“This has been an all-time low by mainstream corporate media,” says media scholar Robert McChesney, who joins us to discuss how the media is covering the race for the White House. “What we’ve seen is the Sanders campaign has been largely neglected … And the coverage and the framing of it has been largely through the eyes of the establishment for the Hillary Clinton campaign.” McChesney says reporters also failed simply to ask questions about what exactly happened over the weekend when Sanders supporters erupted in protest at the Nevada state Democratic convention after they said rules were abruptly changed and 64 Sanders supporters were wrongly denied delegate status. This “brought to the front just how little actual journalism goes on,” he notes, “how much of it is simply regurgitating what people in power tell them.” McChesney is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Communication and is co-founder of Free Press, a national media reform organization.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re on the road, on our 100-city tour, today broadcasting from Madison, Wisconsin. Well, on Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders rallied supporters in San Jose, California, emphasizing the importance of next month’s primary in the delegate-rich state.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: All of you know that as part of the Democratic nominating process, California has by far the most delegates at stake: 475 of them. And on June 7th, let us win the vast majority of those delegates. If we have a high voter turnout, we will not only win, we can win by a lot, which is what we have to do. And my hope is that this great state, one of the most progressive states in the country, will make it loud and clear, and say to the American people and the world, California is on board for a political revolution! Thank you!

AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, Senator Sanders won the Democratic primary in Oregon, while Hillary Clinton declared victory in Kentucky with a razor-thin 0.5 percent lead.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Bernie Sanders’ supporters erupted in protest at the Nevada state Democratic convention. They say rules were abruptly changed and 64 Sanders supporters were wrongly denied delegate status. Clinton ultimately won 20 pledged delegates to Sanders’ 15. The state party chair, Roberta Lange, said she received death threats, while state party headquarters were vandalized. Lange told CNN about the threats.

ROBERTA LANGE: “We want you hung. We know where you live. We know where your grandson goes to school. We know where you work. And we’re going to get you.” That’s pretty—a pretty huge threat.

AMY GOODMAN: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid urged Sanders to condemn the behavior of some of his supporters, saying he faced a “test of leadership.” In a statement, Sanders rejected violence, and noted that during the Nevada campaign, shots were fired into his campaign office in the state, and his staff’s housing complex was broken into and ransacked. He also accused Nevada Democratic leadership of using its power to, quote, “prevent a fair and transparent process,” unquote, at the convention Saturday. This is Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, speaking on CNN.

JEFF WEAVER: We do not condone any kind of violence or threats. That’s unacceptable. Bad language, we don’t—that’s unacceptable. But we are not going to allow the millions of people who supported Bernie Sanders to be sort of rolled over in places like Nevada by the way they handled that convention.

AMY GOODMAN: Much disagreement remains over what actually happened during the Nevada convention and if the media’s portrayal of the situation is even reliable.

For more, we’re joined here in Madison, Wisconsin, by longtime media analyst Robert McChesney, professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the Department of Communication. He co-founded Free Press, a national media reform organization. McChesney and John Nichols recently co-wrote the book People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy.

Bob McChesney, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us.

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Glad to be here, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: So, what do you think of the media’s coverage of this presidential race?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, it’s been deplorable, even by the standards—and we’ve talked about this in past years. Grading with a curve allowing for bad coverage as a rule, this has been, I think, an all-time low by mainstream corporate media. And NPR, I’d toss right in there.

You know, you have in the Sanders campaign—whatever one might think of Sanders, as a journalist, you’re looking at one of the most extraordinary political stories in decades that’s come along. You have someone who’s galvanized young support on really an entirely different vision of our society like no other candidate, again, in decades. As journalists, you’d think this would be heaven on Earth, this is the greatest story you could possibly ever cover; you’d look to the sky and say, “Thank you for putting me here in 2016.” Yet what we’ve seen is the Sanders campaign has been largely neglected—all the data shows this—barely covered. And the coverage and the framing of it has been largely through the eyes of the establishment for the Hillary Clinton campaign: This guy is a nuisance, he’s a pain in the butt; he’s getting in the way, in front of the real candidate, the presumptive nominee—presumptive going back to the very beginning. And when you see Sanders or one of his surrogates on the air, generally the tenor of the questioning is “What would Hillary’s people want to ask him?” You know, it’s never like “Let’s take these people on their own terms.” So you put it all together, it’s been pretty distressing and the source, I think, of frustration for a lot of people, that they’ve not really had a fair hearing and a fair exposure to people who rely upon cable news networks and the mainstream media to learn about politics.

The other issue that’s really crucial here, and it gets to the Nevada issue, is that it’s also brought to the front just how little actual journalism goes on in American mainstream journalism, how much of it is simply regurgitating what people in power tell them, how much of it is simply predictions that are mindless. You know, there’s all sorts of crucial issues, everywhere you turn, that journalists should be diving into, looking at, like the claims about Nevada. We had all this reporting about purported threats and violence in Nevada, but it was all based on basically taking at face value the words of one side and dismissing the words of the other side. This was videotaped. They could actually go in and interview people, talk to people, and get to the bottom of it before they announce the results.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s turn to Hillary Clinton’s press secretary, Brian Fallon, who spoke on CNN in April.

BRIAN FALLON: One week ago today, in this very chair, Tad Devine from the Sanders campaign was sitting here talking to you, and you asked him, “You know, why didn’t Senator Sanders decide to run as an independent? Why did he decide to run through the Democratic primary?” And Tad Devine said that for a very simple reason, he decided to run as a Democrat: He did not want to be a Ralph Nader. He did not want to be a spoiler. If he didn’t not win the Democratic nomination, he didn’t want to spoil the chances for the Democrats to retain the White House. I’m afraid that if the attacks in the style of yesterday’s baseless accusation continue, that that’s exactly what he’ll be doing. And this has been an extraordinary effort that the Sanders campaign has embarked upon. They’ve brought so many people into the process. But yesterday, the tone of the attacks was suggesting that if the Democratic Party doesn’t see fit to nominate Bernie Sanders, then it’s not a party worth supporting. And that is poisonous rhetoric that would seriously impair our ability—our party’s ability to come together in these closing weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Hillary Clinton’s press secretary, Brian Fallon. Bob McChesney?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: And following the point we just made, that also became—has been the meme now in the corporate news media in virtually every story for the last month. They sort of got their marching orders from the Hillary campaign. You know, it’s an outrageous and absurd charge, if you think about it. And all it takes for journalists is to look at 2008, when Hillary Clinton was running and was in a similar position vis-à-vis Barack Obama the last two months of the campaign. In that period, she refused to get out, said, “I’m taking it right to the convention.” And in fact, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of her main supporters, currently the chair of the Democratic National Committee, argued, even if she didn’t win the most elected delegates, the superdelegates should pick Hillary because she’d do better in November. She was making that argument then: So she should stay in and not worry about maybe hurting Obama’s chances. And there was more evidence then, or as much evidence, that Hillary Clinton was doing damage theoretically to Obama’s November chances than there is today that Sanders is doing damage to Hillary Clinton’s November chances.

 

Facebook’s Monopoly & Surveillance Antithetical to Free Press and a Free Society

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with top conservative media figures, including Glenn Beck, Dana Perino and Tucker Carlson, after his company was accused of suppressing news stories on political grounds. Former Facebook workers told the website Gizmodo they routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers by keeping them out of the “trending” stories section on the sidebar. “The concerns are legitimate,” says media analyst Robert McChesney, “but the real question is: Should we have a private monopoly that has so much political influence and political power?” McChesney also discusses Facebook’s surveillance and access to user’s data, and whether such companies could be nationalized.

AMY GOODMAN: Bob McChesney, I also want to ask you about Facebook. On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with top conservative media activists, including Glenn Beck; Dana Perino, the former Bush spokesperson; and Tucker Carlson. The meeting took place a week after Facebook was accused of suppressing news stories on political grounds. Former Facebook workers told the website Gizmodo they routinely suppress news stories of interest to conservative readers by keeping them out of the trending stories section on the sidebar.

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, it’s a real problem, in the sense that the issue here is the one that’s not being talked about, the elephant in the room, the two-ton elephant, which is Facebook is a monopoly, and they have monopolistic power, as do a number of these digital giants that are the largest companies now, in terms of market value, in the world economy. And so, what Facebook does, or Google or Amazon, has immense influence over how people see the world and understand the world. And so, the concerns are legitimate, if you feel you’re getting the raw end of the stick. But really, the real question is: Should we have a private monopoly that has so much political influence and political power? I think democratic theory is unequivocal on this point: no. This is really antithetical to anything remotely close to a free press and a free society.

Then, the other issue is, if you’re going to have this private monopoly, no matter how lovely you think the people are who run it or how much you trust them, how benevolent you might think they are, in our society, and most others, what you get is, the people or the squeaky wheel that gets their attention, that causes them to react, are powerful people. So it’s going to naturally gravitate to suiting the interests of those who can arrange a private meeting, who have big backers, who are politically and economically influential. I don’t think Facebook is holding meetings with homeless representatives to make sure their side of the story gets covered, or peace activists to make sure their side of the story gets covered. I doubt the boycott and divestment folks, that you talked about at the newscast here, across the country, with regard to Palestine and Israel, are getting their audience with Facebook, either. You know, it’s really slanted very heavily towards benefiting those in power, when you have a private monopoly that basically has uncontrollable power.

AMY GOODMAN: So what should happen to Facebook, do you think?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, I think this is the great discussion of the next generation. There’s nothing on the table now. But as a society, we have to consider, as we move into this heavily digitized economy—and we have, you know, four, five, six companies that dominate it, and the largest companies in the world in terms of market value, and they’re privately owned, and they own the politicians—is this acceptable? And if it isn’t, where do we go from here? And I think that’s the great discussion we’re going to have, because the status quo isn’t going to work.

AMY GOODMAN: What about nationalizing?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, that’s certainly the traditional method. And—

AMY GOODMAN: What does that mean?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: What that means is that if you have a company so big that you can’t allow it to exist, but it’s in an industry where it can’t be broken up—you can’t break it into 12 competing parts; because of networks and economics, it gravitates towards being a monopoly—you take it out of the market system, like you have the post office outside the market system, not a private monopoly. And you take it so it’s not a source of profit making. You make it municipally run, generally nationalized in some form. And then it not only benefits the society as a whole, but it benefits smaller businesses, that aren’t getting ripped off by these monopolies to pay much higher rates for their services than they would have to pay otherwise.

AMY GOODMAN: What about surveillance?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: And that’s another issue.

AMY GOODMAN: How much Facebook knows?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Yeah, exactly, and that’s another issue. We’ve got these digital companies, aren’t just monopolies in the sense that a train company is, but they’re a monopoly in the sense that they actually are doing surveillance. They have all the data on all of us. And they have a very strong interest in being on good terms with the federal government and the national government. They’re really joined at the hip. And the national government, once you get away from election time and once the door closes, has a real clear record of not being especially interested in civil liberties of citizens. That seems a nuisance that gets in the way of their doing their job. And that’s another reason why, you know, this is a marriage that is not made in heaven for democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: How could Facebook manipulate a presidential race or political race?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: You know, I’m not a—I’m not comfortable speculating on that, although, as you know, I’m comfortable speculating on a lot of things. But, you know, I think that it’s possible. I mean, it just takes very subtle things, and maybe not even always intentional, can have a great deal of influence. One thing they do, though, is simply by regurgitating existing journalism. They’re regurgitating the stories that are coming down the pipe from the mainstream media, which are largely—the problems in there then become amplified and become the problems worldwide. That’s how people see issues. And so, it just—it’s a megaphone for our worst problems in our journalism.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about some other media news. Charter Communications announced Wednesday it’s completed its acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, creating the second-largest U.S. broadband provider and third-largest pay TV provider. Talk about the significance of this. This is your specialty, media consolidation.

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Yeah. Cable companies and telephone companies and cellphone companies, they—these companies all are really government-created monopolies. These aren’t free market companies that were tinkering in the garage out in Palo Alto, and they came up with a great idea, and they lucked into a monopoly. These are companies that, from the beginning, have gotten their power by having the best lobbyists in town and getting government monopoly licenses, not having any competition. They’re monopolies by nature.

And so, we’ve really gravitated to a point—this is where the sort of crony capitalists and the corruption of our system becomes so transparent, where these companies have gobbled up all the licenses, they’ve gotten rid of many of the regulations that prohibited concentration, and now we have two companies, Charter and Comcast, which are going to have—about two-thirds of all landline broadband internet access is going to go through those companies, and close to that in terms of cable television access, as well. And this is something, again, antithetical in our entire history, until quite recently, that you’d allow these sort of companies this much power. When we say they have two-thirds, it’s not like you have an option. That means in two-thirds of the country, they’ve got a monopoly. They’ve divided up the country between themselves. They’re not competing with each other. And again, similar to the Facebook—it’s just slightly different, because in this case you’re dealing with purely government-created monopolies.

But for the representative of the people to allow there to be even more concentration in this industry, there’s no economic justification, except for the shareholders of these companies. There’s no benefit for the citizens of this country to do this. It’s just a textbook case of tremendous lobbying. And these guys, the most important—their competitive advantage in economics is they’ve got the best lobbying in the world. That’s it, period. It’s not that they serve consumers well. And these guys have got great lobbyists. I’m sure they’re all getting huge bonuses this year for pulling off this deal.

AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think should have happened?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: We should have prohibited it. And I think we have to really have a serious discussion in this country about why do we pay so much more for broadband access and cellphone service than almost any other country in the world, sometimes by double, triple the rates for crappier service. Is having these private companies, which are the equivalent of the health insurance companies, gouging us and setting super high prices and paying off the regulators and politicians, a very rational way for a free society to have the central component of our communication infrastructure controlled?

AMY GOODMAN: Your report card on President Obama when it comes to media policy, and how it compared to President Bush?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Oh, boy, that’s a low bar you’re giving me right there. Well, he’s better than President Bush—there’s no question about that—in many respects. It’s been mixed. I think it was a low priority for him. He got elected in 2008 running on a very progressive platform, which he pretty much largely forgot. Especially his first term, the FCC was run—produced a backwater that basically didn’t want to make any waves and didn’t want to ruffle any feathers. The second term, under the current head, Wheeler, implemented a great net neutrality policy, much to their credit, has been good on some of the mergers to stop them, but still had to throw—threw a bone here to Charter with the Time Warner merger. So I’d say better, but still a disappointment. I think for someone who ran in 2008 really with a very progressive platform on the internet, on public media, on media consolidation, on community media, he’s basically dropped the ball.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Robert McChesney, professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the Department of Communication, co-founded Free Press, a national media reform group. And Bob McChesney and John Nichols recently co-wrote the book People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Democracy Now!‘s Mike Burke goes into a Chicago church where a Mexican immigrant has taken refuge after living in this country for more than 16 years. He has five U.S.-born children. He’s trying to prevent his deportation to Mexico. Stay with us.

 

Trump Vows to Sue New York Times in Latest Show of Disregard for Freedom of Press

We get reaction from media scholar Robert McChesney to news that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is reportedly considering suing The New York Times after it ran a major report on his past treatment of women, and has vowed to make it easier to sue news organizations. Lawsuits are not the solution, McChesney says. “Instead, it’s to broaden it, enrich it, create new voices and fund new voices, so we actually have a diverse marketplace of ideas … Donald Trump’s view is the exact opposite: It’s either my way or the highway.”

AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, the Republican political operative and Trump supporter, Roger Stone, accused CNN of censoring stories about Bill Clinton’s treatment of women, and suggested Trump should shut CNN down if he’s elected president.

ROGER STONE: You have organizations like CNN, which is not a news organization but an advocacy group, and if you attempt to discuss this on the air—and I’ve seen this done, with Steve Malzberg and Kurt Schlichter and yours truly—they literally pull—they pull the cord on your microphone; they turn you off. Frankly, when Donald Trump is president, he should turn off their FCC license. They’re not a news organization. And they’re about censorship.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Roger Stone, who is also the source on the National Enquirer stories against Donald Trump’s opponents. Your response to what he’s saying?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, they don’t get an FCC license, to begin with, so he doesn’t know the elements of how this works. And so—

AMY GOODMAN: Explain that.

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, it’s a cable channel; it’s not a licensed broadcaster with airwaves, where you get a license. So their deal is with the cable companies, and, you know, it’s not a direct license by the government. But the idea that you would censor to solve a problem like this is absurd and antithetical, I think, to any tradition I’m interested in.

But I do think he raises a very important point, which is a real concern, which is, in the case of Hillary Clinton, you know, she did, for example, a massive corporate shakedown tour after leaving the State Department and before formally announcing for president in 2015, where she did 90 talks, largely to corporations, for at least $100,000 a pop, that all went into her private bank account. She made $21 million in personal profit while she’s planning her run for president unofficially. And no one else has ever done this before. It’s extraordinary. It’s not just three Goldman Sachs talks. It’s 90 talks to the largest corporations in the country, and it’s many in Canada. And this is totally uninvestigated. This is known fact. This has been reported once or twice, it’ll show up periodically, but then it drops to the bottom of the ocean. And good journalists shouldn’t let it drop to the bottom of the ocean. So I think there’s legitimate concerns that they’ve not really pursued the issues they could have, and I think he’s right to make that point.

And this also touches on another issue. You know, the Hillary campaign has—and the corporate media—belabored the point that Bernie’s been so hard on Hillary. Oh, he’s just so mean to her. He’s being unfair to her, and he’s weakening her for Donald Trump in the fall. In fact, he hasn’t even touched any of these issues to speak of. He only mentions her briefly in his speeches, and never in a derogatory sense, as de rigueur for Donald Trump to talk about his opponents. If Hillary Clinton thinks Bernie Sanders is tough on her, wait until she sees what’s coming around the corner.

AMY GOODMAN: Donald Trump is reportedly considering suing The New York Times after it ran a major report on Trump’s past treatment of women. At a campaign rally in February, Trump vowed to make it easier to sue news organizations.

DONALD TRUMP: I’m going to open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws, so that when The New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Donald Trump. Bob McChesney?

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Well, I think that’s vintage Donald Trump. This sounds like something on a bar stool or something. He’ll just come up with some idea. And also, he wants to use litigation on suing, which is his specialty, as that’s his history, is winning through lawsuit. I think that’s an outrage. And again, you know I’m probably as critical of these news media as anyone. But the solution to our problem with news media is not to tie them up in lawsuits, with lots of lawyers and legal fees, and try to intimidate them and shut down news media, what remain of news media. Instead, it’s to broaden it, enrich it, create new voices and fund new voices, so we actually have a diverse marketplace of ideas and we have people who normally are cut out of the picture have an opportunity to participate. And Donald Trump’s view is the exact opposite: It’s either my way or the highway. I think that’s completely outrageous.

AMY GOODMAN: After The New York Times piece about his attitude toward women, now he has escalated, and on Fox last night, in talking to Sean Hannity, he is talking about President Clinton’s past behavior and now using the word “rape” when it comes to allegations of President Clinton and what he did.

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Oh, is there a clip for me to listen to?

AMY GOODMAN: No.

ROBERT McCHESNEY: Oh, I thought—usually I have a clip. Well, yeah, he’s going to—you know, Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a master at controlling the media dialogue. He knows what they want. He knows how to feed the beast. And so, stories that they wouldn’t touch with a 100-foot pole, Donald Trump makes front and center, and he’s going to keep them there as long as he wants. And again, what—the solution to this, if you have journalists, is to investigate them, investigate the charges, and report on them, and also to do the same to Donald Trump’s side, so it’s an equal playing field. Their specialty, on the other hand, is simply to announce the charges one candidate—in this case, Trump—makes, and then allow Hillary Clinton to deny them or her camp to deny them. It goes back and forth, but there’s no real journalism that goes on in the process. And that’s the great weak spot, what’s missing in action in the campaign coverage.

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