Recently Andrew Yang has came out and made a point about MSNBC not showing him in polling where he did better than the candidates on air, as well as giving him less than half the time to speak during debates compared to other candidates, and not asking any questions relating to his campaign’s policies.
Is this a problem? I don’t favor Yang, I disagree with his implementation of UBI, I would give UBI to everyone below a certain median, and I would not allow opt in/opt out all subsidized aid programs like SNAP or Section 8 would still be kept while receiving that UBI. I also know he’s not in the top 3, but he’s been fighting to get his 8 or 9%. And I think this is an important topic, mainstream media has too much influence over voters to go unchecked. MSNBC needs to apologize and admit what they’re doing, and that it’s wrong.
Of course, Republicans and independents have known since forever that the media has a shameless bias in favor of mainstream Democratic candidates and ideas, and against anyone and anything which questions them. Now a small sliver of Democrats are seeing it clearly.
Is there a particular MSNBC would want to snub Yang? I’d assume they’re ignoring him because he’s a seemingly inconsequential candidate with terrible polls in a crowded race.
Judge Alex Ferrer(Host and Executive Producer of “Whistleblower” on CBS, former host of the nationally syndicated court show “Judge Alex”) [on leaving Yang out of graphics]:
Cenk made the point that an ad on MSM could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so leaving off any candidate who is polling higher than others is giving the other free advertising worth millions of dollars.
Some Bernie supporters have joined into the boycott hashtag in solidarity because Bernie has been left out of the media a lot as well. Nate Silver on 538:
There’s no doubt Yang (as well as Sanders and Gabbard) has been ignored, misrepresented, and under-represented by MSNBC. The question is “Are they deliberately biased in favour of candidates approved by the DNC? Or are they just massively, shamefully stupid, unprofessional and incompetent in this one very specific area?”
I don’t like Yang. I think his signature policy is stupid and unworkable. I’ve no reason to fight his corner. But even I’ve been a bit taken aback by how shabbily he’s been treated by MSNBC.
But he has a very strong following, ardent admirers. Despite the lack of media attention he is polling ahead of Booker and Klobuchar, who are still treated as serious candidates; and IIRC he has now pulled almost even with Harris.
Part of the problem is that his message doesn’t fit into well-worn channels. Anything unfamiliar is treated as crackpottery. As I’ve mentioned in other threads, it often seems that America has never been stupider and more poorly informed than now, in the so-called Information Age.
His message about the need for a new economic paradigm is important — far more important than blah-blah-blah about M4A or gun control details. While a long-shot, he probably has one of the higher IQs of the candidates. One thing he is NOT is a “nutjob.”
But I’ll guess MSNBC and CNN don’t have a special nefarious agenda. Wasn’t it William of Ockham who said “Do not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by ordinary incompetence and stupidity.” ?
We saw something similar by FoxNews in the previous cycle: Fox totally ignored Ron Paul, while hanging on to every tweet or fart by Sarah Palin. At least Paul had ideas (admittedly every single idea was a stupid idea) while Palin was an utterly laughable bloviating imbecile without a single discernible idea, yet Fox was rooting for her to enter the race!
didnt sanders complain of the same thing last election? that if he held an event hed get 5 minutes if he was lucky but Hillary could drive through a town and not stop but it was covered like the second coming?
This is kind of different. That can be somewhat excused, they’re choosing their content on what they think people want to see. Yang is being bizarrely and frequently just left off lists of the candidates. Look at the link ITR champion posted.
No, that’s not it. Unless other hopeless candidates are frequently left off the graphics - hopeless candidates are certainly on the graphics presented in ITR’s linked article. That could be happening though, for all I know. These other nobodies don’t have a twitter army watching every move.
Yeah, +1. The links provided by the OP make a pretty good case that he’s being treated unfairly. One wonders if all the other minor candidates could come up with a similar list of “snubs” if they tried. But if Nate Silver agrees that Yang isn’t being treated fairly, I’ll buy that it’s a real thing.
And it’s a real problem, not because it affects Yang’s nonexistent chances of winning the nomination, but because it makes people mistrust the mainstream media, making them more likely to embrace weird conspiracy theories. We certainly saw this in the last cycle with Bernie supporters getting justifiably angry at his dismissive treatment.
But as a Bernie supporter, I’m happy to say that things seem better this time around. The media seem to have gotten used to the idea that Bernie is a power player and are treating him more fairly. Hopefully it won’t take them as long to get up to speed with Yang.
I don’t trust Silver’s opinion on this anymore than any other newswatcher, unless he’s actually done real homework on it. It would be nice if someone besides the Yang Gang dug in. I certainly doubt Harris or Booker were ever left off a candidate list, the two in his polling tier. But I also doubt Booker or Harris is getting much more coverage nowadays than Yang.
In your opinion. In my opinion, making sure my children can be assured of affordable health care, and reducing senseless slaughter is far more important than some blue-sky blah blah about a new economic paradigm.
I suspect that more people agree with me than with you, which may explain why Yang is polling at 3%.
When a group that’s at least as conservative as Fox News, except sneakier about it, starts defending a progressive Democrat, let’s just say I defend the defense “insincere.”
I don’t like this trend by the mainstream media where they basically seem to think that they are unofficial DNC superdelegates or some quasi-DNC and it’s their job to “vet” which candidates are suitable and mainstream enough to serve as the (D) nominee. I get that Yang’s UBI idea is considered too radical for our time as of yet, and that he is seen as a not-so-serious candidate who has little to talk about or offer other than UBI, but still, it’s not the MSM’s job to do vetting.
As far as I know, it’s only MSNBC that has been making these frankly baffling omissions in their graphics. Do you have some neutral like cite about mainstream media doing anything as bad?
Joe Biden takes Yang seriously. There’s some clips of Yang saying Biden’s the candidate he is friendliest with as Biden was the only candidate who engaged with him at events from the beginning, beyond a handshake and some pleasantries. That when Biden talks to candidates he asks more questions to Yang than he does to sitting US Senators so it gave Yang confidence that if a former VP values his contribution he doesn’t care if others scoff. And of course Yang is now polling above sitting US Senators.