Bernie Sanders and Corporate Media

One good Avedon link deserves another, I guess. Here’s a really interesting quote from Socialist-and-Senator-elect Bernie Sanders.

If you are concerned about the environment, if you are concerned about women's rights, health care, foreign policy, Iraq, the economy, if you are concerned about any of those issues, you must be concerned about the media. And what people like Bob and John Nichols and others have been saying for years, which I fully agree with, is we have got to make corporate control over the media a political issue in the same way that health care and education and Iraq is a political issue. And that means that when somebody runs for office and comes before you and they talk about the issues, you raise your hand and say, what are you going to do about corporate control over the media? And after the candidate recovers after his fall on the ground, he or she will start responding, but we have got to make it a political issue, because it is as important or more important than any other issue that we talk about.

Let me begin by telling you how I first recognized that media was a huge issue. Way back in the 1970s before I became Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, I did a little bit of independent writing. And I did a video, if you like, not quite a film, on the life of Eugene Victor Debs, who some of you know was one of great labor and socialist heroes in America. And I did it because nobody in Vermont, none of the kids, and kids in America today do not know who Debs was, as they do not know the names of many great American heroes. We did the video, and it was not very sophisticated, but it was a fairly -- I thought it was a fairly good video, done for a few thousand dollars. And we took it to our local public television station. And we said, “Here is a video, and we would like you to run it.” And they looked at it. One month went by, two months went by, and three months went by, and then they finally wrote back and said, “Sorry, Mr. Sanders, we cannot use your video, because it doesn't tell both sides of the story.”

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And let me tell you some of the concerns that I have with what's going on in the media today. Am I concerned that when I am asked to speak about an issue like Iraq, I get six seconds to respond? Yep. I'm concerned. Because I can't, and you can’t, and our panelists can't, and nobody can discuss an issue intelligently in a six-second sound bite, which is what dominates television, which is the most important medium in our country. Am I concerned that, by definition, corporately-owned media is pro-corporate? Yeah, I am very concerned about that. We see the manifestations of that all over the place. We saw the difference between how the corporate media treated a moderate Democrat like Bill Clinton, as opposed to a conservative Republican like George Bush. We saw how they covered the lead up and the war in Iraq so that millions of Americans, in order to get unbiased news, had to go to the CBC in Canada or the BBC. Am I concerned about that? I sure am. Am I concerned that the media seems to think that one of the major issues facing civilization today is the Michael Jackson case? Or maybe -- break it to you: Britney Spears is pregnant! It's true. And we'll have many months of discussion about that or the local trials or the horrible crimes. Am I concerned about that? I sure am.

But of all those concerns and many more, let me tell you what my deeper concern is. My concern is not just what the media reports or discusses and the slants that it has on the issues -- that's important -- but the deeper concern is what the media does not talk about.

I’ve never claimed too many socialist attributes (I've read Zinn's People's History of the United States...does that count?), though as Mark Adams suggests in the comments to Avedon's post, I wasn’t exactly taught much about socialism in school beyond “Socialism = Communism = Fascism = Evil.” All I know for sure is, I’m really hoping Sanders succeeds in making corporate media a political issue. It’s always been an issue among lefty bloggers, and hopefully having a Senator thinking the same way can make a difference. Though considering how long it seems to have been a problem, I’m not going to get my hopes up too high.