Bernie Sanders Media Coverage

The way the media portrays a candidate can make or break a campaign, and no American campaign is more affected by media coverage than the presidential one. Every day for months before the election, even before the primaries, news broadcasts and publications are full of talk about the election. The American people largely make political decisions based on coverage of the politicians, which is what makes Bernie Sander’s recent tie at the Iowa caucus so interesting. He received 48.6% of the vote, which is notable because of how shockingly little media coverage has been devoted to him by mainstream media. From the very beginning of his campaign, Sanders was written off. No one from the mainstream media considered him a serious candidate. When Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and many others announced their campaigns, the New York Times …show more content…
While Sanders was mentioned while talking about the Democratic debates, coverage about him as an individual was practically nonexistent. A media analyst, Andrew Tyndall of the Tyndall Report, noticed this trend and decided to compile some data. He found that in 2016, 857 minutes were devoted to covering the campaign on NBC, ABC, and CBS. Of those 857 minutes, only 10 were devoted to Bernie Sanders. People interpreting this data may say that this is to be expected because Tyndall did not include times when Sanders was mentioned with other candidates. This figure comes only from minutes of coverage focused on Sanders. However, these 10 minutes are miniscule compared to the 234 minutes Donald Trump has received. Donald Trump is not even the Republican front runner- he came in second by several points at the Iowa caucus, and only received 24% of the vote. When compared to Sanders’ virtual tie with Clinton at 49.6%, it seems completely unreasonable that Trump has so much more media coverage when he is not doing as well as