There's been a recent claim that Biden's surge was because of friendly media coverage. But that notion doesn't really add up. The claim is that after his win in South Carolina, Biden earned so much free media via news coverage that that propelled him to victory on Super Tuesday. It turns out that between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, Sanders actually won twice as much earned media as Biden, via news coverage, according to media monitoring data from Critical Mention. (Biden earned $72 million worth of earned media, Sanders $156 million.)
All of this is true, but even more broadly, for-profit media needs drama and narrative. Their job is selling eyeballs to advertisers, so they need to constantly grab people's attention. Hence all the sports-style focus on the "horse race". Who's up? Who's down? What are the prospects for next week's matchup? "The primary contest looks basically the same as it did a year ago, other than Buttigieg replacing O'Rourke as this primary's 'young fresh face' candidate" doesn't get clicks.
Also the national media "discourse" is determined by whatever people in the social circles of the NY-DC media axis are talking about, despite whatever guilt they sometimes feel about this. Their fellow liberal-ish urban professionals lean towards Sanders, and some like Buttigieg and O'Rourke, or Klobuchar or Warren, and they tend to dislike Bloomberg but are quite familiar with him (and he was spending tons of money on ads!), so those are the candidates they talked about constantly. Biden is old and boring and doesn't appeal a lot to them, but of course they couldn't ignore him totally, being the constant frontrunner and the obvious party establishment favorite, but coverage of him generally had a distinct eating-your-vegetables-before-you-can-have-dessert flavor to it.
We Californians (remember, California is the most populous state!) are quite attuned to the aforementioned NY-DC bias in national media. Anything west of the Mississippi might as well be on another planet most of the time, except when something "headline-grabbing" is happening.
The media’s reporting on the results of Iowa and New Hampshire was biased to fit their favorite narrative that Democrats have become much more liberal in recent years. They ignored the clear evidence that there were significantly more moderate voters than liberal ones in both of those states. Focusing only on individual candidates masked the fact that moderates out numbered the progressive voters but were splitting their votes among three candidates, not two. In Iowa the total for Warren and Sanders combined was only 44.1% of the total compared with 53.3% for Buttigieg, Biden and Klobuchar combined. That difference was even starker in New Hampshire with the two more liberal candidates earning only 34.9% of the vote while the three moderates got 52.6 %.
The best explanation I can think of for this is that hyping the strength of the progressives and Bernie in particular fits with one of the media’s favorite narratives - that Democrats are moving to the left. That fits the media’s faux balance claim that both sides are polarized. But what really puzzles me is that they kept claiming that Bernie was the winner when he was actually trailing Buttigieg in delegates and the two of them were virtually tied in total votes. That narrative surely helped Bernie in Nevada becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropped out the evidence that a strong majority of Democratic voters are much more moderate than the media has been portraying them became so clear that the media cannot ignore it anymore. At least for now.
And the flip side of this is that the press completely failed to account for the very voters who do traditionally decide the winner of the Dem primaries, i.e. Black voters. No one has won the Dem nomination for President without a majority of the Black vote since 1988. Campaign coverage attempting to name a front-runner before SC voted was amateurish and ridiculous.
Joe Biden’s surge from SC through Super Tuesday exposed another element of this primary election the media has utterly failed to recognize: many democrats waited to get behind a candidate until we saw who Black voters supported. SC showed us it is Joe Biden. #votelikeblackwomen is not just a hashtag. In 2020 it’s a promise.
I agree with that. They also focus more on working class male voters. Middle aged and older women - black or white - are invisible to them. I have seen plenty of articles urging people to be sympathetic to those working class guys who voted for Obama but now support Trump. I have never seen an article about the frustrations and disappointment of all of us women who were strong Hillary supporters. We might not go scream at rallies but our votes count just as much and there are a lot of us. And more and more women are turning against Trump unlike those white working class men. But soccer moms and grandmas are not cool enough to merit attention.
Jennifer Rubin has an interesting article up about this issue pointing out that the media is ignoring the fact that women really don’t like Sanders and voted overwhelmingly on Super Tuesday for Biden - and they voted in much larger numbers than men. She also says something I have never heard or read before:
“The degree to which Sanders has turned off women is a fundamental problem for the left, which contrary to its self-conception is largely white and male. “
I have never read that the left is largely male but it makes sense. I certainly knew more guys in the sixties who were radical anti-war protestors and supported violent tactics. The women were generally opposed to that kind of extremism. And they were generally just more pragmatic overall.
Rubin goes on to say:
“It is hard to present oneself as the vanguard of a diverse party when your coalition on race and gender (but not age) looks like a Republican coalition. Moreover, it is impossible to win as a Democrat without the support and enthusiasm of women.”
(BY Eric Boehlert, article)
There's been a recent claim that Biden's surge was because of friendly media coverage. But that notion doesn't really add up. The claim is that after his win in South Carolina, Biden earned so much free media via news coverage that that propelled him to victory on Super Tuesday. It turns out that between South Carolina and Super Tuesday, Sanders actually won twice as much earned media as Biden, via news coverage, according to media monitoring data from Critical Mention. (Biden earned $72 million worth of earned media, Sanders $156 million.)
Thx. I appreciate your reporting.
All of this is true, but even more broadly, for-profit media needs drama and narrative. Their job is selling eyeballs to advertisers, so they need to constantly grab people's attention. Hence all the sports-style focus on the "horse race". Who's up? Who's down? What are the prospects for next week's matchup? "The primary contest looks basically the same as it did a year ago, other than Buttigieg replacing O'Rourke as this primary's 'young fresh face' candidate" doesn't get clicks.
Also the national media "discourse" is determined by whatever people in the social circles of the NY-DC media axis are talking about, despite whatever guilt they sometimes feel about this. Their fellow liberal-ish urban professionals lean towards Sanders, and some like Buttigieg and O'Rourke, or Klobuchar or Warren, and they tend to dislike Bloomberg but are quite familiar with him (and he was spending tons of money on ads!), so those are the candidates they talked about constantly. Biden is old and boring and doesn't appeal a lot to them, but of course they couldn't ignore him totally, being the constant frontrunner and the obvious party establishment favorite, but coverage of him generally had a distinct eating-your-vegetables-before-you-can-have-dessert flavor to it.
We Californians (remember, California is the most populous state!) are quite attuned to the aforementioned NY-DC bias in national media. Anything west of the Mississippi might as well be on another planet most of the time, except when something "headline-grabbing" is happening.
The media’s reporting on the results of Iowa and New Hampshire was biased to fit their favorite narrative that Democrats have become much more liberal in recent years. They ignored the clear evidence that there were significantly more moderate voters than liberal ones in both of those states. Focusing only on individual candidates masked the fact that moderates out numbered the progressive voters but were splitting their votes among three candidates, not two. In Iowa the total for Warren and Sanders combined was only 44.1% of the total compared with 53.3% for Buttigieg, Biden and Klobuchar combined. That difference was even starker in New Hampshire with the two more liberal candidates earning only 34.9% of the vote while the three moderates got 52.6 %.
The best explanation I can think of for this is that hyping the strength of the progressives and Bernie in particular fits with one of the media’s favorite narratives - that Democrats are moving to the left. That fits the media’s faux balance claim that both sides are polarized. But what really puzzles me is that they kept claiming that Bernie was the winner when he was actually trailing Buttigieg in delegates and the two of them were virtually tied in total votes. That narrative surely helped Bernie in Nevada becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropped out the evidence that a strong majority of Democratic voters are much more moderate than the media has been portraying them became so clear that the media cannot ignore it anymore. At least for now.
I think it also fits in w/ the press’ intense, over-sized focus on young voters, who traditionally don’t decide winners/losers in Dem primaries
And the flip side of this is that the press completely failed to account for the very voters who do traditionally decide the winner of the Dem primaries, i.e. Black voters. No one has won the Dem nomination for President without a majority of the Black vote since 1988. Campaign coverage attempting to name a front-runner before SC voted was amateurish and ridiculous.
Joe Biden’s surge from SC through Super Tuesday exposed another element of this primary election the media has utterly failed to recognize: many democrats waited to get behind a candidate until we saw who Black voters supported. SC showed us it is Joe Biden. #votelikeblackwomen is not just a hashtag. In 2020 it’s a promise.
(Inadvertently deleted comment. Reposting)
Agreed. same press corps thst has spent last 3-4 yr obsessing over white Tepublican Trump supporters
I agree with that. They also focus more on working class male voters. Middle aged and older women - black or white - are invisible to them. I have seen plenty of articles urging people to be sympathetic to those working class guys who voted for Obama but now support Trump. I have never seen an article about the frustrations and disappointment of all of us women who were strong Hillary supporters. We might not go scream at rallies but our votes count just as much and there are a lot of us. And more and more women are turning against Trump unlike those white working class men. But soccer moms and grandmas are not cool enough to merit attention.
not cool, indeed. it’s sad but true in terms of campaign media coverage
Jennifer Rubin has an interesting article up about this issue pointing out that the media is ignoring the fact that women really don’t like Sanders and voted overwhelmingly on Super Tuesday for Biden - and they voted in much larger numbers than men. She also says something I have never heard or read before:
“The degree to which Sanders has turned off women is a fundamental problem for the left, which contrary to its self-conception is largely white and male. “
I have never read that the left is largely male but it makes sense. I certainly knew more guys in the sixties who were radical anti-war protestors and supported violent tactics. The women were generally opposed to that kind of extremism. And they were generally just more pragmatic overall.
Rubin goes on to say:
“It is hard to present oneself as the vanguard of a diverse party when your coalition on race and gender (but not age) looks like a Republican coalition. Moreover, it is impossible to win as a Democrat without the support and enthusiasm of women.”