Essay Questions

What is Bernie Sanders' view of the media?

Sanders is not a particularly big fan of the media. The reasons for this are both subjective and theoretical; from a subjective standpoint, he is anti-media because he feels that they are biased against him, and are not covering his campaign or his support of senate candidates in the way that he would like them to. He is so annoyed about this that he cannot resist a jibe at the reporters who denigrated his proteges and who said they would never get elected.

However, he also has a more general, ethical issue with the media, and that is that it does not report the things that happen, but the things that happen that the owners of their particular media conglomerates want them to report. Because of this, the public is not seeing the world as it is, but as the media magnate wants them to. This means that effectively everyone is seeing the world through the same pair of eyes. He feels this is a control that the media have over the public that is a genuine threat to democracy.

Sanders does not seem to like politicians from either the Republican or the Democrat parties. What are some of his complaints about both?

Sanders' chief complaint about the Democrats is that they lack backbone and are too easily cowed. They do not press the issues that they have highlighted as important, and they do not want to relinquish the populist vote by saying or doing anything controversial. He also feels that they are too swayed by what lobbyists tell them which means that they do not pursue Bills that are not in line with what they lobbyists are lobbying for.

He does not like Republican politicians because he feels that they are too loyal to their big donors, and that if a donor is going to be negatively affected by a Bill then they will not pass the Bill rather than upset the donor. In both cases he feels that politicians who should be answerable to the people are answerable to donors and corporations.