
How the New York Times Sandbagged Bernie Sanders - smacktoward
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-new-york-times-sandbagged-bernie-sanders-20160315
======
unclesaamm
With last night's victories for Clinton and Trump, the real question people
should be asking themselves is what these two candidates have in common that
have kept them winning, despite their having the two worst favorability
ratings in the election?

To me, media is an obvious one. Turner Broadcasting is a major corporate donor
to Clinton, and the NYT is all but falling over themselves to build
connections with a Clinton administration.

Another similarity is neither Clinton or Trump care that much about
consistency, which makes them much shinier objects to cover. See this article
for a rare example of the NYT even being unable to notice Hillary's flip
flopping: [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/campaign-
stops/...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/campaign-stops/which-
side-are-you-on-hillary.html)

~~~
libertymcateer
> With last night's victories for Clinton and Trump, the real question people
> should be asking themselves is what these two candidates have in common that
> have kept them winning, despite their having the two worst favorability
> ratings in the election?

Specious assumption. My conclusion is that the favorability ratings are
bullshit.

To posit that a huge media conspiracy has caused millions of voters to vote
huge, huge landslides in favor of these two people is just ridiculous compared
with the probability that measuring very complex and ineffable metrics like
"favorability" is a total crapshoot, especially in a world where voters like
myself (and many HNers, I suspect) do not have landlines, use ad-blockers, do
not click on advertising online and do not fill out surveys.

Tl;dr the likelihood of media influence controlling this election to such
huge, huge landslide outcomes is overwhelmingly improbable compared to the
high likelihood that favorability metrics are junk-science.

~~~
DSingularity
> Tl;dr the likelihood of media influence controlling this election to such
> huge, huge landslide outcomes is overwhelmingly improbable compared to the
> high likelihood that favorability metrics are junk-science.

Overwhelmingly improbable? Oh man! What is that likelihood?

Please dont masquerade your opinions as facts by using terms like "likelihood"
and "improbable".

I have one question for you. If media influence over elections is so
"unlikely" and so insignificant why would the NYT have tripped over itself to
retitle and reword their article to make it seem like pro-Bernie?

Media influence is real. You will quickly notice after speaking to people
outside your bubble that the average voters political almost always conform to
that of the "pundits".

~~~
libertymcateer
The subscription and readership numbers just don't back this. People simply
don't read newspapers. The NYT could say that Hillary is the second coming and
the average voter wouldn't be aware of it.

~~~
id
They have to get their information from somewhere. TV channels are media, too.

Most people don't know Bernie, Hillary and Donald personally, so the only way
to get an impression is the media.

~~~
settsu
No, not the only way.

Just the lazy way.

------
tokenadult
A lot of us here in the United States who are pickled in news about electoral
politics at this time of year don't appreciate stories that are purely about
electoral politics creeping on to Hacker News. The guidelines here say, after
all, "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless
they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or
disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's
probably off-topic." I'm familiar with how to find Matt Taibbi's stories
published in _Rolling Stone,_ and I don't usually find them up to the
"gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" standard expected here on Hacker
News. This particular article digs into how a piece published online by the
_New York Times_ gradually underwent editing after first publication, which is
interesting to any of us who do online publishing, so I thank the participant
here who kindly submitted it, but it's apparent that most comments here are
responding to the headline, or to the campaign in general, and not to the
article's content at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
wf
But I would say this falls under "evidence of some interesting new
phenomenon". News pieces with large audiences being largely edited to deliver
a different message after they've "gone viral" is similar to a high traffic
website being hacked to deliver a message about something else.

~~~
deathhand
This is the point where I draw a reference to 1984 where the main character's
job was to do exactly what the New York Times is doing.

~~~
brador
The question is, is it done with malice or to further align the article to the
viral viewers and hopefully make it even more viral?

------
clarkevans
This article demonstrates clear "main-stream" bias, where an article was
deliberately edited to inject editorial bias (even increasing article length
by adding 2 sentances) rather than simply correcting inaccuracies or fixing
poorly articulated sentences. This isn't surprising.

What is surprising is the effectiveness of non-mainstream and peer-to-peer
media. Sanders consistently beats Clinton in the "Facebook Primary". The rise
of Sanders as a credible candidate wouldn't have happened a generation ago,
and it demonstrates a new twist since the introduction of mass media -- voters
who support Sanders get information mostly through alternative media. While
the Internet also affected politics 8 years ago, it does so much more
profoundly now.

Who would have thought that an off-track candidate (who is an Independent)
could run on a major party, and get 40% or more of the popular vote in a
primary. Some attribute voting shift to generational differences (millennial
vs boomers); while certainly true, I think there's another force at work:
access to new, peer-to-peer media and the leisure time to digest it.

~~~
mc32
It's sad the NYT feels they have to go this route but I think it will prove
that they are politically impotent. On the flipside, the ineffectiveness of
Jeb! seems to disprove the thought that media can shape or change the
electorate in a great way. The media may grant them marginal advantage, bug
ultimately it's up to the candidate to produce a viable candidacy via brand.
We see that with Trump. Little ground game not much paid media but overwhelms
his opponents in most markets. We may have to wait to see if the media lite,
populism heavy approach works in the general election. I think his and
Sanders' approach will change if they make it to the general.

It's like the swiftboats or the binders of women's CVs. They are excuses.
People already didn't like these candidates and needed an excuse to prove
their ambiguity right and drop them like a hot mess.

~~~
dcposch
Establishment bias still matters a lot. Voters over 65 make up a shockingly
high fraction of overall turnout, and they get more of their information from
old media. (Converselt, the median CNN viewer is 68 years old...)

This election showed the new and unprecedented power of social media and
grassroots democracy. But at least on the democratic side, it looks like the
establishment will prevail.

I think in a few years, party elites will have even less control than they do
now, for better or worse.

------
superskierpat
Can someone explain to me why the media constantly uses the word landslide to
describe hillaries victories? I mean, looking at the results, I see that,
superdelegates aside, most of the primaries seem to show a 5 to 10% difference
between sanders and clinton.

I call that a rather close victory. (Even if 1% can mean thousands of people)

~~~
gdulli
The 2000 presidential election really changed things. The winner of the
popular vote at the national level lost the election, and of course there was
the whole Florida recount thing. 2004 was also very close and reinforced this.
Since then a 10-15 point win seems like a bigger deal than it used to and the
threshold for using "landslide" is lower.

Hillary won 3 of 5 states last night by 10+ points and the biggest state by
30+ points. Overall that might not have been called a landslide 20 years ago
but the definition is looser now.

~~~
toyg
Yeah, since 2000 it became clear the US electoral process is f*ed up (which
makes the whole "democracy" grandstanding very shallow). And I thought the UK
system was bad...

~~~
pmarreck
At least we don't have a monarchy. ;)

------
huac
This story reminds me a lot of Sanders' old quote: "The revolution will not
begin at Harvard University." For how liberal the NYT (and Harvard) are
reputed to be, they are actually bastions of the elite, a role that is
diametrically opposed to being revolutionary.

Harvard students and NYT writers have very real vested interests in
maintaining the current order, which in this cycle is HRC, the most
establishment candidate in recent memory (of course, every GOP candidate this
cycle is incredibly establishment too, but that's another comment).

~~~
jandrese
Arguing Trump as an establishment candidate is a tough road. It seems pretty
clear that the establishment would prefer almost anyone else, but their
systematic oppression of moderates in their own party left them with no viable
candidates this year.

I mean the primaries are already half over and they're still trying to figure
out if they can make Kasich the nominee somehow.

------
zimbatm
It would be nice if we could link against an immutable version of articles
(like the good old paper). Changing the content after the fact makes it hard
for all parties to discuss properly.

------
forgottenpass
The linked "Four Amendments and a Funeral" doesn't have much to it, but
Taibbi's "Inside the Horror Show that is Congress" from the same visit to
congress is my favorite non-music thing to ever be published by Rolling Stone.
In it Bernie shows Taibbi how the congressional sausage is made, if you don't
what the House Rules Committee does, give it a read.

[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-
horror-...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-horror-show-
that-is-congress-20050825)

------
irq-1
> It's not immoral or anything, just sort of crass. And odd, that they don't
> care that their readers now know, too.

Newspapers and journalists love to talk about a free and fair press being
essential to democracy. If you accept that, then political manipulation is an
issue of morality.

The New York Times being deceptive and not caring that anyone knows is very
old news. Noam Chomsky famously measured New York Times 'column inches' about
the genocide in East Timor. That was in the 1980s (?).

------
jccalhoun
It seems slightly odd for an article that is largely a rewrite of someone's
medium post to be complaining about improper journalism practices.

