Bernie Sanders, the democratic candidate who has created some of the largest turn outs to his events yet gets barely any coverage in the mainstream media, ripped into a CNN reporter last week for being part of the problem. The transcript is fascinating and gives real insight into why John Key and Donald Trump can say such offensive things and still rate so highly…
The most telling exchange of the interview came when Sanders confronted CNN and the media about the amount of coverage they give to Trump.
Transcript:
SANDERS: Well, Chris, you are going to have to ask the media precisely why. Trump is a smart guy. He is a media guy. He did a TV show. I’ll give you one example. A recent study showed that on ABC evening news Trump got 81 minutes of time. Bernie Sanders got 20 seconds. Now you tell me why. And I think it has to do with the fact that Trump is very smart.He knows that media is not interest in the serious issues facing this country. They love bombastic remarks. They love silly remarks. If he says that somebody is sweating well my God, that is a major story, and all that silly business and the personal attacks that kind of works. So I think this is more an indictment of the media, actually, than it is of Trump.
CUOMO: Yeah, I don’t see it. Look. Do we cover him more? Yes. Why? He’s number one in the polls. He’s highly relevant. He drives the discussion.
SANDERS: But, but, but. Chris, Chris. Explain to me how he becomes number one. He boasts of the fact. This is what he says. Hey, I don’t have to pay for commercials. The media is going to put me on all of the time. Explain to me, and I know CNN may be different here, and you have been very generous with me, but you explain how a major network on the evening news has 80 minutes of Trump and 20 seconds of Bernie Sanders, Does that make sense to anybody? In many ways, I think it’s fair to say…
…we have a fawning media in NZ who rather than challenge Key, merely shrug and let the PM off. To be fair to the media however, they are operating now in a landscape of fear and retaliation where journalists who ask critical questions are silenced. But the point stands, that our media are part of the problem, just like America’s media is part of the problem.
Key rates, Trump rates and in a clickbait media world – that’s all that matters. Trump says despicable things about Mexicans, the disabled and women and it rates. Key goes onto crass commercial radio stations and makes jokes about prison rape, gay weddings and mocks the waitress he repeatedly touched at work and it rates.
Rather than critique the PM, our media simply amplify him.
We need a serious alternative to the way our current affairs work.
True. Key is taking full advantage of the fact that the incumbent administration has a greater advantage in terms of resources and an ability to influence than any opposition. Many institutions, media and otherwise, are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them, no matter what dubious activities they may be involved in. When you look at it from a purely pragmatic perspective, why would a corporate media organisation purposefully undermine a government whose policies serve their interests? Unethical? Undoubtedly, when ostensibly your sole reason for being is to objectively report on current events. Sadly, the days of the fourth estate serving as a non-partisan information conduit for the nation’s citizenry seem well and truly over.
You have a point where journalists are fearful of asking hard questions. National demonstrate this weekly. Things get even a tiny bit challenging and their ministers fall silent and hide, just ask Minister Sam!.
And like Guyon Espiner who had John Key KOed on the canvas during Dirty Politics, all that caused was for Key to boycott RNZ until Espiner fell into line, played the game and never again called him to answer. It would be a big yawn but patsy interviews aren’t good for a democracy and sure ain’t good listening!
The media’s love of holiday road toll fatality stats has gone unrewarded. So Stuff.co desperately started compiling “crash”stats. Now both major online sources are now rolling around like pigs in shit over their fall back option, “drownings”, bolstered by sundry crime stories.
2015 will probably be the last year I take in any NZ mainstream media be it radio, or newspaper, having long since given up on TV, because it is so awful!
I am thinking journalism is going the way of the Dodo, more rapidly than anyone ever thought! It is definitely not a profession one would or should waste money studying for, that’s for sure.
Key “rates” like Donald Trump, because the present day media, has reduced itself to mostly “reporting” only stuff that gets sensationalistic attention – like “click bait” (given their limited resources and lack of research).
Hence the government gets away with endless misinformation, with hiding facts, with not answering to questions and with even blatant lying. The following post on Public Address is now one and a half year old and asked the question how government is “evaluating” the success if its welfare reforms.
http://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/speaker-how-is-government-evaluating-its/
Since then we have been told stuff all, and there have answers given to questions in Parliament, saying some information on the outcomes of outsourced services would be made available late this year (2015).
We have got NONE, and I doubt we will get it by New Years Eve. Yet the MSM report on weather, holidays, the alms giving through the City Mission “feeding” the poor and Boxing Day Sales. Key gets away with stunts on radio shows that would make any other “leader” of a government of a developed nation blush in shame, but he then makes excuses and offers “apologies” (at times) that are not meant to be serious.
The people do not even bother asking for facts anymore, it is a nation of each one to themselves and for themselves, in competition for getting the latest gadget on special off the shop shelf during Boxing Day sales. Apart from that it is off to the beach or to have a BBQ in the back yard. Never mind those “moaning minorities” “that are never happy”, stuff the children in poverty, it is all their parent’s fault, they should stop “drugging” and get “a job”.
I am disgusted at the state of affairs here in NZ Aotearoa (The Land of the Long White Lies we may now call it), same as what goes on in the US and elsewhere.
John Key is now in Hawaii, ready for another round of golf with Obama and other “leaders” (I bet some from big business based in the US).
All is well in Auckland, where for those “that matter” (who vote to preserve their privileges), the better off side of the middle class, have more credit and value to their accounts than ever before, given the explosion in house prices, in property they own.
Never mind the many new migrants, foreign investors and home buyers, they are welcome, as long as they write out nice big cheques. The rest, south of the Mangere Bridge, and in some other areas out West or in spots on the Shore, they can get stuffed, it seems, they no longer count. Let them rent and be grateful, they have a roof over their head at all, that seems to be the motto.
And the MSM is firmly focused on entertaining that better off part of the middle class, others go under the radar, are not important or relevant anymore.
Same as facts and figures, the truth, the inconvenient truth, matters no more.
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