Bernie Sanders walks back suggestion Bezos meddled in Washington Post coverage

[ehrnst]

At least partially...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today dialed back his suggestion that there's a connection between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post and what Sanders views as negative coverage of his presidential campaign.

“Do I think Jeff Bezos is on the phone, telling the editor of The Washington Post what to do? Absolutely not. It doesn’t work that way,” Sanders told CNN.

The comments mark a reversal from earlier this week. Speaking in New Hampshire on Monday, Sanders questioned why the newspaper “doesn’t write particularly good articles about me,” noting it is owned by Bezos, whose handling of labor practices at Amazon Sanders has consistently criticized. “I guess maybe there’s a connection,” he added.

..........................................................................................................................

Sanders' comments drew comparisons to the rhetoric of President Donald Trump, who has linked what he sees as the Post's unfair coverage of his administration to Bezos, calling the newspaper a tax scam and a lobbying tool for the Amazon CEO and labeling it the “Amazon Washington Post.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/13/bernie-sanders-bezos-washington-post-1461360

[DownriverDem]

1. I'm sure I'm not

the only one who votes for true members of the Democratic Party.

[ehrnst]

2. I'm guessing one of his inner circle took him aside and pointed out the optics

of attacking the credibility of Marty Baron, to the point where Baron made a rare public statement to defend the WAPO newsroom.

Maybe he didn't know who Marty Baron was until Baron made the statement...

In any case, the 'walkback' is weak tea. He denies saying that Bezos "is on the phone telling the staff what to do" but he's certainly not going to admit that he was wrong in his implication that the newsroom is somehow trying to please Bezos by writing articles that are "not particularly good" about Bernie, like having the nerve to report that his campaign staff is in a labor dispute with him.

Sanders never, ever, ever, admits he is wrong, or has ever made a mistake.

[Cha]

5. And, just who is BS' inner circle?

Let's refresh.. Nina Turner, David Sirota, Bri Gray, Dr Dooley, Jeff Weaver..

Yes, I would imagine when they read Marty Baron's piece in the WaPo it was a wake up call to reexamine what they started..

"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,"

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=237821

Mahalo, ehrnst!

[ehrnst]

15. I think it may be smaller than that list. (nt)

[SouthernProgressive]

3. Sanders ego has gotten out of control.

He is going out on the stump, doing interviews, and showing up to debates completely unprepared.

Going off on the media like Trump does and then walking it back. It's just gaffe after gaffe.

He didn't prepare for his run. Holly Otterbein, a journalist and Sanders surrogate, highlighted this in one of her pieces.

A little over a month ago, despite putting on a brave face publicly, Bernie Sanders’ aides privately concluded that a shakeup was needed for his presidential campaign.

The Vermont senator had neglected to practice in mock sessions before the first 2020 debate, and failed to aggressively take on former Vice President Joe Biden on stage. On the trail, he was sticking to the old hits: His stump speech sounded remarkably similar to the one he delivered in his first presidential bid, and he gave a major address touting democratic socialism that mirrored his talk on the same subject in 2015. Even some of his diehard supporters wondered how he would distinguish himself in a crowded field of candidates, especially when many claimed to embrace his left-wing ideals.

They were aided by Kamala Harris, who released her own health care plan shortly before the event. Harris’ campaign claimed that its proposal also constituted Medicare for All, and the Sanders campaign pounced, with campaign manager Faiz Shakir emailing supporters that “[h]er plan is centered around privatizing Medicare, enriching insurance executives and introducing more corporate greed and profiteering into the Medicare system.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/13/bernie-sanders-medicare-for-all-2020-election-1459217

[comradebillyboy]

16. Is Holly Otterbein really a Sanders surrrogate? I found her

stories to be fairly objective and balanced. And I am not one of Senator Sanders supporters.

Otherwise I am in agreement with your take.

[SouthernProgressive]

19. You need to go no further than her twitter page.

For the most part, it is simply pro-Sanders with droppings of anti-Biden sentiment.

https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Please don't get me wrong, some of her pieces are excellent. That includes the blatantly pro-Sanders pieces. But it is clear she is there to help him.

[Cha]

26. ..

[George II]

4. When he questions why the Wash Post "doesn't write particularly good articles about me"....

....perhaps he should look introspectively?

[Cha]

6. But are they true?

I read they were also complaining about the polls that were published.. something about them being "flawed"..

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1287&pid=238496

[George II]

7. Did Weaver actually say which polls and how they were flawed? I'm thinking he didn't.

Just toss out an accusation and make everyone scurry for the facts, or not bother but believe him.

[Cha]

8. Exactly.. you got it.

[lapucelle]

12. Here's what VT Digger's political columnist had to say.

As an example, Weaver said a recent Quinnipiac University poll showing Sanders far behind Biden (32% to 14%) inspired 47 news stories, while a poll by Democracy Corps giving Biden a mere nine-point lead was the subject of only two stories.

Clearly, an anti-Sanders media cabal. What else could possibly explain such a disparity?

Well, maybe that the Quinnipiac poll was taken from Aug. 1 through Aug. 5, sampled 807 likely Democratic voters, and was the product of a highly respected polling firm with no known ideological leanings, while the Democracy Corps poll, run by proudly leftish Democrats, reached only 484 likely Democratic voters up to two weeks earlier.

So maybe paying more attention to the Quinnipiac poll reflected sound editorial judgment, not anti-Sanders bias.

snip===================================================================

[T]he “Bernie blackout” turns out to have been not so well documented after all. Neither is the “Bernie write-off” about which the campaign now complains.

Not that it has no evidence at all. Sanders pollster Ben Tulchin notes that while several media outlets ran stories about the campaign’s problems, “new independent polling analysis finds that Sanders has gained the most support of any candidate since the second round of debates and is solidly in second place among the field.”

That’s not inaccurate. The independent polling analysis to which Tulchin referred was from FiveThirtyEight, and it showed that in a weighted average of five post-debate polls Sanders gained … (drum roll here) … 1.8 percentage points.

Better than anyone else, but a thin reed on which to base an accusation of bias because political reporters were not impressed. It’s not all that impressive.

https://vtdigger.org/2019/08/13/margolis-sanders-whining-is-not-good-political-strategy/

[Cha]

25. Mahalo, lapucelle!

[lapucelle]

10. Here are some more details about Jeff Weaver's allegations concerning coverage and poll reporting.

The Bernie Sanders campaign is frustrated. Some might even go so far as to say they have had it with all the fake news about the electoral chances of the current runner-up in the Democratic primary race.

At least that was the tone of campaign officials’ most recent press call.

Jeff Weaver said Sanders has gained momentum in the presidential race but he complained that the Vermont senator hasn’t received the coverage he deserves after a strong showing in the second primary debate. The senior campaign adviser told reporters Monday that the imbalance isn’t fair.

snip===================================================================

“There seems to be a direct correlation between the media coverage of polls and Bernie Sanders’ specific standing in those polls,” Weaver said. In his telling, “the better the number is in the poll, the less coverage it receives. And the worse he does, the more it receives.”

Weaver wondered, for instance, why a recent Quinnipiac University poll showing Sanders trailing former Vice President Joe Biden 32% to 14% received extensive coverage; 47 stories were published about that survey, he said.

But another poll, this one conducted by the left-leaning Democracy Corps, was largely overlooked. It showed Sanders trailing Biden just 31% to 22%. Only two stories were written about it, according to Weaver.

snip===================================================================

“MSNBC repeatedly puts polling statistics on the air that are not accurate,” he said, asserting also that CNN ran an unfair story about Sanders’ appeal slowing. Negativity at the Washington Post, he added, “is legion.”

The campaign is rolling out evidence to support an alternative narrative. “The polling data clearly shows that Bernie’s campaign is doing very well in a solid second place and has momentum and has made up ground especially after the second debate,” pollster Ben Tulchin insisted. “There is a lot of data to verify that, as opposed to cherry-picking a couple polls that don’t have Bernie doing as well, which are outliers.”

snip===================================================================

Here's Nate Silvers' take on the allegations:

“We've been tracking press coverage all primary long and Sanders has consistently been at or near the top of the field in terms of the volume of news coverage he's received,” Nate Silver, the editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, responded on Twitter before the press call was over.

It isn’t unusual for campaign flacks and reporters to go back and forth over coverage. Increasingly, though, that bickering now happens out in the open.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/13/sanders_campaign_accuses_press_of_bernie_write-off_140997.html?fbclid=IwAR2SpnrypQECs43NBzVPFgS7rFH9cTiahq-WZwwrlIyZueKhUewpYitGK1o

******************************************************************************************

Here's a link to the poll Weaver claims should have received as more coverage.

https://democracycorps.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Dcorps_July-National-Poll-072819-FQ-1.pdf

******************************************************************************************

Here's some information on the organization that did the polling.

Democracy Corps is a left-of-center 501(c)(4) research and advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1999 by Democratic Party pollster Stanley Greenberg and Democratic Party strategist James Carville, who had worked for the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton. The group provides polling and strategic research to left-wing candidates and organizations.

https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/democracy-corps/

******************************************************************************************

You can read VT Digger's coverage of the Weaver conference call here:

https://vtdigger.org/2019/08/12/sanders-adviser-criticizes-press-for-writing-off-campaign/

[comradebillyboy]

17. Somebody did her homework here. Nice post lapucelle.

[Cha]

22. Mahalo, lapucelle!!!!

Great information and verifies what some of us already know from experience.

[ehrnst]

14. Word is that he's furious that WaPO published a story on the labor dispute in his campaign.

Hence his anger, and attempt to discredit Marty Baron's journalistic integrity.

[comradebillyboy]

18. He's furious the Post won't be his stenographer.

[ehrnst]

21. Yes - that too. (nt)

[Cha]

27. Gee.. that's too bad.

[lapucelle]

9. Any candidate who launches an attack on several reliable news sources

based on alleged conspiracies rooted in the belief that journalists and editors are inherently biased and corrupt has probably disqualified him or herself from high office.

We already have a president who has eroded people's trust in journalism by shouting "fake news" every time he sees coverage he doesn't like and who founded his own personal news media via the internet in order to serve his fans thirst for bias confirmation. We certainly don't need another.

[Vegas Roller]

11. Eating crow is good for mental health

Unless he is just pretending to eat crow while eating chicken.

[NYMinute]

13. Anything to get in the news to seek relevance

first by attacking the media
then by walking it back

Just a publicity stunt

[Gothmog]

20. Opinion: Bernie Sanders's real media problem

Link to tweet

So let me offer an explanation of what Sanders’s real media problem is: Right now Sanders 2020 is suffering from the comparison with Sanders 2016, when his candidacy was a captivating new phenomenon that turned what could have been a dull coronation for Hillary Clinton into a real contest. That made him compelling to reporters — again, always drawn to what’s new and what creates conflict — who wrote story after story about this fascinating campaign, particularly the unlikely fact that a rumpled 74-year-old had become the hero of college students everywhere. They covered his policy proposals, but they also covered all the attendant human-interest sidelights such as people getting Bernie tattoos.

Sanders’s current candidacy doesn’t provide that same narrative interest. He’s just one candidate among many, running somewhere between second and fourth in every poll — a part of the big story, to be sure, but not the primary protagonist/antagonist, depending on the framing. If during the 2016 primaries he was getting something like half the coverage, most of it positive, now he can expect only to get a much smaller portion of a pie that has been sliced into many more pieces. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but you’d have to define what “fair” coverage would look like for all the candidates to say for sure.

It’s not as though Sanders is being ignored. I did a search on The Post’s website and found 28 articles and videos mentioning him that appeared just this Monday and Tuesday. FiveThirtyEight monitors the volume of cable news coverage of the candidates, and what you see is that coverage pretty well tracks poll standing: Joe Biden gets the most, followed by Sanders, Warren and Kamala D. Harris clustered together. You might be able to make a case for why that’s wrong, but you can’t say it’s particularly unfair to Sanders.

And here’s the thing: I’m sure Sanders knows how this all works. He’s a smart guy, and he has been around for a long time. In most of the comments he and his aides make on this topic, you can tell they understand the incentives and proclivities of the media perfectly well.

[Cha]

23. Thanks Goth!

[Cha]

24. yeah, you better.