In what has to be some kind of record, the Washington Post ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours, between roughly 10:20 PM EST Sunday, March 6, to 3:54 PM EST Monday, March 7—a window that includes the crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, and the next morning’s spin:
- March 6, 10:20 PM: Bernie Sanders Pledges the US Won’t Be No. 1 in Incarceration. He’ll Need to Release Lots of Criminals
- March 7, 12:39 AM: Clinton Is Running for President. Sanders Is Doing Something Else
- March 7, 4:04 AM: This Is Huge: Trump, Sanders Both Using Same Catchphrase
- March 7, 4:49 AM: Mental Health Patients to Bernie Sanders: Don’t Compare Us to the GOP Candidates
- March 7, 6:00 AM: ‘Excuse Me, I’m Talking’: Bernie Sanders Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Repeatedly
- March 7, 9:24 AM: Bernie Sanders’s Two Big Lies About the Global Economy
- March 7, 8:25 AM: Five Reasons Bernie Sanders Lost Last Night’s Democratic Debate
- March 7, 8:44 AM: An Awkward Reality for Bernie Sanders: A Strategy Focused on Whiter States
- March 7, 8:44 AM: Bernie Sanders Says White People Don’t Know What It’s Like to Live in a ‘Ghetto.’ About That…
- March 7, 11:49 AM: The NRA Just Praised Bernie Sanders — and Did Him No Favors in Doing So
- March 7, 12:55 PM: Even Bernie Sanders Can Beat Donald Trump
- March 7, 1:08 PM: What Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Get About Arguing With Hillary Clinton
- March 7, 1:44 PM: Why Obama Says Bank Reform Is a Success but Bernie Sanders Says It’s a Failure
- March 7, 2:16 PM: Here’s Something Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders Have in Common: And the Piece of the Argument That Bernie Doesn’t Get Quite Right.
- March 7, 3:31 PM: ‘Excuse Me!’: Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know How to Talk About Black People
- March 7, 3:54 PM: And the Most Partisan Senator of 2015 Is … Bernie Sanders!
All of these posts paint his candidacy 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. Even the one article about Sanders beating Trump implies this is somehow a surprise—despite the fact that Sanders consistently out-polls Hillary Clinton against the New York businessman.
There were two posts in this time frame that one could consider neutral: “These Academics Say Bernie Sanders’ College Plan Will Be a Boon for African-American Students, Will It?” and “Democratic Debate: Clinton, Sanders Spar Over Fracking, Gun Control, Trade and Jobs.” None could be read as positive.
While the headlines don’t necessarily reflect all the nuances of the text, as I’ve noted before, only 40 percent of the public reads past the headlines, so how a story is labeled is just as important, if not more so, than the substance of the story itself.
The Washington Post was sold in 2013 to libertarian Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is worth approximately $49.8 billion.
Despite being ideologically opposed to the Democratic Party (at least in principle), Bezos has enjoyed friendly ties with both the Obama administration and the CIA. As Michael Oman-Reagan notes, Amazon was awarded a $16.5 million contract with the State Department the last year Clinton ran it. Amazon also has over $600 million in contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization Sanders said he wanted to abolish in 1974, and still says he “had a lot of problems with.” FAIR has previously criticized the Washington Post for failing to disclose, when reporting on tech giant Uber, that Bezos also owns more than $1 billion in Uber stock.
The Washington Post’s editorial stance has been staunchly anti-Sanders, though the paper contends that its editorial board is entirely independent of both Bezos and the paper’s news reporting.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Andrew DuPree
Thank you. Very important information to disseminate.
darlise stallworth
Somebody count the number of negative stories run about Hillary Clinton over the last thirty years!
Herb Fumeur
FAIR draws attention to media bias by organization, not the media as a whole. WaPo if blatantly biased toward the Democratic establishment. That’s the point of this article.
Corey
I’m a big Bernie Sanders supporter and I’ve actually really been enjoying the post’s coverage of the election.
Until today. Today was just too all over the place.
I actually feel like the article about him campaigning mostly to white people is actually quite accurate. It’s been one of my complaints with Bernie since the start.
alsanbalaur
That anyone still thinks there is unbiased and impartial journalism ANYWHERE in the U.S. is astounding. Money talks, more loudly than truth. America has decided that money is more important than ANY other factor. Money trumps honesty, ecology, compassion, equality, religion, and our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. We are now the United States of Money, praying to the almighty dollar. And if “the little people’ aren’t making enough profit for the top 0.01% then they don’t count, have no value, no worth. God forbid that you have altruistic motives, disability,or weren’t able to get a superior education. If you belong to any of these categories, you are considered human garbage. Oh, and let’s not forget that you ALSO have to have the correct ethnic heritage. (European required, English preferred) give lip service to the correct flavor of the “Christian” Faith (Now with 60% less Christ), and admire the proper sports, and the right teams. Conform, obey, be the little drone making Master happy.
Bernie and his followers don’t subscribe to this currently popular “ideal” We think that people have value beyond the profit they can make for the corporate oligarchy. We believe that there is more to life than a race from cradle to grave to see who can provide the most capitalist fiscal gains to the top. Therefore, the Corporate Voice (media) is lashing out in childish fits of temper that more and more Americans are not buying into the Rat Race, and instead looking into the quality of a simple, but compassionate life. As the Revolution builds, as more Americans hear the truth in Bernie’s words, the corporatist elite media will make up more lies, more scatological idiocy to try and make something, ANYTHING stick to Bernie.
Cheryl
Truth! Today I Googled fair reporting on the Sanders campaign and that’s how I found this site. Surprise; nothing else came up!
JW
Jeff Bezos is a cock sucker; fuck the Washington Post
Kevin
Do you know that from personal experience?
Kaila
I can’t believe this! Another billionaire controlling the media…
Theresa Sanders
Your extremely biased & misleading reporting is going to come back & bite you in the backside! You are a disgrace to the profession of journalism, which, I guess puts ya’ll in the majority w/ the rest of the corrupt mainstream media. Maybe you journalists could have avoided selling out to keep your jobs, if you had been reporting on thrse corporate monopolies, before they took over! I f we can see it, surely you could, too! Or was it just greed?
Randy
Corey, have you been watching any of the debates or listening to the rally speeches? Bernie has been appealing to the black voter for a very long time.
Michael Burns
Thank you for this, FAIR.
Jo Lake
Disgusting… Read like Borowitz SATIRE.
She can’t win this primary fair, onbher merots, so let’s distort the character of the only honest man running.
Got some news for ya…Hillary will NOT win a general election either.
Jandre Scacks
“darlise stallworth
Somebody count the number of negative stories run about Hillary Clinton over the last thirty years!”
Are you serious? I think you completely missed the point (you know, that is over one DAY, not thirty years, that that day happens to fall on the primary of an important swing state, that the Sanders campaign is not pulling the strings of every attack made over Clinton during her political career, etc.)
Kathy
The war from the media/press and now on Facebook has started against Bernie’s campaign big time. Since last night on FB I’ve seen 3 incredible misleading articles against Bernie…ie. Hillary Clinton has a 45 to 55% lead over Bernie Sanders here in Michigan. That was from this morning, when I went to bed last night the spread was in single digits. It amazes me that journalism for the media /papers have sold their souls to these corporation’s for the sake of their jobs. Ted Koppel put a Fox commentator in their place recently for their “gutter tactics”. I wish
we could go back in time when integrity was a given for a journalist.
Instead now it’s like the sensationalism of ” reality TV”.
Barbara Hays
It’s all interesting to me because 8 years ago Clinton couldn’t buy good coverage of her campaign, even on relatively liberal stations like MSNBC. Night after night Mattews, Maddow, Olbermann and others ripped into her – clearly supporting Obama. I believe the difference is outlined above. The Clintons did their homework with the 1% cultivating and calling in chits over the past eight years. Money and the promise of other political payoffs does tend to work, which is why I’m supporting Sanders.
As for the issue about the Sanders’ campaign targeting only white voters, again, I believe — again — that the coverage has created this perception. HRC’s support in the south among blacks seems to have come about through a network of black churches and older civil rights activists like John Lewis. I am waiting to see how Bernie does in more diverse states. I would hope people would realize that her support among blacks in many of the southern states she has carried thus far will do NOTHING to bring those states into the ‘blue’ column in the Electoral College in the fall. To me it’s far more significant to watch how she does in states like Minnesota and Colorado and whether Bernie is more the choice of Dems in those states.
The media coverage of the Clinton and Sanders campaigns thus far is really awful – no wonder new voters feel the system is rigged against them.
Josh
Bernie supporters are such cry babies! They want everything to be free and for everyone to love Bernie! If you don’t like this, then don’t support this news agency. But here we go again with the “it’s so unfair!” bull! Hillary is going to get the nomination, so they are doing everything possible to try to justify his loss.
Carson
@Josh: No one can be so dense as to read this and then post that. You must be an astroturf commentator.
socko
We can expect this and MUCH much more from the corporate media as Bernie’s popularity continues to grow.
Gerardo
Bernie is scaring the poop out of these oligarchs!!!
Jandre Scacks
@Josh
Look, genius. You’re posting in the comments of a media watch group. If fact checking media sources is not something you can stomach, then what are you even doing here?
Joy
Jeff Bezos is supporting GOP and Hillary DNC.
Jeff Bezos & Hillary Clinton, together announced the global launch of the Kindle Mobile 4years ago. Also, he has been lobbying in Washington for tax cuts.
I hate his way.
“Bezos has donated to the nonprofit organization that publishes Reason.com, the Web site of the libertarian magazine with the same name. He also put $100,000 toward the defeat of a 2010 measure that would have imposed an income tax on top earners in the Evergreen State.”
“Amazon’s PAC gives to both parties: It’s also worth noting that Amazon.com has a political action committee, to which Bezos and his wife have donated. The PAC split its donations pretty evenly between Republican and Democratic candidates for Congress last cycle. Democratic House and Senate contenders received $93,000, while Republicans got $86,500, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/08/07/the-politics-of-jeff-bezos/
Sam Shepard
Surprised that the author didn’t note that 2 days before this happened, Bezos’ Nash Holdings LLC – the company that technically owns the Washington Post – gave four enormous checks to the Clinton campaign.
Timothy
…what’s even worse, Bernie’s opponent never receives negative press.
Cheryl
Canceling my subscription to the Washington Post today! Also just wanted to mention that I watched the CBS World ‘News’ last night and they only covered the Trump/Republican campaigns, no mention of Hillary or Bernie. Guess maybe they know how obviously biased they are looking???! Thanks for being the voice of truth and reason.
Myles
Boycott amazon and the post.. I am