Robert Reich's comments on latest media coverage of Bernie

[LongTomH]

Political reporters know only three stories: (1) who's up and who's down, (2) how much money candidates have raised, (3) which candidates have made what gaffes, and (4) who's attacking whom. They're not trained to report on what the candidates actually say, or the economic and social realities that are fueling what they say and why their candidacies are catching on (or not).

Yet even given these realities, I continue to be surprised at how little of what's reported about Bernie mentions widening inequality, flat wages, CEO pay, the depredations of Wall Street, and the flooding of our democracy with money from big corporations and the wealthy. Indeed, I'm appalled at how little Bernie's campaign is being covered at all.

Today, after delivering a major policy address calling for an investment of $1 trillion over 5 years to modernize our country’s physical infrastructure, thereby creating and maintaining at least 13 million good-paying jobs while making our country more productive, Bernie happened to mention to a reporter that the Clinton campaign is getting nervous about his rising poll numbers. His comment about Clinton was all that was reported.

Bernie's surge has nothing whatever to do with Hillary's campaign; and her campaign's supposed "nervousness" is completely irrelevant to Bernie's message or the enthusiasm it's garnering.

Your view?

Shared from Robert Reich's Facebook page

[cantbeserious]

1. All Too True - No Citizen Need Settle For The Lesser Of Two Corporate Evils - Go Bernie Go

eom

[appalachiablue]

2. Reich is absolutely right, little to nothing of the issues Bernie is focusing on

are being covered. Right now on ABC's Sunday morning program, 'This Week' with George Stephanopolous, guest Katrina Vanden Heuvel is trying to bring up the Sanders campaign and the lack of media coverage.

[azmom]

3. The he can't win meme is played

Big time too.

[Divernan]

16. To which I always reply: "He's in It to Win It!"

[Octafish]

4. If the press covered the issues and his positions there'd be a problem.

For the 1-percent.

Thank you for noticing, Dr. Reich!

Thank you for the heads-u, LongTomH!

[marym625]

8. The press should be called just that, the press.

They are pretty much useless at this point. There are very few real journalists left. It's really sad and so against what this country was intended to have.

They just copy memes and call it a story. They're are "reporters" that actually do nothing but find tweets and call it investigative journalism.

Robert Reich rocks!

[DirkGently]

18. I often defend "the press." Getting harder to do.

I trained as a journalist, and have rolled my eyes for years at the "liberal bias" fallacy concocted to rationalize the pure propaganda machine that is Fox News.

And I likewise get frustrated with progressives who blame their perception that their favored truths aren't discussed enough on some unlikely global conspiracy among "mainstream media." By and large the press is not a monolithic thing, and it therefore doesn't make plans or push agendas as whole, because it's trying frantically to make some money, and not doing very well at it.

Largely, the "mainstream media" reflects whatever viewers and readers are demanding. It is not organized well enough to lie to us for fun or profit (except for Fox) even if it wanted to.

But I'm starting to see the treatment of the current U.S. Presidential primary season as, if not a deliberate plot, a queerly uniform willingness to emphasize and de-emphasize that doesn't line up with any kind of journalistic logic I'm familiar with.

My beloved MSNBC, home of Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow and Chris Kornacki, has been leading every show I have watched, for weeks, with 100% DONALD TRUMP. Hayes literally devoted the first five minutes of a recent broadcast to showing, without commentary, a modestly-attended Trump speech in Alabama, wherein he rented out a huge stadium and then proceeded not to fill it. A large portion of the remainder of the show, and in fact most of Hayes' and Maddow's recent shows, then went on to discuss Trump, his latest outrages, and what everyone on the planet has to say about the unexpected continuing existence of his campaign.

There is some excuse for this. Trump's a television star. He's demagoguing about giant anti-Mexico walls. He's following very little of the modern Republican script, which is supposed to be easing up, not doubling down on nativism. He's not talking about free trade or women's reproductive rights the way Republicans are supposed to. And he's leading the other dozen-plus would-be candidates in the polls. So he's worth some ink and some air time.

But contrast with the way Sanders is covered. Sanders isn't just doing the best splitting support among 15 or 16 or however many it is this week other candidates like Trump. He's pulling closer to a massively empowered and favored Democratic candidate, and drawing much larger crowds in doing so. And despite being a lifelong political leader, Sanders is nearly as unusual and unlikely a candidate. He wasn't supposed to get out of the gate with a Social Democrat platform, talking about expanding Social Security and Medicare; proposing a trillion-dollar investment in infrastructure. Those things were supposed to have been shoved off the table by conservative rhetoric long ago.

He is both more radical and more popular than Trump, but his ideas aren't coming from low-information voter's fears and fantasies.

These are American ideas, thought killed long ago by conservative rhetoric about the evils of taxes and government and anything else that doesn't accrue directly to the benefit of the wealthy.

How long has it been since a Presidential candidate has even come close to talking this way about the government's role in supporting the common good? How many Democrats have bought into the idea that Americans can't be made to listen to anything that can be characterized as "socialist?"

THAT is a news story. The fact that even MSNBC's deep-thinking policy wonks like Chris and Rachel can't seem to find the time to talk about it amidst all the chuckles and groans and eye-rolls over Trump strikes me as bizarre. I cannot imagine the editorial meeting where a 50-minute show that's supposed to be the thinking person's commentary on politics has time for 10-15 minutes on the Trump "phenomenon" and virtually zero to ask why Americans are getting behind the most FDR-like Dem to be taken seriously in 50 years.

[LongTomH]

21. Thank you for the commentary, DirkGently!

The devolution of the media is one of the saddest and most frightening stories of our time.

[DirkGently]

5. Do we even have the capacity to discuss issues at this point?

Seems like everyone is more interested in hashtags and memes and viral videos, hoping to deal some blow for whatever they perceive as their "side."

All those things are fine, in their way, but who is talking about what they would actually do, and why?

Doesn't seem like a coincidence that 99% of the oxygen in the national discussion is taken up with what a man who intentionally says nothing of substance is on about.

[daleanime]

6. +1

[marym625]

10. So true

And so sad.

The fact people here on du actually use "tldr" speaks volumes. I don't understand how anyone even comments on, or recs a post that they find too long to read. It's frightening to me.

[LiberalElite]

15. Question -

What's "tldr"? Thanks!

[marym625]

17. Too long, didn't read.

I had to ask the first time I saw it, too. It was right here on du. A prolific poster used it in response to a great poster that has left du.

[daleanime]

7. K&R.....

[marym625]

9. K&R!

Thank you for this post!

[Maineman]

11. We the People will have to overwhelm the corporate propaganda machines.

Social media, face to face, local letters to editor, etc.

[SmittynMo]

13. The 1%

own the government and the media. Gee, thank you SC and CU. It's time to stop this oligarchy and get our democracy back.

[retrowire]

12. Says, "Political reporters know only three stories:"

Then lists 4.

lol

I agree though! haha

[SmittynMo]

14. Robert WILL have a

position on the Bernie staff if Bernie wins. I'm hoping VP.

[LongTomH]

20. I'd rather see him in a cabinet post

Secretary of Labor - as he was in the first Clinton administration - or Secretary of the Treasury.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

19. They'll put up a Trump speech in it's entirety....

If they ever aired a Bernie speech they'd have to follow it with a panel of right wing assholes scoffing at it.

So it's much deeper than Robert Reich thinks it is.