>> The media coverage of Bernie Sanders' candidacy seems very reminiscent of the 2016 media coverage
of his candidacy.
And it's finally gotten to Bernie, and he's responding to the way he's covered.
And also the general lack of coverage that he's experienced so far.
Here he is talking about one particular outlet.
Anybody here know how much Amazon paid in taxes last year?
Nothing.
Yeah, and I talk about that 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.
So he was immediately attacked about that.
By the Washington Post.
What a twist, I didn't see that coming.
They're biased, though.
Bernie attacked them.
So they had a headline, Sanders accuses The Post of biased coverage due to his criticism
of Amazon, cites no evidence.
And then two lines in, they say he cited no evidence.
So Martin Baron, Washington Post Executive Editor, said, Senator Sanders is a member
of a large club of politicians of every ideology who complain about their coverage.
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.
Okay.
As one example of what he's talking about.
And this is not just the Washington Post, but it's a lot of mainstream coverage.
Someone put together a list of all of the polls recently and how Bernie did in it.
And they showed how many media stories were written about each one, and as he did worse
in the polls, the number shot up.
So if he did pretty well, one, or two, or even zero stories were written about it.
There was one where he did really badly, 47 different articles were written about it.
Let me give you specifics on that exact one.
It was a Quinnipiac University poll, and there, Biden was beating Sanders 32 to 14.
That's a big range, or obviously a big difference.
Biden's significantly leading that one poll, 47 stories written about it.
Okay, look, look, let's be fair.
There was a Democracy Corps poll right around the same time, because these polls fluctuate.
That one was way closer, 31 to 22.
In fact, that has Biden dropping, Sanders gaining.
He did really well in the debate last time around, and in fact, the polls indicated he
rose.
When you go to a Real Clear Politics average, the average of all the polls, he rose by two
points.
So Sanders clearly rising after the debates, that's a fact, right?
And so Democracy Corps is more close to the average of the polls, where he's closing in
on Biden, 31 to 22.
So how many people wrote about that?
Was it 45, was it less than the 47?
Like high 30s?
Maybe 49, maybe more people wrote about it.
You know how many people wrote about that?
Two, two articles about that poll, 47 articles about the poll where he's not doing well.
And they claim that they're like, what bias?
No, we criticize all the politicians, really?
If you're a mainstream media reporter, editor, publisher, it doesn't matter, and you can't
see that the coverage against Bernie Sanders is more negative.
Well, it's like asking a fish, how's the water?
And he says, what water?
How's your bias?
What bias?
How can you not see that?
How could you not see that?
It actually proves your bias.
Here, I'll give you another data point.
Look, I love Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
I think they're both wonderful progressives.
Anybody who watches TYT knows that I think that, right?
And knows that that is 100% the case.
Yet I could objectively say that they have received different coverage.
In the beginning, Elizabeth Warren was criticized over the nonsense racist attacks against her
by Trump, Pocahontas, etc.
But since then, her coverage has been good to arguably great.
Which I'm thrilled about, I'm thrilled about it.
So you don't see me coming out here and going, I like Warren, but damn it, they're being
unfair to her.
No, because then I'm being unfair.
Thank God for the first time in my lifetime they're treating a progressive fairly.
I think that if Bernie Sanders wasn't in the race, that might be a different dynamic, but
that's the case.
But I can see that clearly and objectively, even though I support her.
On the other hand, almost every article, almost every one about Bernie Sanders, is negative.
Once, every once in a blue moon, literally once every three months, there'll be a positive
article.
We'll come on here and be like, my God, somebody wrote a positive article about Bernie Sanders,
that's unbelievable, breaking all records.
And Baron, who's, look, otherwise a good editor, and Washington Post does some good journalism.
They do.
But on the other hand, they also have one attack after another, certainly all of their
editorial section, right?
From the Never Trumpers, to the conservative Democrats, to the establishment Democrats,
to the right wing, to the Trump people.
They all are unified only around one thing, how much they despise Bernie Sanders.
If as an editor you can't see that, your bias is deeper than any other bias that I've ever
seen.
So it's about damn time Bernie fought back.
I love that he's fighting back.
Yeah, and we're gonna play, he responded to the criticism of his criticism.
Really fast, I wanna mention, though, the difficulty is when you say, the media is biased.
It's very easy for members of the media to be like, well, I'm not biased, maybe other
people are, I'm not.
Even Washington Post, that's a lot of different people, they would rebut the charge.
But we know, even at the individual level, how difficult it is for these people, who
were fine, professional at their job for the most part, to see their bias.
And I think you interacted with them today actually.
Nate Silver was tweeting a ton about Bernie.
He really does not think that he's biased against Bernie Sanders, even though it drips
from every one of his tweets constantly.
And you like Nate Silver.
I generally do.
Nate Silver likes numbers, and nobody else does anymore, so I kinda like that.
Aside from the fact that I can see that he's clearly biased against Bernie Sanders.
I generally am a fan of him.
I like his website, I follow their live coverage from time to time.
No, but the irony was built into the tweets that Nate did today about that.
He's like, he thinks the media is biased against him.
Eye roll, hey haha, ridiculous, Bernie Sanders sucks.
You see how we're not biased against him?
Nate, look at your tweets.
I'm paraphrasing, obviously.
He didn't say the sucks part, but he did do the weird eye roll thing.
Yeah, he did the eye roll.
No, but the second tweet was full-blown criticism of Bernie Sanders while saying, I can't believe
he thinks we're biased.
Yeah.
How do you not see, you just wrote it.
Look, I don't like Joe Biden as our nominee, it's not personal.
As a person, he's probably a decent guy.
But I call him Status Quo Joe.
But unlike the establishment media, I don't go around pretending to be neutral.
I call him Status Quo Joe because I don't think he's the right candidate, and I'm a
progressive.
Whereas they go, no, no, no, I'm neutral.
My opinion is the correct opinion, hence it is objective.
And if you disagree with me, then you're biased.
But I by definition am not biased cuz I think the establishment is awesome, and I write
positively about almost every establishment candidate.
And I despise Bernie Sanders, and I spit on him three times a day.
But you're the one who's biased.
What?
Look, finally, even that same Washington Post article, look at the framing.
At the end, they compared him to Trump.
Yeah.
Yeah, I wonder right?
And by the way, look, knuckleheads.
These guys, these media reporters, and publishers, and stuff, and there's a lot of good guys
there, and they do a lot of good journalism.
But when it comes to politics, they just literally cannot see how biased they are.
That cloud is so thick, that group think is so thick in front of them.
But guys, if you do this without the context, and it's not like we don't see when you say,
hey, Joe Biden made a gaffe.
And they're like, but I guess you ignore that?
No, we don't ignore that, we see it.
Stop patronizing us when in reality you're the biased ones and can't see straight.
Did you know we also once criticized Gillibrand?
Yes, of course we know that, but we're asking you to look at the full context.
But then you also write positive things about Joe Biden, and you will also claim without
any evidence that Joe Biden is more electable.
Why, well, he appeals to the same people as Trump.
But Trump's polling in the 30s, right, so that doesn't make any sense.
But you'll say it as a matter of fact, as a matter of course, without disclosing your
bias.
And then finally, in that headline, they say Sanders says this, citing no evidence.
Wait, wait a minute.
First of all, there was two different events.
There was the call that gentleman was referring to, led by his campaign, where they cited
evidence, including the polling, how much coverage received, etc.
So you can't say they didn't cite any evidence in the call.
So I guess you've selectively chosen to ignore where they made their major point and take
that 15-second clip of Bernie Sanders talking about the Washington Post.
But you know that's in the middle of his speech.
And if you ask them for evidence, they can give you reams of evidence.
The famous 16 headlines in 24 hours that the Washington Post did in 2016.
And I covered it when Bernie made his announcement this time around.
Four articles about Bernie Sanders in the Washington Post, all four deeply negative.
Some of them were editorials, some of them were articles.
But I read you the exact verbiage, and it was scathing.
So to say in the title, cites no evidence, as if there is no evidence, and then he's
a Looney Toon that's just making stuff up like Trump.
And then saying, see, I'm not biased against him, is preposterous.
Well, two can play that game.
Cuz the title of this video is gonna be, Amazon Says He Cites No Evidence, But Cites No Evidence.
Aha.
And guys, we're not like the right wing.
We know that Bezos owns the Washington Post, not Amazon.
And it doesn't have to be that Bezos comes into your news room and goes, okay, hey John,
you're gonna write this, and Sally, you're writing this.
And remember, protect Libertarians, and we wanna pay no taxes.
But in the choices that you make and the people that you hire, who gets to select the people
writing the articles.
Who gets to select the editors, who gets to select the Op-Ed writers, on and on and on.
And you think that doesn't filter down?
And then they mentioned, Bernie is being conspiratorial.
And then sometimes they'll say, could it make a difference that you're multibillion dollar
organizations?
Now, Washington Post, to be fair, is not worth that much.
But overall, most of the media organizations are worth a tremendous amount of money, and
mostly owned by corporations.
Now, in this case, Bezos owns it personally.
But I say, well, their profit motive, in terms of the advertisers, drug companies, oil companies,
etc., defense contractors that advertise on cable news and other media outlets, that could
influence you.
And then reporters will turn around and go, that sounds conspiratorial.
Corporations wanna make money?
Really, do you hear yourself?
Do you hear yourself?
Yes, multibillion dollar corporations want to make money.
And yes, their advertising might affect them.
And maybe, just maybe, you should keep that in mind while writing headlines and picking
editors so that you're more careful, not less careful.