(C) Fairness & Accuracy in Media This story was originally published by Fairness & Accuracy in Media and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . In Dems’ Post-Election Fight, Corporate Media Took Side of Centrists [1] ['.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Vertical-Align Middle .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar Is .Alignleft .Alignright', 'Display Table .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar.Aligncenter Display Table Margin-Inline Auto'] Date: 2020-12-01 20:09:40+00:00 In the face of poorer-than-expected results in House and Senate races, establishment Democrats began pointing fingers at the left—with corporate media giving them a major assist. In a write-up of a contentious conference call among House Democrats, the Washington Post’s Rachael Bade and Erica Werner (11/5/20) quoted and paraphrased 14 sources who blamed those who “endorse far-left positions” for Democrats’ losses, counter-balanced by only four sources defending the left. All of the progressive sources were named; half of the establishment sources were either quoted anonymously or presented as unspecified “moderates”—or, twice, simply as “Democrats,” erasing progressive Democrats as legitimate members of their party. Bade and Werner only managed to interview two progressives for their article—one of whom, Rep. Jared Huffman, took the side of the centrists. In its piece on the dust-up, in which “Democrats traded excuses, blame and prognostications,” the New York Times (11/5/20) quoted South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, who “cautioned against running on ‘Medicare for all or defunding police or socialized medicine,’ adding that if Democrats pursued such policies, ‘we’re not going to win.’” What the article didn’t mention was that Clyburn has taken more money from the pharmaceutical industry in the past decade than any other member of the House or Senate (Charleston Post and Courier, 12/16/18). The piece then quoted Rep. Marc Veasey, who “warned his fellow members against anti-fracking talk.” Veasey ranked fourth among House Democrats in taking oil and gas industry money in the 2020 election cycle, and got 70% of his total campaign contributions from PACs. (To put that into perspective, the two progressives quoted in the Times piece, Pramila Jayapal and Rashida Tlaib, got 13% and 3% of their campaign contributions from PACs, respectively.) Readers might have found such information useful in analyzing the motivations behind those quotes. CNN’s Chris Cillizza (11/6/20) jumped into the fray as well, praising Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA official (a piece of relevant context not mentioned by Cillizza) who had some of the harshest words for progressives, for speaking “some hard truth to her party”—like, “We need to not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again,” as if the McCarthy era had never ended (FAIR.org, 10/9/20). After quoting Spanberger extensively and then printing some of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rebuttal (“You can’t just tell the Black, brown and youth organizers riding in to save us every election to be quiet or not have their reps champion them when they need us”), Cillizza wrote: What’s beyond debate is that Republican strategists took comments made by liberals within the Democratic Party and used them to blast everyone from Spanberger on down. Though all of these pieces offered plenty of suggestions that the left wing’s vocal support for things like socialism, Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and defunding the police cost the party seats in 2020, they failed to provide any actual data that might have helped readers evaluate the veracity of those statements. It’s an important point, because understanding Democrats’ lackluster performance should help guide their platform and messaging moving forward. But these articles aren’t shedding light on the data—perhaps because it would thoroughly undermine the anti-progressive framing. As the New York Times’ Jim Tankersley (10/14/20) reported just last month, “many of the plans favored by the most liberal wing of Democratic leaders remain popular with wide groups of voters, polling shows”: A recent Times poll found 2 in 3 respondents support a wealth tax, 3 in 5 favor Medicare for All (including 2 of 3 independent voters), and even higher numbers support free college tuition. The Green New Deal is likewise broadly popular: One poll specifically of swing House districts (YouGov/Data for Progress, 9/19) found that respondents supported the idea by a 13-point margin, 49% to 36%—even when informed that it will cost trillions of dollars. Ocasio-Cortez pointed out (Twitter, 11/7/20) that every Democratic co-sponsor of Medicare for All in a swing district won re-election. And Gizmodo‘s Brian Kahn (11/9/20) found that of 93 Democratic incumbents who co-sponsored the Green New Deal—including five in swing districts—only one lost their race. [END] --- [1] Url: https://fair.org/home/in-dems-post-election-fight-corporate-media-took-side-of-centrists/ Published and (C) by Fairness & Accuracy in Media Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/fair/