The newsletter landed in supporters’ email inboxes with an ominous subject line: “What We Cannot Discuss.” In it, the author lambasted “the Washington pundits who are paid by the corporations and billionaires who own the media”.
“[C]orporate and billionaire-owned media often tilts coverage against candidates … who push a working-class agenda – an agenda that threatens the political power of corporations and billionaires,” he continued, arguing that such biases have harmed his boss’ presidential campaign.
The author’s boss is, perhaps surprisingly, Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders, and not the notoriously anti-media Donald Trump
In fact, the Vermont senator’s campaign has repeatedly questioned the alleged biases of the mainstream media in recent days, leading some to compare Sanders to the president he hopes to defeat.
While media-based complaints are nothing new for Sanders, they come amid an increasing willingness among the broader Democratic presidential field to harshly criticize the press – even as violence against US journalists has escalated and the president’s hostile rhetoric of “fake news” continues unabated. To some observers it now seems the anti-media accusations of the right are being mirrored on the left, albeit not at the dangerous levels of the president.
Sanders’ latest gripes about the press started at a New Hampshire town hall earlier this month, when he told the audience: “See, I talk about [Amazon’s low tax burden] all of the time,” Sanders said. “And then I wonder why the Washington Post – which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon – doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why. But I guess maybe there’s a connection. Maybe we helped raise the minimum wage at Amazon to 15 bucks an hour as well.”
The Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, put out a statement dismissing the claim that Bezos controls its coverage as a “conspiracy theory”.
But Sanders’ comments still alarmed many journalists, who noted Trump has launched similar attacks against the newspaper – derisively referring to it as “the Amazon Washington Post”.
Sanders later appeared to walk back his initial comments, telling CNN that he did not think the press was “anti-Bernie”. But some of his top advisers have since struck a more combative tone, with speechwriter David Sirota putting out the aforementioned newsletter and his campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, speculating (without providing evidence) that reporters widely harbor a personal dislike of Sanders.
The Sanders campaign did not return the Guardian’s request for comment.
Sanders is far from alone in the Democrats’ 2020 field. Democratic presidential candidates such as the New Jersey senator Cory Booker, the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand and former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke weighed in as the New York Times faced widespread criticism for its headline “Trump urges unity vs racism” in the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, earlier this month.
“Lives literally depend on you doing better, NYT,” Booker tweeted. “Please do.” (The Times later changed the headline for its second print edition.)
O’Rourke also slammed the media for what he saw as its soft coverage of Trump’s racist rhetoric in the wake of a mass shooting that targeted Hispanics in El Paso, Texas. “Members of the press, what the fuck?” he said in a moment that went viral online.
The Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard dismissed a negative story about her candidacy – which detailed how multiple Kremlin sympathizers have donated to her campaign – as “fake news” in a May interview. “You know, it’s unfortunate that you’re citing that article, George, because it’s a whole lot of fake news,” Gabbard told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. A review of Gabbard’s filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) confirmed the Daily Beast’s initial reporting.
Dr Courtney C Radsch, advocacy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warned that baseless attacks on reporters are on the rise.
“Unfortunately, what we’ve seen is that this attempt to delegitimize and denigrate the press by calling it ‘fake news’ has become a common tactic by politicians across the political spectrum and around the world,” Radsch said. “It’s distressing to see political candidates who are running for office in a country that has traditionally been a leader on press freedom and human rights falling prey to the same rhetoric.”
She warned such comments can carry disturbing consequences for reporters just trying to do their jobs.
“The trouble with this politicized, anti-press rhetoric is that it is having real impact on journalists and on their safety, both in the United States and around the world,” Radsch said.
According to the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders, the US was among the top five deadliest countries for journalists last year – ranking just behind Mexico and Yemen. The US Press Freedom Tracker has recorded 27 attacks against journalists so far this year.
Trump himself has obviously been the country’s most significant contributor to a trend of anti-press rhetoric. Just last week, Trump resurfaced his attack on journalists as “The Enemy of the People”, ominously warning that the “LameStream Media” is “treading in very dangerous territory”.
Christine Corcos, a media law professor at Louisiana State University, noted that politicians’ common gripes about coverage take on new meaning when combined with broader promises to attack press freedoms – as Trump has done when he threatened to change US libel laws.
Corcos said: “If politicians or officials are trying to dictate, or suggesting what the press or citizens should be writing or saying, then that suggests that those politicians or officials might not value this very basic principle that is the hallmark of a democracy – the right of free expression.”
Radsch encouraged all presidential candidates to remember that critical democratic role the press serves.
“This denigration of journalists and journalism as ‘fake news’ not only does a disservice to those individuals but also does a disservice to the functioning of our democracy in the United States,” Radsch said.