than Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders combined during a time when those were the only primary candidates left in the race.^[18]

A June 2016 report by the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy on media coverage of candidates in the 2016 presidential primaries.^[2] The report found that Trump received inordinate amounts of media coverage in relation to his standing in the polls and that the media coverage "helped propel Trump to the top of Republican polls". The Democratic race "received less than half the coverage of the Republican race." Regarding Sanders, the analysis found that his campaign was "largely ignored in the early months" when he was barely ahead of the other lagging Democratic contenders, Martin O’Malley and Jim Webb. However, as the Sanders campaign "began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone. Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic." Throughout the 2016 primaries, "five Republican contenders—Trump, Bush, Cruz, Rubio, and Carson—each had more news coverage than Sanders during the invisible primary. Clinton got three times more coverage than he did." The analysis found that "Clinton had by far the most negative coverage of any candidate. In 11 of the 12 months, her "bad news" outpaced her "good news," usually by a wide margin, contributing to the increase in her unfavorable poll ratings in 2015."

The report's review of Fox News found that Sanders was the subject of 79 positive reports and 31 negative reports while his opponent Hillary Clinton had 291 negative reports and 39 positive ones.^[20][21]

In her book, Colleen Elizabeth Kelly said that Sanders and Clinton got a share of news coverage similar to their eventual primary results, until Clinton pulled ahead in the primary. Sanders received the most favorable coverage of any primary candidate. Kelly writes that Sanders was both right and wrong to complain about media bias, citing the Shorenstein Center report on the media's outsized coverage of the Republican primary, but noting that Sanders' coverage was the most favorable of any candidate.^[22]

John Sides found that the volume of media coverage of Sanders was also consistent with his polling.^[23] Using data and social analytics tools provided by consumer insights company Crimson Hexagon, he also concluded that the coverage Sanders received was proportionally more positive than that received by Clinton.^[23] Jonathan Stray, a scholar of computational journalism at the Columbia Journalism School, wrote for the Nieman Lab in January 2016 that, "at least online", Sanders received coverage proportionate to his standing in polls.^[24]

Journalistic analyses of media coverage

In 2015, Elizabeth Jensen of NPR responded to an influx of emails regarding a "Morning Edition" segment. Jensen said that she does not "find that NPR has been slighting his campaign. In the last two days alone, NPR has covered the Democrats' climate change stances and reactions to the Republican debate and Sanders has been well in the mix."^[25] NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik responded to criticisms of bias against Sanders in April 2016 saying that Sanders had appeared three times on NPR whereas Clinton had only done so once, that media outlets saw a Sanders win as a "long shot" early in the campaign, and that by April 2016, she appeared very likely to win the nomination.^[26]

In September 2015, Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, wrote that she had received many complaints from readers about purported bias against Sanders. She responded that the Times had given roughly the same amount of articles dedicated to Sanders as they did to similarly-polling Republican candidates (barring Donald Trump), while conceding that some of the articles written were "fluff" and "regrettably dismissive".^[27] That same month, amid momentum in the Sanders campaign, The Washington Post wrote, "Sanders has not faced the kind of media scrutiny, let alone attacks from opponents, that leading candidates eventually experience."^[28]

In October 2015, Story Hinckley of the The Christian Science Monitor said there was "near-blackout from major TV news sources" about the Sanders campaign, despite Sanders polling high and bringing in significant donations.^[29] Media Matters reported on a September 2015 study by Andrew Tyndall, which showed ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted 504 minutes to the presidential race (338 to Republicans, 128 minutes to Democrats, of which 8 minutes were about Sanders).^[30]

That same month, Bernie Sanders supporters complained of media bias after he did very well in post-debate online polls, with media pundits saying that Clinton had won the debate. Josh Voorhees wrote for Slate that the polls cited by Sanders supporters were "informal and unscientific" "instant online polls" impacted by selection bias.^[31]

In January 2016, Claire Malone of FiveThirtyEight rejected that Sanders was the subject of a "media blackout," saying that he received sizable and rising article coverage.^[32] Glenn Greenwald predicted in the same month that "the political and media establishment" would become increasingly hostile towards Sanders as the chances of him winning the Democratic primary increased.^[33]

The New York Times was criticized for retroactively making significant changes to a March 15, 2016 article about Bernie Sanders' legislative accomplishments over the past 25 years.^[34][35] In addition to the revised title, several negative paragraphs were added.^[36] In 2019, Margaret Sullivan, public editor at the NY Times, wrote that the changes were clear examples of "stealth editing" and that "the changes to this story were so substantive that a reader who saw the piece when it first went up might come away with a very different sense of Sanders' legislative accomplishments than one who saw it hours later."^[37]

In April 2016, Ezra Klein writing for Vox said that in some situations in the 2016 campaign, Sanders actually received overly positive bias.^[38]

In an article published by FAIR, Adam Johnson documented that the Washington Post ran 16 stories about Bernie Sanders over a 16-hour period between a "crucial" debate and primary, all of which were allegedly presented "in a negative light, mainly by advancing the narrative that he was a clueless white man incapable of winning over people of color or speaking to women."^[39][40] The Washington Posts Callum Borchers responded, saying that all the stories with the exception of two were commentary and analysis pieces. Of the two news articles, one was an Associated Press wire story, and the other was about the Sanders campaign's struggle to connect with African-American primary voters in 2016 and its implications for 2020.^[41] After the aforementioned primary had passed, Borchers said thatThe Washington Post ran 16 stories which presented Sanders in a positive light.^[42] Johnson replied by mocking the idea of the Washington Post investigating itself for bias.^[43]

Sanders found support early in his campaign from The Young Turks, which in turn grew rapidly due to the untapped market for coverage of the Sanders campaign.^[44]

2020 primary campaign

In February 2019, Shane Ryan (Paste Magazine) reported that within 48 hours of Sanders' campaign launch, the Washington Post had published four opinion pieces about him, two of which were by columnist Jennifer Rubin. Ryan described the common themes in these columns as a "manufactured narrative" that Sanders' time had—as one of the columnists put it—"come and gone".^[45] One week later, Paul Heintz opined in the Post that "the way the senator sees it, the job of a journalist is merely to transcribe his diatribes unchallenged and broadcast his sermons unfiltered".^[46]

According to a March 2019 analysis by Northeastern University's School of Journalism, Sanders received the most positive coverage of any major candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary. An updated analysis in April placed him third out of eight candidates;^[10] a further update for June–September 2019 found that Sanders's positive coverage ranked fourth out of eight major candidates.^[11] In April 2019, Sanders wrote to the board of the Center for American Progress in response to a video produced by their former media outlet ThinkProgress. The video mocked him for becoming a millionaire after writing a book about his 2016 election run.^[47][48]

In June 2019, Katie Halper, writing for FAIR, reported that a New York Times reporter was citing lobbyists—like Mary Anne Marsh—and paid political consultants—like Tracy Sefl—without properly describing their conflicts of interest in 2019.^[34] The following month, Halper documented a number of cases where media selectively reported poll numbers and distorted graphics.^[5]

In July 2019, Politico put forth the idea that the Sanders campaign's perception of bias may be an artifact of Sanders propensity to decline informal interviews at "press gaggles" after events and his reluctance to focus on breaking news.^[49]

In August 2019, Sanders said that The Washington Post "doesn't write particularly good articles about" him and suggested that it was because he frequently mentioned that Amazon did not pay taxes.^[50][51] Marty Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, stated in response, "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."^[51] Sanders rejected that his claim was a conspiracy theory.^[52] NPR wrote that Sanders's comments bore similarities to Trump's criticism of the media.^[52] CNN columnist Chris Cillizza said that Sanders had no evidence for his claims.^[53]

In the same month, the Washington Post deemed false Sanders's claim that "500,000 people go bankrupt every year because they cannot pay their outrageous medical bills". Journalists disputed the article's finding and said that the claim was true, citing a study in the American Journal of Public Health.^[54][55] The Columbia Journalism Review published Sanders' "plan for journalism", in which he repeated his opposition to accelerating media consolidation and the concomitant layoffs in local newsrooms, issues which had already led him to vote against the 1996 Telecommunications Act. In analyzing root causes of inadequate media coverage, Sanders said that today public relations personnel outnumbered journalists six to one.^[4][56]

In November 2019, Emma Specter at Vogue doubted that there was a conspiracy against Sanders. However, she listed several examples of bias and interpreted lack of coverage of Sanders on certain issues and events as slightly unfair.^[57] In the same month, In These Times analyzed coverage of the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary by MSNBC between August and September 2019.^[58][59] They found that "MSNBC talked about Biden twice as often as Warren and three times as often as Sanders", and that Sanders was the candidate spoken of negatively the most frequently of the three. They also found that "[o]verall, MSNBC's primary coverage was devoid of policy discussion."^[60]

See also

• Media bias in the United States
• Hostile media effect

References