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The Smears Of A Clown: CNN

On Monday August 12 2019 Bernie was the top trending topic on Twitter with #myberniestory - over a thousand supporters posted a video explaining why they were supporting Bernie. This is newsworthy one might naively think - maybe not the main political topic but certainly worth a mention in one of the CNN segments that day. Wrong. Instead, CNN spent the day smearing Bernie regarding quite innocuous and obviously true comments he made about the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos etc.

Beginning with Poppy Harlow, she described Bernie’s Monday Aug. 12 reference to Jeff Bezos, Amazon and the Washington Post’s providing unfair coverage / no coverage of his campaign as a conspiracy theory. She went on to discuss this notion with Kirsten Powers and Brittany Shepherd, all three agreeing with the idea that Bernie provides no evidence for his criticism of WAPO. As is well known, Bernie is not just critical of the Washington Post - he is critical of the corporate news media in general which are a for-profit enterprise. As such, they tend to steer discussion away from some subjects (like Medicare for all, Green New Deal, student debt loan forgiveness etc). Unlike Trump who decries the ‘fake news’ if there is a story he doesn’t like, Bernie does have plenty of evidence to back up his criticisms of the media.

It would be too easy to just cite how CNN colluded with the DNC to sabotage Bernie’s campaign in 2016, resulting in the resignation of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Donna Brazile (something never mentioned on CNN unsurprisingly). Instead let’s look at the recent allegations of Bernie having no evidence to back up his idea that he is being treated unfairly by the media.

Harlow showed a recent clip of Bernie’s campaign manager Faiz Shakir with Brian Stelter, in which Shakir suggested that after their segment, CNN would go to a commercial break featuring some pharmaceutical products paid for by pharma companies who pay the wages of hosts on CNN (which in turn tends to determine what kinds of political issues are talked about on CNN and which ones aren’t). In reply, Stelter irrelevantly claimed not to know which particular commercials are shown on CNN. Harlow then repeated Stelter’s idea to her panelists, claiming that they don’t know what particular commercials are coming up while they are on air in defense of Stelter’s idea that Shakir lacked evidence.

Two un-televised Biden Gaffes re El Paso TX and Dayton OH

Gaffe number 1:

Two mass shootings occurred early August 2019 in El Paso Texas and Dayton Ohio. In his initial response, Biden falsely referred to the shootings as having happened in Houston and Michigan. According to Snopes.com

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-houston-and-michigan/

(amongst many other sources):

“Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden incorrectly referred to the locations of two mass shootings in August 2019 in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, as having happened in “Houston,” Texas, and “Michigan.” The remark came during a speech Biden gave at a fundraiser in San Diego, California, on Aug. 4, the same day as the Dayton massacre.

According to San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Lindsay Winkley, about 75 people attended the event, which was held at a private residence in the Del Cerro neighborhood of San Diego. Winkley, who was a pool reporter at the event, told us she personally heard Biden make the gaffe. It came during a speech in which he vowed to ban assault-style firearms if elected president in 2020.

Come on man

On Friday July 5 CNN aired segments of Chris Cuomo’s ‘one-on-one’ with Joe Biden (in a cafe, the kind of place Biden likes to be seen). The same segments were introduced in the afternoon (by Dana Bash in for Jake Tapper) and at eight o’clock (by Jim Sciuto, in for Chris Cuomo).

Healthcare, murder (and mass shootings) - Tapper v Bernie

The issue of health care has been one of the most pressing concerns amongst voters as far as recent polls about Democratic Party candidates for President have been concerned. Following the tragic mass shootings in El Paso Texas and Dayton Ohio (August 3 and 4), the importance of an issue that Jake Tapper raised with Bernie prior to the second round of debates has increased exponentially (though the media are not talking about it).

Tapper basically asked Bernie: are the CEOs of pharmaceutical companies akin to murderers? (If they are, they produce far more death than the El Paso and Dayton murderers and ought to be condemned.)

Aren’t such CEOs and pharmaceutical companies right to think that they are helping people (Jake asked?) Bernie responded that there is a philosophical issue here that needs to be addressed. The format of the tv interview didn’t allow for a philosophical discussion but even a decent undergraduate moral philosophy student can see that Bernie is right if we reject consequentialism.

Breaking news: Cuomo wastes Nina Turner’s time

Tuesday June 25 2019

Chris Cuomo began his show with the usual let’s get after it. Next was a segment billed as a precursor to the first set of Democratic Primary debates, on Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 June on CNN. Invited guests were Nina Turner (from Bernie’s 2020 campaign, previously denied the opportunity to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016) and former Governor of Pennsylvania and ex DNC Ed Rendell.

Thomas Friedman, Revolution and the Debt Ceiling

July 22

Anderson Cooper included a prerecorded lengthy segment on his show AC 360 in which he interviewed Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and author of ‘Thank you for being late’. The main point of discussion during the piece concerned Friedman’s recent op ed piece in the New York Times titled ‘Spare me the Revolution’.

Rob Astorino Out Front July 16

Interviewed by Erin Burnett (together with April Ryan and Keith Boykin), Trump surrogate Rob Astorino made a number of false statements and fallacious inferences designed to obfuscate and subtly propagate the effects of the racist remarks Trump had made the previous day against four progressive Congress members and women of color. Unfortunately these falsities were not called out in the actual segment, which consisted of righteous indignation to Astorino’s claims rather than refuting them with reason and logic. The following attempts to do what might have been done during the segment in question.

Beginning the segment, it was suggested to Astorino that Trump never says to people who look like him or Erin that they can go back to where they came from (implying Trump’s tweets were racist). Racism involves unfair discrimination against someone on the basis of an irrelevant characteristic - their ethnic background).

(Kelly Anne Conway asked a journalist what his ethnic background was, earlier in the day, in the context of Trump’s twitter attack on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. The journalist rightly queried the relevance of his ethnic background regarding the question he was asking).

Astorino in general insisted that Trump is not a racist (a different matter to whether his tweets are racist. Earlier in the day Anthony Scaramucci said to Jake Tapper that the Trump tweets were racist, whilst David Axelrod claimed that their racist nature was part of a strategy to appeal to Trump’s base.).

S. E. Cupp Unfiltered - Bernie Media Bias?

‘Bernie media bias?’ was the title of a segment on the S.E. Cupp Unfiltered show, CNN Saturday July 20.

One sometimes comes across the idea online that to think that the media is biased against Bernie is a case of ‘confirmation bias’. In other words, on this view one already believes that the media is biased against Bernie and is looking for evidence which supports one’s preconception, whilst ignoring other evidence that contradicts one’s bias.

However, if one considers the following evidence one cannot rationally deny that objectively, there is widespread and systematic media bias (putting it mildly) against Bernie. For instance, in the 2016 primaries:

Hundreds of Democratic Party super-delegates in 2016 (including Donna Brazile) were portrayed by the media as already on Hillary’s side before a single primary vote was cast, giving voters the impression that Bernie faced an insurmountable task. Although Bernie’s policies were appealing many didn’t vote for him because they thought he couldn’t win - directly because of media bias (super-delegates weren’t supposed to vote until the end of the primary process).

(In 2020, skewed media polls have taken the place of super-delegates (who will become relevant if a second ballot is called for).)

The media (Reuters / ABC News) declared Hillary the presumptive Democratic Party nominee in 2016 BEFORE the California primaries. This amounts to voter suppression since many who would have voted for Bernie didn’t bother due to the media telling them to do so would be a waste of their time.

Media pundit, Hillary surrogate (and super-delegate) Donna Brazile passed information to Hillary Clinton about an upcoming debate question in 2016, before the debate and against the debate rules, unfairly giving Hillary an advantage over Bernie. CNN subsequently disowned Brazile as if they were opposed to bias, despite the evidence to the contrary above.

Erin you sound like someone in the media

Tuesday June 18 2019

On Outfront with Erin Burnett, Erin did an interview with Bernie Sanders. The context was that Bernie was going to reply to Trump’s official launch of his re-election campaign in Florida later that evening.

Erin asked what Bernie was going to say in response to Trump’s rally (before Bernie had heard Trump’s speech). Bernie made some tongue in cheek speculative predictions that Trump would probably not talk about having wanted to throw 30 million people off their existing health insurance with no alternative plan for them, or the tax breaks he gave to billionaires etc.

Erin asked about Bernie’s view on recent attacks on commercial oil tankers in the gulf of Oman which the CIA allege are likely Iranian in origin. Bernie responded that the attacks should be investigated, but reminded viewers that the American government lied to its citizens about the pretext for the war in Vietnam and the Iraq war (also indicating that according to the constitution only congress has the power to declare war, not any president).

The Draw Thursday July 18

Anderson Cooper: “Normally the Democratic Party nominee is picked behind closed doors but still wants to give the impression of being Democratic. However, after the 2016 primaries when our panelist Donna Brazille got caught colluding with the DNC to sabotage Bernie we want to try to make the nomination process seem as transparent and unbiased as possible (even though it’s obviously not).”

Wolf Blitzer: “That’s right Anderson. Although we bias our daily political coverage in favor of Joe Biden, we often try to appear like we’re objective and neutral by covering other corporate candidates who claim to be progressive like Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren. To the extent that we mention Bernie, we only do so in a negative way.”

David Chalian: “The candidates are divided into three groups based on how well they are polling. Of course, the CNN / SSRS April poll which had Joe Biden as the front-runner excluded the opinions of people under the age of 50. So the way this whole draw is set up is of dubious reliability.”

David Axelrod: “That’s right. Remember we said that many people’s views changed after watching our coverage in which Kamala Harris attacked Joe Biden in the first debate - yet according to the SSRS poll (in the caption above) 36% said they hadn’t even watched much of the debate but got their opinions from our spin about it. So I think we can expect more of that kind of thing in the second round of debates.”

Chris Cillizza

June 11, 2019, Chris Cillizza wrote (on CNN.com):

“Speaking to a group of donors and lobbyists in Washington on Monday night, Joe Biden said this of the Republican Party post-Donald Trump:

"With Trump gone you're going to begin to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn't what they're supposed to be doing."

That is, without any exaggeration, a radical view from the man who polling suggests is the front-runner to be the party's nominee against Trump in November 2020.

Why? Because the commonly held view among liberals, who compose the base of the Democratic Party, is that Trump is not an anomaly or a virus within the broader Republican Party, he is the Republican Party. That attempts, like Biden's, to say Trump is "other" than the GOP lessens the party's culpability on its capitulation to the darker forces at work in the President's message and the party he represents.

Don Lemon Pelosi and AOC

Don Lemon July 11

Don Lemon’s producers included a section in his show regarding Democratic Party House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s public spat with a ‘squad’ of four including ALexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The section was prefaced in terms of Pelosi being reluctant to impeach Trump or investigate Alex Acosta’s connection with the sex-trafficking of Jeff Epstein, but the broader emphasis was on the public disagreement between AOC and Pelosi regarding the direction of the Democratic Party generally. Pelosi represents the old guard establishment, whereas AOC etc. represents the progressive wing of the party. Should these two apparently inconsistent factions within the Democratic Party be reconciled in order to defeat Trump in 2020. Can they be reconciled?