Big Media Is The Big Loser in the Democratic Debate

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

According to a headline at Alternet.com:

"Bernie Won All the Focus Groups & Online Polls, So Why Is the Media Saying Hillary Won the Debate? 

Good Question! Let's first see some of the more objective measures on how well Bernie Sanders did with ordinary people during the debate:

• In the Salon live debate poll Bernie won by 72% to Hillary's 12%
• The Time Magazine poll had Bernie winning by 56% with Jim Webb coming in second at 31%. Hillary came in at 11% in their poll.
• A US News and World Report live blog poll conducted on Facebook had Bernie winning the debate by 85% to Hillary's 12%
• A majority of CNN's own focus group felt Bernie Sanders won the debate.
• On Fox News, the Frank Luntz focus group in Florida unanimously felt Bernie won the debate. Half the group of 28 Democrats supported Hillary at the start of the debate and less than half of those supporters continued to support her after the debate. 
• On Facebook, Bernie Sanders was mentioned 107,000 times to Hillary's 131,000 mentions
• On Twitter Bernie was mentioned 407,000 times, the most of any candidate. His name was mentioned in 12,000 tweets per minute compared to Hillary's 8,300 tweets per minute.
• A content analysis of tweets for Bernie and Hillary showed that 69% of his tweets were positive compared to 56% positive for Hillary.
• During the debate people Googled Bernie Sanders twice as often as Hillary Clinton.
• On Facebook, Bernie attracted 24,000 new followers to Hillary's 7,700 new followers.
• On Twitter Bernie attracted 42,730 new followers to Hillary's 25,000 new followers.

So what were the corporate media newspaper headlines the day after the debate?

The New York Times: "Hillary Clinton Turns Up Heat on Bernie Sanders in a Sharp Debate"

The Washington Post: "Hillary Clinton won the debate"

The Boston Globe: "Hillary Clinton wins, with an assist from Bernie Sanders"

The Business Insider: "Everyone's declaring Hillary Clinton the big winner of the debate"

The New Yorker: "Hillary Clinton Wins Big in Vegas"

The Guardian: "Hillary Clinton won the Democratic debate, simply by saying 'no'"

The New Republic: "Hillary Clinton Nailed It in the Democratic Debate"

So what is going on here?

I listened to Chris Matthews on MSNBC extolling the way Hillary dominated the debate during his show that immediately followed it. The next day, on his own show, he expressed real doubt about who won. He said that on the night of the debate he was listening to what the producers were saying in his ear. Wow!

I believe that Hillary Clinton was pitch perfect in the debate. She gave the best performance of her life. This was very reassuring to her big donors and to those who are already among her ardent supporters. But despite her outstanding performance it is clear that she didn't win the debate. Bernie Sanders performance was also very good. The match up of their good debate styles, however, only served to amplify Senator Sanders' ideas, and his passion clearly caught the public's attention. For the "establishment media" this was an incongruent moment. It isn't what they expected, and it is now very clear it isn't what they wanted either. I believe that the corporate (establishment) media has finally tipped its hand:

• It is not an independent and neutral party in American politics.
• It serves the for profit interests of its owners and its advertizing clients. 
• It takes an active hand in shaping public opinion and framing our public debates.
• It is responsible for the rise in political polarization and the sharp divisions we have experienced in recent decades. 
• It is responsible for the unhinging of the Republican Party and the entertaining, carnival like atmosphere that characterizes it today. 

The Citizen's United Supreme Court decision was a windfall for the main stream media. All that money pouring into political PAC's from anonymous wealthy donors ends up in the media's pocket. The have every incentive to grab as much of it as they can and very little incentive to remain faithful to their journalistic mission.

I talked about how Bernie Sanders represents a double threat to the establishment media and establishment politics in a recent post. In an article entitled "Covering Politics For Profit Has Warped Our Democracy" I said:

"Many of the issues Sanders holds, such as the need to break up big banks and tax billionaires to pay for free college tuition, hurt the financial interests of the mainstream media's biggest corporate clients. This creates a conflict of interest for the corporate owned media. Covering the Sanders campaign on his terms forces them to report on issues that don't serve the financial interests of their advertisers.

The Sanders campaign also poses another challenge to the corporate media's business model. Much of the organizational work by his campaign is organized from the bottom up. It makes extensive and creative use of free or low cost social media platforms. This means the Sanders campaign is spending less money on media buys than any other candidate except for Donald Trump, who is getting his media attention for free.  [snip]

Senator Sanders, on the other hand, attracts even more actual voter attention than Trump without the help of the mainstream media. Major news outlets are just starting to cover the Sanders campaign as news events in order to preserve their legitimacy as news organizations."

And then, when it was clear to viewers that Bernie Sanders has something important to say that doesn't fit the establishments narrative, main stream media outlets simply pivot and declare their preferred candidate the winner.