PBS Overview Of Dem Primary Completely Snubs Bernie, Yang & Tulsi

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1. 

   Shane Crowe on December 7, 2019 at 7:21 am

   I have heard a lot of frustration from Bernie Supporters regarding the lack of coverage he and his campaign received from the PBS Newshour in their segment covering the 2020 Presidential race titled “Vote 2020” on Monday, December 2nd, 2019. For example, on The Hill, national co-chair of Sanders’s campaign Nina Turner told Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti “it almost seems like every morning these networks get a script that says ‘black out Bernie Sanders’ even though he is polling very high…”

   As a disclaimer, I supported Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination in 2016 and continue to do so this Presidential cycle. I have grown up watching the PBS Newshour with my father for years now and we both love the news station for their refusal to turn politics into an entertainment business. That being said, we openly criticize the network for some of the comments pundits on the Newshour make, especially regarding the 2020 race (my father and I firmly believe syndicated columnist David Shields is a firm supporter of moderate candidates for the Democratic Nomination based upon his reverence of the Senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar and other said moderates).

   My criticism of this criticism itself is not against the narrative that Bernie Sanders receives little to no positive media attention; I agree with this argument myself. My criticism is that including Bernie Sanders’s campaign in that segment may have potentially hurt him, based upon the underlying theme of the segment itself.

   That underlying these was this: Democratic hopefuls struggle to find support as the race for the Democratic nomination continues. We can see this within the first few sentences Yamiche Alcindor says at the beginning of the segment: “This is a Democratic field in flux. Candidates on the rise are shoring up weaknesses. Candidates whose campaigns are lagging are looking for second wind. And still, other candidates are dropping out entirely.” The rest of the segment focused on these struggles and downfalls of the campaigns they mentioned, including Pete Buttigieg trying to shore up support from the Black community despite low poll numbers, to the disarray that (now former candidate) Kamala Harris’s campaign was in.

   If we return to the comments Nina Turner mentioned in her interview on The Hill, we can see that this whole narrative does not fit Bernie Sanders’s campaign, and quite rightly so. He continues to show resiliency amongst his supporters and fails to show any kind of shortfalls in support, especially among minorities, young people (such as myself), and working-class folks.

   In my personal opinion, the controversy around this Newshour segment is a consequence of the catch-22 the Newshour must’ve found themselves in: either mention Bernie Sanders in a piece discussing the shortfalls of Democratic hopefuls when he clearly is not showing signs of shortfall, or (as I believe was the right decision) leave his name out because it did not aptly describe his campaign. The reason the latter option has received so much attention is because Bernie Sanders suffers from an overall lack of coverage from mainstream media.

   And I would also like to iterate the huge difference in structure between PBS and mainstream media regarding the amount of time the networks are allocated to report on news in general. When I say mainstream media, I am talking about news platforms that distribute their news stories via television 24/7 and receive their revenue and are owned and managed entirely or in part by an entity that is publicly traded on the market. That model is not the PBS Newshour; it is a one-hour show on the weekdays and a thirty-minute broadcast on the weekends that receives its revenue in the form of donations. And no doubt, those donations (as can be argued) shape the bias of the network. But those biases do not stem from a single corporation or person (although I do not also believe that the large donations from large corporations and families that they receive make them any more impartial). They stem from the will of the thousands of people who watch and donate to the network.

   And, again, the Newshour broadcasts their news for a maximum of one hour a day (fifty-five minutes if we want to get technical). One hour, compared to almost nonstop, 24-hour coverage corporate networks – CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc. – are allocated on their channels. The Newshour crew is forced to make much more difficult decisions than their corporate compatriots about which stories are the most important to mention on the air. Segments last about ten to fifteen minutes on the show, which means that a full news “hour” will comprise a handful of stories. It should also be mentioned that the Newshour makes it a goal to focus on issues that rarely, if ever, get mentioned in detail on mainstream media, including the ongoing situation between Hong Kong and China (which was also aired the same day as the piece on the 2020 Democratic Race), recent cuts to the food stamp program (Wednesday, December 4th, 2019), Iranian responsibility for the 1,000 deaths of protestors during a crackdown (December 5th of this year as well), etc. In short, the Newshour must economize their time to report the news that is important not just for the nation, but for the entire world to hear.

   Going back to the December 4th broadcast this past Wednesday, when the Newshour aired their segment about the shortfalls of Kamala Harris’s campaign. Chelsea Janes of the Washongton Post mentioned Bernie Sanders by name, touting the fact that his campaign (unlike Kamala’s campaign) has a clear message everyone can get behind. While this certainly isn’t news for Sanders supporters, for me I see it as a piece of evidence that the Newshour does not do a complete blackout on his campaign.

   I would like to wrap up by saying PBS is not a terrible network because of the lack of attention they specifically gave to Bernie Sanders on Monday, as some may lead you to think. It does not mean they are infallible, but the standards to which they uphold themselves are, in my opinion, the gold standard. I encourage everyone to watch and listen to the guiding principles Jim Lehrer (one of the founding anchors for the Newshour) laid out before his departure from the network.

   Thank you for your time.

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