The Bernie Blackout Is Real, and These Screenshots Prove It

This is sickening, infuriating, chilling, dangerous! BEWARE THE BRAINWASHING OF THE CORPORATE MAINSTREAM MEDIA!!

And my friend Betsy Anjani Toll’s words are absolutely spot on —
This is indeed the time of unraveling. The Senate has decided, predictably, that it can determine the president's innocence or guilt based on hearing ... well ... zero testimony and zero documentation. Following suit, mainstream, huge-platform media figure that will work for the electorate as well. MSM is doubling down on their complicity in the 2016 DNC debacle that gave us the failed election and brought us to this shameful and painful moment in our history. Altering data, literally erasing all mention of the leading progressive candidate in some instances, the DNC and MSM are guaranteeing there will be no change in November. Rough waters ahead ...

By Nolan Higdon &Mickey Huff

It’s 2020, but it could well be 2016 all over again — history is repeating itself as the cadre of neoliberal Democratic Party leaders who worked to derail Sen. Bernie Sanders’s previous presidential bid four years ago are once again projecting their confirmation biased, pro-corporate agendas into the primaries. Along with an establishment media that frames the issue of “electability” in favor of party centrists and moderates, these interests work against more popularly polling progressive candidates, like Sanders, first by ignoring them, then by attack.

Back in 2016, Democratic National Committee’s efforts to suppress Sanders’s chances included giving Hillary Clinton advance notice of debate questions, engaging anti-Semitism by emphasizing Sanders’s Jewish heritage and counting delegates’ votes before they had voted, to cite a few examples.

Four years later, they are once again aligning with many corporate media outlets to try to portray Sanders as an unelectable outlier, despite clear and mounting polling evidence to the contrary.

Reporting from establishment outlets like The New York Times illustrates a clear double standard: While referring to Sanders as a “divisive” candidate, the Times remains silent on former President Barrack Obama’s remarks about how he will work to stop a Sanders nomination, and Hillary Clinton’s recent statements implying she would not get behind a Sanders candidacy. Clinton went even further, attacking progressive policies and candidates, especially Sanders.

As we noted in our book United States of Distraction, CNN, Washington Post and The New York Times tacitly admitted their reporting on the 2016 election was inadequate and flawed, and didn’t go far enough to inform voters. However, despite their mea culpae, these same establishment media outlets continue to censor progressive positions and distort the facts for audiences. The people, policies, debates, pundits and media coverage have remained mostly static. One of the tactics up until now has been to try to ignore progressives, and Sanders in particular. But, before voters take to the polls, we want former Clinton supporters to recognize that, just like many Trump voters, they are being led to vote against their own interests, and the broader interests of the public, by the corporate news media and party establishment leaders who have done their best to create a Bernie blackout.

The Bernie Blackout

“The Bernie blackout is real; it is not just a figment of our imagination. It almost seems like every morning these networks get a script that says ‘blackout Bernie Sanders,’” said the national campaign co-chair of Sanders’s presidential campaign, Nina Turner, on a December 5, 2019, episode of “The Rising.” Indeed, GDELT, a real-time open data global graph tracker, found that Sanders was covered three to four times less than Joe Biden in 2019 despite being neck and neck in the polls. Similarly, a November 2019 In These Times poll found that MSNBC gave Sanders the least frequent coverage and the most negative of overall coverage. This is especially shocking given that Sanders has been polling in first or second place.

Censoring Progressivism: Where's Bernie?

For most of 2019, the corporate press sought to undermine Sanders’s campaign by pretending it did not exist. For example, a Fox News headline noted the first- and third-place candidates Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren respectively, but ignored Sanders who was in second place and added a picture of Pete Buttigieg who was polling in single digits.

Please continue this article here: https://truthout.org/articles/the-bernie-blackout-is-real-and-these-screenshots-prove-it/