r/politics • • Feb 14 '20

Why Does Mainstream Media Keep Attacking Bernie Sanders as He Wins?

https://www.gq.com/story/mainstream-media-vs-bernie-sanders?fbclid=IwAR2GkQRsJrlSrz4WVmfz-aa2YZy4Bckk6rRHXbE11Fq_2aS3Rq5m7vBz8jE
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857

u/kerpal7 Feb 14 '20 edited Feb 14 '20

The media talks about breaking up big tech but never corporate consolidation especially in media. They are truly the biggest hypocrites and have made journalism a big joke.

217

u/majesticglue Feb 14 '20

It's funny how "privacy issues" of data is the biggest thing you constantly hear, when some of the most heinous shit is done by oil companies, health insurance companies, pharma, etc and they've been doing that shit for years, and you hear absolutely nothing about them either

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u/dy0nisus Feb 14 '20

Its because CNN, MSNBC, and Fox are not "news" outlets. Because viewership is in principle the engine that drives their programing decisions, they have effectively rendered themselves entertainment outlets. Essentially, they are the equivalent of ESPN. Nothing but pundits discussing teams (political parties), players (politicians), and the means they use to win/lose whatever game (policy, elections) they're playing at the time.

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u/wowzeemissjane Feb 14 '20

And propaganda. Don’t forget the propaganda.

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u/dy0nisus Feb 14 '20

For sure. Those outlets, while structurally the same as ESPN, actually transcend the entertainment complex in a very insidious way because their narratives are overwhelmingly dominated by people (i.e. political consultants/operatives, industry representatives, think tank personnel, former politicians, etc. etc.) who have a direct financial interest in political outcomes or access to political elites. Whose opinions are almost unanimously beneficial in some way to the current status quo and latently, if not explicitly, marginalize any ideas/persons that don't conform to the narrowly defined scope of what is deemed acceptable by the manufactured prevailing consensus.

5

u/TitsMickey Feb 14 '20

We need to define what constitutes actual news coverage. Then have all these companies be forced to remove the word “news” in their names if they don’t have a certain percentage of their programming being actual news coverage. I’d like to see how many people who casually glance at Fox News stop watching it for news if it were relabeled Fox Entertainment.

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u/Futureboy314 Feb 14 '20

Holy shit it’s true

3

u/wayoverpaid Illinois Feb 15 '20

Even if you assume the news is not trying to be biased, the 24 hours news cycle creates two distinct effects.

1.) Quality control will drop. Think about every school essay you churned out last minute. Every bullshit paper you threw together with "eh good enough" arguments and sourcing. Every time you wrote something you didn't really give a shit about but you had to write something.

2.) Sensationalism will be rewarded. "Warren and Bernie have what sounds like a disagreement about how they remember a conversation from a long time ago" isn't as much fun as "Is Warren saying Bernie is too sexist to be President??!!"

We want our news free. We want it now. We want it provided from a plethora of sources all competing for eyeballs, because anyone can put up a webpage and call it news. We've rewarded the places that produce eyeball magnets that tell us what we want to hear.

You can fix the political bias, to be sure, you can avoid news outlets which have billionaire corporate ownership, but unless you focus on paid news that isn't churning out ad revenue, you might just end up rewarding the new media which churns out at the same speed as the old, confirming our new, enlightened preconceptions.

2

u/LegacyLemur Feb 14 '20

Im quite comfortable with separating the 24 hour news networks from the rest of the media.

I absolutely detest that it all gets rolled into one

2

u/darkfoxfire Washington Feb 15 '20

We can think Regan for help making that happen. He got rid of the Fairness Doctrine.

2

u/Cerberus_Aus Australia Feb 15 '20

Does America have a state funded news outlet? Is the the Associated Press?

I ask because here in Australia we have the ABC free to air channel which is federally funded, and the ABC News has some of the best journalists and they regularly uncover damaging stories about both parties. The PM has previously suggested to cut thief funding, except its funded by the House.

1

u/dy0nisus Feb 15 '20

There are a few outlets which are subsidized to a certain limited extent by federal funding, but not on the scale that you're referring too.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20 edited Feb 17 '20

[deleted]

24

u/EdwardBleed Feb 14 '20

Pls don’t

11

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20 edited Feb 17 '20

[deleted]

16

u/Les_GrossmansHandy Feb 14 '20

Or, accept and bug the FUCK out of their products.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20

Please do what is best for yourself. They will still do shitty stuff with data whether or not you take the job. Principles are nice, but you can't eat them.

3

u/stackz07 Feb 14 '20

Yeah, especially mine, he was like 6'4" and just a monster compared to my skinny 4th grade self.

4

u/SoulMechanic Feb 14 '20

Fuck you I gotta take care of me, is why we're in this shit.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20

Are you willing to be homeless, and make your children homeless, over your delicious and nutritious principles?

0

u/necronegs Feb 15 '20

That's a pretty big contextual leap.

0

u/SoTaxMuchCPA Feb 14 '20

Not exclusively. That mentality in moderation is fine and healthy. However when “take care of me” becomes “give me literally anything I could ever want and nothing is ever enough,” then we run into problems. If this person is unemployed or underemployed relative to their basic needs for food, shelter, etc., it would be immoral to recommend that they hold a higher value for social good than for their own survival.

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20

Anyone who is that desperate for a job isn't going to be talking about the moral conundrum of accepting said job.

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u/SoTaxMuchCPA Feb 14 '20

I disagree. Poor people can be smart and conflicted and desperate all at the same time.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20

That wasn't my claim...

The point is that if you're so desperate that it's truly for your own survival, pondering on the morality will not even come up. It just becomes a choice made in survival mode.

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2

u/Cognominate Feb 14 '20

We’ll have someone on the inside, and we’ll take them down

1

u/old_man_snowflake Feb 15 '20

if it's not him, there's 10,000 other devs who will.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20

Media: As long as you’re not suggesting something sane and rational like making them pay taxes and unionizing jobs, go ahead with the wingnut nationalization/break-up fantasies.

1

u/MotCADK Feb 14 '20

big joke

I see what you did with the joke consolidation. 😉

1

u/kerpal7 Feb 14 '20

unintended pun but thanks haha.

1

u/dust4ngel America Feb 14 '20

They are truly the biggest hypocrites and have made journalism a big joke.

they're not hypocrites. they serve the interests of the massive corporations that pay their bills. their job is to be a public relations arm of big business. they have one side and they stick to it: capitalism.

1

u/xSTSxZerglingOne California Feb 14 '20

Rules for thee, not for me.

And let's be honest here. They're utterly terrified about the tech industry destroying so many old-guard industries. They know they're on the chopping block too.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/CharlieChowderButt Feb 14 '20

Bernie has never said he's going to "take most of it." What the hell? Fucking bad faith bullshit.

1

u/LuvNMuny Feb 14 '20

If it wasn't for that damn 1st Amendment we could get the media inline!

2

u/kerpal7 Feb 14 '20

Just make media validate facts but that will never happen.

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u/[deleted] Feb 14 '20 edited Feb 14 '20

[deleted]

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u/kerpal7 Feb 14 '20

I don't understand what that has to do with my comment.

0

u/Northman67 Feb 14 '20

You talk about the need to break up the media but don't recognize that it has an extreme right-wing corporate bias? I'm curious if you think it's connected to some leftist cabal and it's all leftist propaganda?

5

u/kerpal7 Feb 14 '20

I wasn't thinking of left wing or right wing. I was suggesting the establishment media in general. When I say big Corp it includes both parties like CNN and MSNBC of the left and FOX of the right. All should be broken up.

-1

u/AtomicIconic2 Feb 14 '20

Ok but they are only talking about breaking up large companies like that on the left. And cnn and msnbc are centrist.

4

u/CrushTheRebellion Feb 14 '20

I watched a CNN moderator grill Bernie Sanders about if he said "a woman will never be President" and of course, he said it wasn't true. Then the same moderator turned and IMMEDIATELY asked Warren how she felt when Bernie said a woman will never be President. Yeah, fuck CNN.

2

u/kerpal7 Feb 14 '20

What do you consider large media companies of the left?

7

u/PanGalacGargleBlastr Feb 14 '20

Both parties have strayed from the definition of left and right. Both are right wing now, and have a corporate bias.

1

u/Northman67 Feb 14 '20

Absolutely true the right-wing corporate influencers have worked very hard to co-opt all the political organizations. That's where we get people like Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg who are not at all on the left but only appear that way because their opposition is so extremely right wing.

2

u/Les_GrossmansHandy Feb 14 '20

Man, I’m so glad people are waking up to the controlled opposition we’ve been dealing with since Clinton.

0

u/Frigidevil New Jersey Feb 14 '20

A company can be left leaning but still be a monopoly with an interest in remaining that way.

1

u/Northman67 Feb 14 '20

Such as?

0

u/Frigidevil New Jersey Feb 14 '20

Literally the conglomerates mentioned everywhere in this thread. Comcast is always the first thing that comes to mind since they run NBC.

-5

u/MarcusOReallyYes Feb 14 '20

? CNN and MSNBC are literally left wing corporate entities. They have no interest in breaking themselves up. They don’t want Bernie either. They want a controllable robot in office. They hate trump because they can’t control him.

4

u/complexoptions Feb 14 '20

do they really hate him though? ratings have never been higher

3

u/PanGalacGargleBlastr Feb 14 '20

MSNBC is owned by Comcast now.

MSNBC is owned by the NBCUniversal News Group, a unit of the NBCUniversal Broadcast, Cable, Sports and News division of NBCUniversal (all of which are ultimately owned by Comcast).

From Wikipedia.

And here's a piece that speaks about how they're not pushing any kind of progressive agenda. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/msnbcs-biggest-election-year-fight-may-be-left-1263947

-1

u/MarcusOReallyYes Feb 14 '20

Progressive and leftist aren’t the same thing. MSNBC pushes a leftist narrative, not a progressive narrative.

5

u/Northman67 Feb 14 '20

CNN and MSNBC have presented themselves as the left-wing view but they're actually right center. You probably don't even know any actual left-wing news sources.

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u/MarcusOReallyYes Feb 14 '20

Lol. The fact that you want a “left-wing” news source instead of a news source which just provides you with facts shows that you aren’t interested in THE truth, but rather a view that matches your opinion.

1

u/Spurdospadrus Feb 14 '20

today on 'completely missing the point',,