{"id":13919,"date":"2020-02-18T10:11:56","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T18:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=13919"},"modified":"2020-02-18T10:11:58","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T18:11:58","slug":"the-escalating-class-war-against-bernie-sanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2020\/02\/18\/the-escalating-class-war-against-bernie-sanders\/","title":{"rendered":"The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

February 17, 2020 by Common Dreams<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

by Norman Solomon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 24 Comments<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"With<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of average Americans. (Photo: Drew Angerer\/Getty Images)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than ever, Bernie Sanders is public enemy number one for power elites that thrive on economic injustice. The Bernie 2020 campaign is a direct threat to the undemocratic leverage that extremely wealthy individuals and huge corporations constantly exert on the political process. No wonder we\u2019re now seeing so much anti-Bernie rage from leading corporate Democrats — eagerly amplified by corporate media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flagrant media biases against Sanders are routine in a wide range of mainstream outlets. (The media watch group FAIR has long documented the problem, illuminated by one piece<\/a> after another<\/a> after another<\/a> after another<\/a> just this month.) In sharp contrast, positivity toward Sanders in mass media spheres is scarce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid reporters and pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate power, including the prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pattern is enmeshed with the corporatism that the Sanders campaign seeks to replace with genuine democracy\u2014disempowering great wealth and corporate heft while empowering everyday people to participate in a truly democratic process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid reporters and pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate power, including the prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors. And, in news coverage of politics, there\u2019s an inexhaustible supply of former<\/a> Democratic officeholders and appointees who\u2019ve been lucratively feeding from corporate troughs as lobbyists, consultants and PR operatives. Their corporate ties usually go unmentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An important media headquarters for hostility toward the Sanders campaign is MSNBC, owned by Comcast\u2014a notoriously anti-labor and anti-consumer corporation. \u201cPeople need to remember,\u201d I pointed out<\/a> on Democracy Now! last week, \u201cthat if you, for instance, don\u2019t trust Comcast, why would you trust a network that is owned by Comcast? These are class interests being worked out where the top strata of ownership and investors hires the CEO, hires the managing editors, hires the reporters. And so, what we\u2019re seeing, and not to be rhetorical about it, but we really are seeing a class war underway.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Routinely, the talking heads and go-to sources for mainline news outlets are far removed from the economic pressures besetting so many Americans. And so, media professionals with the most clout and largest megaphones are quite distant from the Sanders base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voting patterns in the New Hampshire primary reflected whose economic interests the Sanders campaign is promising to serve. With 10 active candidates on the Democratic ballot, Sanders \u201cwon 4 in 10 of voters with household incomes under $50,000 and nearly 3 in 10 with incomes between $50,00 and $99,000,\u201d the Washington Post reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, a trio of researchers associated with the Institute for New Economic Thinking\u2014Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen and Paul Jorgensen\u2014found<\/a> that \u201cthe higher the town\u2019s income, the fewer votes cast\u201d for Sanders. \u201cLower income towns in New Hampshire voted heavily for Sanders; richer towns did the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers saw in the data \u201cfurther dramatic evidence of a point we have made before: that the Democratic Party is now sharply divided by social class.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a reality with media implications that are hidden in plain sight. The often-vitriolic and sometimes preposterous<\/a> attacks on Sanders via powerful national media outlets are almost always coming from affluent or outright wealthy people. Meanwhile, low-income Americans have virtually zero access to the TV studios (other than providing after-hours janitorial services).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely read, seen and heard journalists are on the low end of the nation\u2019s extreme income inequality. Viewed in that light\u2014and keeping in mind that corporate ownership and advertising dominate mainstream media\u2014it shouldn\u2019t be surprising that few prominent journalists have much good to say about a presidential campaign fiercely aligned with the working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there is going to be class warfare in this country,\u201d Bernie Sanders told<\/a> the Iowa AFL-CIO convention last summer, \u201cit\u2019s time that the working class of this country won that war and not just the corporate elite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the corporate elite, goals like that are unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Norman<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Norman Solomon<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0is co-founder and national coordinator of\u00a0RootsAction.org<\/a>.\u00a0His books include\u00a0“War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death<\/a>“<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0“Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State<\/a>.”<\/em>\u00a0He is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 17, 2020 by Common Dreams In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned. by Norman Solomon  24 Comments With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of average Americans. (Photo: Drew… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13919"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13920,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13919\/revisions\/13920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}