Media bias against Bernie Sanders

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Various media outlets have raised concerns that the mainstream media in the United States have made a concerted effort to downplay, underreport, or ignore the popularity of Bernie Sanders, primarily concerning both his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. Accusations have ranged from explicit media bias, journalistic malpractice, and distortions of information and data. Alternative media such as Rising with the Hill's Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti (by The Hill), Jacobin, Vox, Common Dreams, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, among others, have published articles, videos, and reports discussing what they see as an alleged media bias against Bernie Sanders. The campaign runs its own media platforms—many of which discuss media bias and what they call the Bernie Blackout.
Accusations of bias often revolve around themes concerning the concentration of media ownership, profit-driven special interests, manufacturing consent and the propaganda model, general media propaganda, conflicts of interests, and agenda-setting theory. The most prominent media organizations being accused of bias have been MSNBC, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. Many of the media organizations have responded to the criticisms in various ways through rebuttals, criticism, and analysis. Various studies have been done in an effort to document statistical data in regard to news coverage of presidential candidates. Legitimacy of the bias has been called into question by some political commentators.
Background
Sanders is a self-styled democratic socialist, who has avoided party affiliation throughout his political career. In the U.S. two party system, Sanders is ideologically closer to the Democratic Party, In an interview with USA Today on April 29, Sanders stated that he was "running in this election to win," and launched a campaign website, effectively beginning his run. Sanders said he was motivated to enter the race by what he termed "obscene levels" of income disparity, and the campaign finance system. On May 26, 2015, Sanders officially announced his candidacy at Burlington's Waterfront Park.
Early campaign months
In September 2015, John Sides, a Political Science Professor at Vanderbilt University, found that media coverage of Sanders was consistent with how well he was polling, noting that candidates who poll well get more news coverage. Sides also noted that to what extent Sanders was covered, the coverage was generally more favorable than that of Clinton.
In October 2015, Story Hinckley of the The Christian Science Monitor published an article discussing what he called a "near-blackout from major TV news sources". He indicated that at the time, Sanders was polling high and bringing in significant donations, yet the mainstream media was giving insufficient coverage of the campaign. According to an analysis by Media Matters for America, media networks overwhelmingly covered Hillary Clinton's email controversy, while ignoring Sanders' campaign. In a study of campaign coverage conducted by Andrew Tyndall, ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted 504 minutes to the presidential race, with 338 minutes devoted to the Republican race, 128 minutes to the Democratic race, and a total of 8 minutes devoted to Bernie Sanders (compared to 145 minutes for Trump, 82 minutes for Clinton, 83 minutes for Clinton's email controversy, and 43 minutes to Jeb Bush).
Later campaign months
In an article published by FAIR, Adam Johnson documented that the Washington Post ran 16 stories about Bernie Sanders over a period of 16 hours, all of which were allegedly presented "in a negative light, mainly by advancing the narrative that he’s a clueless white man incapable of winning over people of color or speaking to women." The Washington Post responded to this claim, stating that FAIR's definition of negative was overly broad, and "conflated news, analysis and opinion". They also noted 16 stories in one day which presented Sanders in a positive light.
The New York Times received criticism when they retroactively made significant changes to an article about Bernie Sanders' legislative accomplishments over the past 25 years. The article was originally titled "Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years Via Legislative Side Doors" but was subsequently changed to "Via Legislative Side Doors, Bernie Sanders Won Modest Victories." In addition to the revised title, several paragraphs were added as well. Margaret Sullivan at the New York Times opined 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 Mr. Sanders’s legislative accomplishments than one who saw it hours later." Katie Halper from FAIR noted in response to a defense of the changes that, "in its original form, the article didn’t cast enough doubt on Sanders’ viability and ability to govern." The report found that,
Patterson stated that,
In her book A Rhetoric of Divisive Partisanship: The 2016 American Presidential Campaign Discourse of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Colleen Elizabeth Kelly noted that Sanders and Clinton got a share of news coverage that was similar to their eventual primary results, until the stage of the campaign when 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, with Kelly 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.
Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
According to the 2018 book Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America by political scientists John Sides (of Vanderbilt University), Michael Tesler (of University of California at Irvine) and Lynn Vavreck (University of California, Los Angeles), "Sanders’s appeal, like Trump’s, depended on extensive and often positive media coverage." Sanders benefitted from media coverage in 2015, which was more positive than media coverage of Clinton. 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 shows that "Sanders’s 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. Meanwhile, Clinton received more negative media coverage."
2020 primary campaign
February
Shane Ryan from Paste Magazine opined that, like in 2016 with Washington Post's 16 negative posts about Bernie in 16 hours report by FAIR, the 48 hours of Sanders declaration to run, the Post published four negative articles about him, two of which were by the same author. Jennifer Rubin immediately criticized Sanders as a dated, unpopular candidate upon which the next day he reached record fundraising numbers. Rubin continued to disparage the senator's success in what Ryan called, "a great big point-missing whiff, and a lame attempt at self-justification after being made to look like a fool a day earlier."
July
Katie Halper in FAIR documented a number of cases where the media was utilizing selective poll reporting and distortions of graphics. In her article, she starts with an MSNBC 2020 matchup against Trump poll on March 7. The poll showed Biden at 53%, Sanders at 49%, and Warren and Kamala at 48%. Sanders however, was listed as being in fourth place. A similar sequence error was made on MSNBC on March 15 with Sanders in a third place order despite being in second numerically. On May 24, Chuck Todd of Meet The Press reported a Quinnipiac Poll that found Sanders had gone up by 5 points between April 30 and May 21 whereas Todd signed it as if Sanders had gone down by 5 points. On April 29, Velshe and Ruhle of MSNBC inaccurately displayed the data of a Monmouth poll that put Sanders at 27% polling with white voters and Biden at 25%. The MSNBC graphic showed Biden at 28%; a three point difference not in accordance with the poll. In a segment by Rachel Maddow on April 29, she showed a graphic with candidates leading with female donations. Kirsten Gillibrand was highest at 52% with women while Sanders was at the bottom at 33%. Maddow did not mention that the data was only based on donations of $200 or more (the only data that is itemized based on gender).
August
Sanders along with various members of his campaign have spoken out directly about the media bias. After Sanders led the movement to pressure Amazon to pay its employees $15 an hour, "I talk about all of the time... And then I wonder why The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn't write particularly good articles about me. I don't know why." According to CNN, Sanders said, "We have pointed out over and over again that Amazon made $10 billion in profits last year. You know how much they paid in taxes? You got it, zero! Any wonder why The Washington Post is not one of my great supporters, I wonder why?" He added, "New York Times not much better". An executive editor of 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."
Around the same time, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told CNN,
Sanders responded to the entire discourse in the end by stating,

Chris Cillizza from CNN opined that Sanders and Shakir,
Domenico Montanaro from NPR opined that, "the remark sounded an awful lot like the kind of criticism leveled by someone else" indicating that Sanders mimicked Trump's criticism of the media. However, in the same interview where Bernie Sanders criticized The Washington Post, he explicitly stated that Trump was undermining American democracy and that, "There are some really great articles out there, like investigations, which we use, so I don't think media is fake news."
In These Times analysis
In November 2019, the Chicago left-wing magazine In These Times published an in-depth article analyzing the coverage of the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary by MSNBC between August and September 2019. They focused primarily on Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joe Biden. The analysis covered The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, All In with Chris Hayes, The Beat with Ari Melber, Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and The Rachel Maddow Show while categorizing positive, neutral, and negative discussion of the candidates. The analysis found that Sanders was discussed 36% of the time, compared to 43% for Warren and 64% Biden. The author notes that part of this discrepancy may be attributed to the Trump-Ukraine scandal. As for positive and negative mentions, 12.9% were positive towards Sanders, while 20.7% were negative—the most likely of the three. Most of the negative mentions came from Hardball and the 11th Hour. In comparison, 11.4% of comments towards Biden were negative, with 23.3% positive. The analysis found numerous inaccurate claims made by various political commentators regarding all candidates. Almost all the coverage discussed polls. Supporters of Sanders allege that it focused unevenly on minor candidates. Left leaning magazine Current Affairs wrote that even though the segment "found time to talk about Joe Sestak and Steve Bullock, plus plenty of candidates struggling to get out of single-digit poll numbers" it did not include "even a photo of Bernie Sanders." This article later was cited in an article by Common Dreams which levied the same accusation, describing it as part of the supposed "Bernie Blackout".
Response to criticisms
Various commentators have responded, criticized, or offered explanations of the various accusations of media bias. In addition, many researchers and institutions have published works analyzing these allegations.
Vox has claimed that in some situations, Sanders actually receives overly positive bias.
In 2016, the Harvard University Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy found that major media coverage of the Sanders 2016 campaign was scant in the early months of the campaign but as his candidacy gained traction and popularity among voters, media coverage increased steadily and was "overwhelmingly positive in tone," according to the study. In 2015, "Sanders’ coverage in 2015 was the most favorable of any of the top candidates, Republican or Democratic," the study found. In addition the ratio of positive over negative coverage on Sanders' policy positions was much higher than candidates from either party. A 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.
Politico put forth the idea that the Sanders campaign's perception of bias may be an artifact of Sanders propensity to turn down interviews and be willing to address breaking news stories. Dan Pfeiffer of Crooked Media, quoted by Politico, questioned the effectiveness of critiquing the media coverage by the press over the Sanders campaign. "Unfortunately for the Sanders campaign, the press too often considers complaints from the left as validation of their objectivity and complaints from the right as something worth addressing to prove their objectivity" Pfeiffer said when comparing the accusations with the technique of the right-wing having, "unbelievable success working the refs by calling the mainstream media biased against them".
Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron characterized Sanders' suggestions that Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, was influencing the Washington Post<nowiki/>'s coverage as a "conspiracy theory." Washington Post columnist Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote that Sanders was making a smart case of media bias that was uniquely different from Trump's explicit criticism; indicating that, "the gatekeepers of established opinion no longer hold as much sway, when new forms of communication and independent media challenge the old. It’s not surprising that the corporate media gives Sanders bad press. Thankfully, though, that matters less and less."
A controversy arose between the Sanders campaign and the Post in late August concerning fact-checking. The Post gave Sanders "Three Pinocchios" (meaning mostly false) for his claim on medical debt. Sanders has consistently maintained 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. The Post then claimed that the paper was not peer-reviewed. Upon inspection it was found that the paper was peer reviewed.
Paul Heintz suggested that Sanders' solution to his concern about media bias would be complete, verbatim coverage of his pronouncements.
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.
Domenico Montanaro of NPR claimed that Sanders sounded like Trump in his criticism of the media, quoting Trump's tweet, "...he failing New York Times and the Amazon Washington Post do nothing but write bad stories even on very positive achievements - and they will never change!" NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik responded to criticisms of bias against Sanders in April 2016 by noting 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.
In March 2019, a preliminary study by Northeastern University's School of Journalism found that Sanders was receiving the most positive coverage of any major candidate in the Democratic primary, while an expanded, updated analysis in April placed him third out of eight candidates; a further update for June-September 2019 found that Sanders's positive coverage ranked fourth out of eight major candidates.

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