(Photo courtesy: Media Matters for America)
How did the New York Times actually work for Hillary Clinton, and trash a Bernie Sanders candidacy?
Conservative publication Observer did a detailed article on how New York Times worked as the mouthpiece of establishment DNC, to promote and glorify Hillary Clinton. You can find the Observer article here, and it shows how blatantly the mentor paper worked for Clinton’s win, dropping all its pretense of journalistic objectivity. In fact, as the article shows, some of the famous reporters and columnists for the Times took cues and quotes from Democratic Party bosses, and used them over and over again in their so-called reporting. There was absolute bias for Clinton, and all the opposition was silenced. Even in their readers’ comments section for various news items (NYTimes uses articles selectively to open readers’ comment box, and therefore, it’s already biased for certain items vis-a-vis the others), the Times often selected pro-Hillary comments as their favorites.
Here’s a segment from Observer.
“Throughout the primaries, the Times regularly published hit pieces on Sanders by columnists Paul Krugman and Charles Blow—and the company doesn’t seem to employ anyone, or at the very least publish freelance submissions, willing to portray Sanders in a positive light. Such an extreme imbalance in the opinion pages was common among major newspapers throughout the primaries, and not because there weren’t articulate academics and activists explaining why particular Sanders proposals were beneficial. Rather, publications like the Times overtly skewed their coverage to favor Clinton. Such extreme bias for one presidential candidate is harrowing, given the Times’ size and reputation of integrity for trusted journalism. The 2016 Democratic primaries saw the paper destroying that integrity and trust.”
CNN did the same thing.
“As soon as the nomination is wrapped up, I will be your biggest surrogate,” current Interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Donna Brazile, wrote to [Clinton campaign chair] Podesta in a January 2016 email. As a Vice Chair of the DNC, Brazile was bound to neutrality per the charter, but as shown in several emails released so far, that was not the case.” Brazile has been a key CNN commentator on the network’s prime time shows.
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz had to resign after her bias was exposed.
“In July, former DNC chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned after WikiLeaks released emails that showed DNC staffers discussing strategies that could be used against Sanders. The emails revived long-running suspicions on the part of Sanders supporters that Wasserman Schultz had tilted the scales in favor of Clinton.” (Quote from LATimes.)
You don’t need to be a right wing, Trump supporter to understand how big media worked for either Trump or Clinton, throughout the campaign. If Fox, New York Post, or Breitbart worked shamelessly for Trump’s victory, New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC did the same for Hillary. They all shed their objectivity and neutrality pretense, and worked as mouthpieces of their favorite candidate.
By doing so, they all worked to promote the status-quo machinery, corporate America and its allegedly criminal institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Monsanto or Exxon, and actively silenced any democratic dissent. Silencing the Sanders campaign was an important example in their election coverage.
And by silencing the grassroots, democratic movement that took America by storm, New York Times and its surrogate media effectively silenced a real, issue-based, pro-99% movement of dissent, and heavily lifted the Bill Clinton-Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton oligarchy that ordinary Americans were craving to change.
Bernie Sanders’ exit from the scene, thanks to pro-Hillary propaganda by the Times, effectively, and ironically, turned over the mantle of the American disenchanted to the Trump candidacy. Trump now became the torchbearer for change!
From that point on, Bernie Sanders’ call for a moderate and nonviolent Democratic Socialism, economic equality for all Americans, a strong labor union, action on climate change, immigration reform, overturning Citizens United, and such urgent matters went into the the back burner. The American electorate did not hear about these issues anymore since New York Times and DNC pivoted Hillary Clinton to the supreme position of a presidential candidate.
The Times and DNC, in effect, decided she was the future president of America. They undermined and flayed Trump.
(To Be Continued.)
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How New York Times Handed the Election Over to Trump — Part II