Bernie Sanders in Rolling Stone (5/31/16): “If I talk about the disappearing middle class? Not exactly what CNN is interested in hearing, right?” (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
Asked for his closing thoughts in an interview with Rolling Stone‘s Tim Dickinson (5/31/16), Senator Bernie Sanders zeroes in on the problem of corporate media bias:
The American people are prepared to support real change. The difficulty that we have is not just the objective crises that we face—the disappearing middle class, income and wealth inequality, crumbling infrastructure, lack of universal health care and paid family and medical leave—the whole list of those things. That’s not the major problem. The major problem is that we have an establishment that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, led by a corporate media, which tries to condition the American people not to believe that we can accomplish those goals—or to even consider that those goals can be part of what American society is about.
You might think that there would be a lot of discussion about why the United States is the only major country on Earth not to provide health care to all people. People might say, “Look at the French system: It stinks, it’s terrible. The Canadian system is terrible; that’s why we don’t want to do it.” But you don’t have that discussion. Why is it that the United States, which spends far more per capita on health care than other nations, why don’t we have a national health care system? Have you seen that debate once in your lifetime? On television?…
Have you seen a debate coming on where a guy says, “Look, I think the British system is good, and it costs about one third of the American system”? And some American guy comes on and says, “No, I think it’s a terrible system!” and argues it out about why our system is better. Let’s have that debate! There’s two sides to every story. You don’t see that debate.
And my guess is that the majority of the American people do not even know that we are the only major country on Earth without a national health care system. They don’t know that we’re the only major country without guaranteed paid family and medical leave. No one tells them that you’ve got 20 people owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people. They don’t know that. Somehow CBS doesn’t have that special. I don’t know why.
You see, that’s what the campaign is about. Our major success so far is in laying out a broad progressive agenda, and forcing ourselves—the media doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. Do you know how many endorsements we have gotten from major media in this country? [Holds up hand forming a zero] They’re much more interested in Trump. For a whole variety of reasons. And if he attacks Hillary Clinton, calls her a bad name, that becomes a major story. If I talk about the disappearing middle class? Not exactly what CNN is interested in hearing, right? OK.
But what we have managed to do in this campaign is, they can’t avoid somebody [like me]. Tonight, we were on CNN—I spoke for a while, for seven minutes. They gotta put us on a little bit. And suddenly people are hearing things they never heard before. And that’s changing consciousness. So what we have got to do is to redefine who we can be as a nation. In a sense, what we are entitled to. What rights we are entitled to as humans. That’s the struggle. And we’re making a little bit of progress.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. He’s on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission from FAIR.