UPDATE (3/10, 11:32am ET) —
Washington Post attempted to justify its clear bias — this attempt was shot down by FAIR’s Adam Johnson, in his piece, “Shocker: WaPo Investigates Itself for Anti-Sanders Bias, Finds There Was None”:
For a piece ostensibly intended to prove the Post unbiased, Borchers’ conclusion is problematic, in that it suggests that they are biased, but consider it compensatory:
Finally, even if we accept the idea that Post reporting, analysis and commentary combined to put Sanders through the wringer, I fail to see the inherent trouble. As I’ve written before, Sanders skated through the early portion of the primary season on stories about his “yuge” crowds and better-than-expected poll numbers. It was one of the perks of being an underdog.
Readers and voters don’t ask for media to use their coverage to offer “perks” or comeuppances to candidates as they see fit, but to render accurate coverage that reflects what voters are concerned about.
In this case, a dry-eyed reading suggests that the range of perspectives reflected by the Post‘s pundit roster simply does not include many people who identify with the challenge to the political establishment Sanders’ candidacy reflects—and considerably more people who feel an affinity with the network of political, economic and media elites who have thrown their support behind Clinton. That this should be reflected in their editorial decision-making is not particularly surprising, just worthy of consideration.
-Adam Johnson
My original post, below (3/8):
BREAKING —
Abandoning all pretense of ethical journalism, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post has decided it would rather attempt to derail Bernie Sanders’ candidacy for the White House than inform its readers. In the 16 hours following CNN’s Democratic Debate in Flint, Michigan, The Post ran 16 negative headlines on the candidate.
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting has compiled the headlines — many of which unfairly depict the Senator as sexist, racist, or extremist.
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!
-Adam Johnson
For comparison, here is one headline by CNN, who ran the debate: Bernie Sanders: 'My father's family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust'
The Post’s sensationalist, negative headlines are a profound disservice to our democracy — rather than discussing Sen. Sanders’ proposals on Women's Rights, Racial Justice, LGBT Rights, or other key issues — our democratic process has been reduced by The Post and other pundits to a set of misleading sound bites. The Washington Post wants its readers to think that Bernie Sanders is a racist, sexist demagogue, rather than a consistent advocate for social justice. Sen. Sanders has built a career in public service by fighting for economic justice & oppressed groups — and has won the endorsement of civil rights activists like Rev. Harold Middlebrook, as well as a range of humanitarians.
FAIR continues, explaining why The Post has an agenda here:
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
As FAIR mentions, Jeff Bezos has every reason to fear Bernie Sanders. Amazon might expect additional regulatory scrutiny if Sanders is elected President. Jeff Bezos’ company has a history of mistreating its workers. The NY Times reported that Amazon kept ambulances outside a warehouse in eastern Pennsylvania in 2011, carrying away laborers as they collapsed under terrible working conditions — greater than 100-degree heat.
Tech writers predicted this — Bezos wanted The Post in order to exert influence on public opinion & American politics. In his piece “Jeff Bezos Bought The Washington Post. But So Did Amazon,” Wired writer Cade Metz foresaw the gradual degeneration of The Post’s independent voice:
Traditionally, newspapers are owned by companies in the newspaper business, but we’re now moving into a world where they’re owned by individuals and companies with agendas outside the news world. John Henry runs the Red Sox. Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, which now owns several local newspapers, invests in everything else under the sun. There is at least the potential for people like Henry and Buffet to use their papers to promote their other interests.
Again, the Bezos buy takes this dynamic even further. The Post isn’t a local paper. With nearly 500,000 subscribers, it’s read on Capitol Hill and in the White House and across the country — and Amazon is a company that can benefit from that, in big ways. The online giant has long struggled to fight laws that would force it to pay sales tax in certain states, and more recently, it has faced complaints about working conditions in its warehouses.
You might argue that The Post’s influence is dwindling, and that it’s not the sort of paper that you could turn into your own mouthpiece. Bezos himself has said he won’t run the paper day-to-day. But the truth is that if you own the paper, you have an effect on its coverage — at least in subtle ways — and you can exert even greater influence on its op-ed page. Few pundits think Bezos would be so heavy-handed as to reinvent The Post in Amazon’s image, but as time goes on, that may change.
“There’s synergy for Amazon in that it’s great to own the opinion pages of The Washington Post, in Washington, D.C,” Doctor says. “It brings a huge amount of clout to issues that a huge company like Amazon will be involved in.”
-Wired
Bezos owns The Post — and the paper is under no legal obligation to disclose its conflicts of interest. Whenever a political candidate comes along who challenges the complete capture of American politics by corporate interests, The Post can write sensationalist hit pieces with impunity. Concerned readers can contact the Washington Post’s reader representative here: readers@washpost.com.
Other examples of media bias against Sanders candidacy can be found below: