Manufacturing Suspense: Big Money's Corporate Media Gatekeepers and the Primary Debate Spectacle

[marmar]

Manufacturing Suspense: Big Money's Corporate Media Gatekeepers and the Primary Debate Spectacle

Tuesday, 10 November 2015 00:00
By Candice Bernd, Truthout | News Analysis


Almost everything we know about the ongoing primary election contest is mediated through some kind of screen. And while the rise of new media has helped to partially shatter the one-way mirror effect of the traditional media, the major media conglomerates still exert enormous influence in negotiating the public's experience of the election process.

It's through this mediated screen that we are now seeing the Democratic presidential field narrow to three, and Hillary Clinton widening her lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa by a margin of nearly two to one among primary voters, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. She has also recently gained a small lead over Sanders in New Hampshire.

But Sanders' supporters have contended for months that the mainstream media coverage of his campaign has given him short shrift, dedicating much less coverage to his campaign overall and condescendingly dismissing his candidacy, despite his ability to draw large, excited crowds.

As Matt Taibbi recently argued, many in the mainstream journalism establishment set out to cover candidates with immature, high-school-like prerequisites for determining whether they are "electable." According to Taibbi, campaign-trail journalists have determined Sanders is "unelectable," arguing, among other obnoxious standards, that he doesn't "kiss enough babies."

Coverage of Sanders' campaign, has, in fact, been more scant in terms of quantity of stories on nightly newscasts and in major newspapers like the New York Times than Clinton's. While some media analysts say it might be reasonable that Clinton is covered more because she continues to lead in polls, that Martin O'Malley received more substantive coverage than Sanders in the run-up to the first Democratic debate on CNN seems implicitly prejudiced. .................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33578-manufacturing-suspense-big-money-s-corporate-media-gatekeepers-and-the-primary-debate-spectacle