How the New York Times Sandbagged Bernie Sanders | Hacker News Reader

How the New York Times Sandbagged Bernie Sanders

rollingstone.com

177 pointssmacktoward69 comments

With last night's victories for Clinton and Trump, the real question people should be asking themselves is what these two candidates have in common that have kept them winning, despite their having the two worst favorability ratings in the election?

To me, media is an obvious one. Turner Broadcasting is a major corporate donor to Clinton, and the NYT is all but falling over themselves to build connections with a Clinton administration.

Another similarity is neither Clinton or Trump care that much about consistency, which makes them much shinier objects to cover. See this article for a rare example of the NYT even being unable to notice Hillary's flip flopping: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/opinion/campaign-stops/...

> With last night's victories for Clinton and Trump, the real question people should be asking themselves is what these two candidates have in common that have kept them winning, despite their having the two worst favorability ratings in the election?

Specious assumption. My conclusion is that the favorability ratings are bullshit.

To posit that a huge media conspiracy has caused millions of voters to vote huge, huge landslides in favor of these two people is just ridiculous compared with the probability that measuring very complex and ineffable metrics like "favorability" is a total crapshoot, especially in a world where voters like myself (and many HNers, I suspect) do not have landlines, use ad-blockers, do not click on advertising online and do not fill out surveys.

Tl;dr the likelihood of media influence controlling this election to such huge, huge landslide outcomes is overwhelmingly improbable compared to the high likelihood that favorability metrics are junk-science.

is there any data to back up most voters not being exposed to the media agenda? It seems a bit like "not I not anyone" when i might speculate "not I but everyone"

> Tl;dr the likelihood of media influence controlling this election to such huge, huge landslide outcomes is overwhelmingly improbable compared to the high likelihood that favorability metrics are junk-science.

Political polling and surveys have a margin of error, and its generally pretty close to the mark.

Trump and Hillary have had by far and away the most advertising for their campaigns, and generally the ones with the biggest ad spends (which has in the past converted into the most advertising, but Trump has gotten enormous free advertising) win elections.

My conclusion is that there is no media conspiracy, they just like getting paid and both Trump and Hillary make that happen.

Jeb spent by far the most on advertising. Trump spends among the least. Equating the media's coverage of Trump with "advertising" is a specious attempt to save the "money buys elections" narrative that is being utterly discredited by these primaries.

I probably need to go get some numbers, but when one person's name is repeated over and over and over and their statements are repeated over and over, even if that has a negative connotation, it clearly puts that person in the spotlight.

If Trump had the same advertising as he could afford I dont think he would have been in the same position he is in now.

Overwhelmingly improbable? Oh man! What is that likelihood?

Please dont masquerade your opinions as facts by using terms like "likelihood" and "improbable".

I have one question for you. If media influence over elections is so "unlikely" and so insignificant why would the NYT have tripped over itself to retitle and reword their article to make it seem like pro-Bernie?

Media influence is real. You will quickly notice after speaking to people outside your bubble that the average voters political almost always conform to that of the "pundits".

The subscription and readership numbers just don't back this. People simply don't read newspapers. The NYT could say that Hillary is the second coming and the average voter wouldn't be aware of it.

They have to get their information from somewhere. TV channels are media, too.

Most people don't know Bernie, Hillary and Donald personally, so the only way to get an impression is the media.

No, not the only way.

Just the lazy way.

Network effects are a hell of a thing.

You don't have to read the newspaper for it to influence your your life, or even your own opinions. The institution has enormous power.

Your example, the NYT, is quoted on TV and radio every single day, in and out of the US. Add to that the number of private who quote, forward, regurgitate-as-if-they-thought-of-it the articles.

The power of the mainstream media is waning, but it is still more significant than anything else, other parts of the Internet included, in swaying voters.

> You will quickly notice after speaking to people outside your bubble

The irony.

> Please dont masquerade your opinions as facts by using terms like "likelihood" and "improbable".

By using... words?

Heluva theory. Now - which media exactly is pro-Trump?

> My conclusion is that the favorability ratings are bullshit.

Primary election results do not support this theory. Clinton has very high favorability among self-declared Democrats, something like 70-80 % off the top of my head. Her favorability declines fast with Independents and Republican voters. I don't have the data in front of me but I could bet Sanders won independent vote in every primary where independents were allowed to vote, notably Michigan. Noone can't say if it's favorability only but correlation is hard to dispute.

Moderate favorability: Sanders 58-38, Clinton 49-45 (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cdh297lWEAAihp-.jpg:large)

Independent favorability: Sanders 50-39, Clinton 31-60 (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cdh1L0vXEAEokgY.jpg:large)

Worth noting that among independents, Clinton has a net -29 which is second worst only to Trump at -32, and is worse than Cruz at -27.

Bias need not be coordinated or conspiratorial to exist in media. Trump and Clinton each have more than twice the earned (free) media coverage than their nearest competitors. The amount each campaign spends on bought media is a small fraction of what is bestowed by news editors and producers.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/03/15/ny-times-trumps-mamm...

The whole "earned media coverage" thing is so mind boggling I don't even know what to say. The media covers candidates people are interested in, and somehow that's equivalent to paid advertising? Maybe, just maybe, peoples' opinions drive what the media covers (like every other market in existence), instead of the other way around?

Beyond that, the media coverage of Clinton and Trump are overwhelmingly negative. All I see on TV is "how to stop Trump" and "is Hillary a lying liar who lies?"

I'm not sure favorability is junk science so much as it is not a good predictor of who will win delegates through a series of byzantine and varied state processes.

And at the risk of stating the obvious, finding someone as more favorable than their opponent doesn't necessarily imply I will vote for them in an election.

This argument, to me, seems like a lot of inside baseball. I think people attuned to the political conversation vastly overestimate how much political coverage the average voter consumes.

Occam's Razor might suggest people are voting for Clinton and Trump due to name recognition and previous primary results.

Actually, ironically enough, the average person's lack of political involvement is precisely why political media coverage works so well for Trump and Clinton. If most people are generally unaware of what's going on, then there's a massive premium attributable to awareness alone. People are more aware of Trump than they are of, say, John Kasich. (I'm willing to bet the latter's unaided awareness among the general population is quite low, and lower still among that sample of GenPop who doesn't read or watch election-cycle news).

This observation is at the heart of Trump's calculus. Awareness, awareness, awareness. How do you get awareness? Through reach and frequency of your exposure to the public. How do you get reach and frequency? Media. How do you get free media? Say crazy shit. Be outrageous. Be different.

Awareness, awareness, awareness. It is nine tenths of the battle, especially in the primaries.

Things like favorability only matter once you've cleared the awareness hurdle. And that hurdle is quite high; it's often a lot higher than campaign managers or media pundits expect. In fact, the more disengaged people are from election coverage, the less aware they are of who the candidates are, and the more important it is to get in front of them through any means possible. Someone like Clinton or Trump has had, what, 9 billion chances to get in front of the average person at this point.

Another key to Trump's success has been hijacking the non-election news cycle. You only hear about John Kasich if you're watching or reading political news, and since many people are not, that sucks for John Kasich. But you hear about Donald Trump pretty much anytime and anywhere; he is inescapably in all aspects of the news across all outlets.

> "People are more aware of Trump than they are of, say, John Kasich."

This is as anecdotal as it gets, but to your point. In a recent political discussion one of my co-workers had no idea how to pronounce Kasich's name. If he was all over the news, this would not be a problem.

> "Be outrageous. Be different."

Or be a Clinton.

"Or be a Clinton."

Exactly.

Both Trump and Clinton have preexisting celebrity going for them, and Trump fuels that fire with a steady trickle of media-baiting tactics.

Or, it's because people like their platforms. Hilary skews right within the democratic party, and Trump skews left on a lot of key issues. Trump isn't out there calling to get rid of the IRS, and Clinton isn't out there saying she will make college free.

This wreaks of elitism. Media is not consumed, nor as influential, as you are suggesting. Never denigrate the intelligence or incentives of others. To dismiss others' intelligence, experience, and/or process for developing their preferences, you miss out on understanding their motivations and needs. You may miss out on opportunities to develop friends, family, ... or customers.

Despite not having a deep warm-fuzzy for Trump or Hillary (thus increasing their favorability ratings), they represent something to their acolytes. It makes sense and defies scapegoats like "they are media sheeple!"

I think most people with your opinion would change their mind if they listened to honest answers as to why people voted for who they did. Most people don't have a reason other than gut instinct, or perhaps one or two big social issues like abortion or (previously) gay marriage. No amount factual evidence to show these people that they're actually voting against their interests would change their mind.

One of the most common ones I've encountered is asking someone why they feel they can trust a particular candidate, when here's a giant list of things implicating them in corruption, lies, and indisputably voting opposite of how they campaigned. The response is always "All politicians are corrupt, it's just part of the system". Or "anyone running for President isn't the type of person who should actually be a President". Anything counter to these people's gut beliefs is dismissed as "everyone has that same problem", ignoring the extent to which their choice has it.

You are assuming the vast majority sees CNN, etc. and/or reads the NYT. That, I think, is too bold.

I don't think there is anything in common between the two, from personalities, party affiliation, to how they conduct themselves in public.

I'd say they have a common hatred for Ed Snowden and common positions on FBI-mandated iPhone unlocking, to start with. And the fact that they lived in the same circles for the last 20 years suggests they likely share much more than that.

Hillary was also born with money (albeit less than Trump) and was a Goldwater Republican before the antiwar tide became too big to fight.

(Party affiliation of political personalities in the US is a joke. See also: Joe Lieberman, another guy living in the same NY circles as Trump and Clinton. Don't take labels seriously, look at the policy, and you'll see the differences between Clinton and Trump are mostly cosmetic.)

I don't see any reason to assume there's some common factor that all election winners share. The only thing they have in common is that they're better at putting together a winning coalition of voters than their respective opponents.

A lot of us here in the United States who are pickled in news about electoral politics at this time of year don't appreciate stories that are purely about electoral politics creeping on to Hacker News. The guidelines here say, after all, "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." I'm familiar with how to find Matt Taibbi's stories published in Rolling Stone, and I don't usually find them up to the "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" standard expected here on Hacker News. This particular article digs into how a piece published online by the New York Times gradually underwent editing after first publication, which is interesting to any of us who do online publishing, so I thank the participant here who kindly submitted it, but it's apparent that most comments here are responding to the headline, or to the campaign in general, and not to the article's content at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But I would say this falls under "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon". News pieces with large audiences being largely edited to deliver a different message after they've "gone viral" is similar to a high traffic website being hacked to deliver a message about something else.

This is the point where I draw a reference to 1984 where the main character's job was to do exactly what the New York Times is doing.

The question is, is it done with malice or to further align the article to the viral viewers and hopefully make it even more viral?

I agree. I was glad this was on hackernews.

I agree that the topic you mention is interesting, but the article as posted is practically guaranteed to devolve into political discussion rather than a discussion about the point you bring up.

A better article, IMO, would have noted that the NYT does this consistently and has done so in a way that has harmed all candidates, not to mention non presidential conversation. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9870347 for another example of this practice.

> A lot of us here in the United States who are pickled in news about electoral politics at this time of year don't appreciate stories that are purely about electoral politics creeping on to Hacker News. The guidelines here say, after all, "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

Look, if you're going to cite the guidelines, read the whole thing. A little further down on the page:

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click "flag" at the top.

This article demonstrates clear "main-stream" bias, where an article was deliberately edited to inject editorial bias (even increasing article length by adding 2 sentances) rather than simply correcting inaccuracies or fixing poorly articulated sentences. This isn't surprising.

What is surprising is the effectiveness of non-mainstream and peer-to-peer media. Sanders consistently beats Clinton in the "Facebook Primary". The rise of Sanders as a credible candidate wouldn't have happened a generation ago, and it demonstrates a new twist since the introduction of mass media -- voters who support Sanders get information mostly through alternative media. While the Internet also affected politics 8 years ago, it does so much more profoundly now.

Who would have thought that an off-track candidate (who is an Independent) could run on a major party, and get 40% or more of the popular vote in a primary. Some attribute voting shift to generational differences (millennial vs boomers); while certainly true, I think there's another force at work: access to new, peer-to-peer media and the leisure time to digest it.

It's sad the NYT feels they have to go this route but I think it will prove that they are politically impotent. On the flipside, the ineffectiveness of Jeb! seems to disprove the thought that media can shape or change the electorate in a great way. The media may grant them marginal advantage, bug ultimately it's up to the candidate to produce a viable candidacy via brand. We see that with Trump. Little ground game not much paid media but overwhelms his opponents in most markets. We may have to wait to see if the media lite, populism heavy approach works in the general election. I think his and Sanders' approach will change if they make it to the general.

It's like the swiftboats or the binders of women's CVs. They are excuses. People already didn't like these candidates and needed an excuse to prove their ambiguity right and drop them like a hot mess.

Establishment bias still matters a lot. Voters over 65 make up a shockingly high fraction of overall turnout, and they get more of their information from old media. (Converselt, the median CNN viewer is 68 years old...)

This election showed the new and unprecedented power of social media and grassroots democracy. But at least on the democratic side, it looks like the establishment will prevail.

I think in a few years, party elites will have even less control than they do now, for better or worse.

40%? Trump is closing on 50% of delegates... We might not agree with his message, but he's bloody good at pushing it through (and around) media skepticism.

"Intertube" candidates had no real chance 8 years ago, were ridiculed 4 years ago, and today they are real forces. In 4 years' time, they will be favourites.

Can someone explain to me why the media constantly uses the word landslide to describe hillaries victories? I mean, looking at the results, I see that, superdelegates aside, most of the primaries seem to show a 5 to 10% difference between sanders and clinton.

I call that a rather close victory. (Even if 1% can mean thousands of people)

As I think this election cycle has made plain, calling someone the "mainstream" or "favored" candidate is an attempt to police the margins of discourse, not an objective statement of fact.

The 2000 presidential election really changed things. The winner of the popular vote at the national level lost the election, and of course there was the whole Florida recount thing. 2004 was also very close and reinforced this. Since then a 10-15 point win seems like a bigger deal than it used to and the threshold for using "landslide" is lower.

Hillary won 3 of 5 states last night by 10+ points and the biggest state by 30+ points. Overall that might not have been called a landslide 20 years ago but the definition is looser now.

Yeah, since 2000 it became clear the US electoral process is f*ed up (which makes the whole "democracy" grandstanding very shallow). And I thought the UK system was bad...

At least we don't have a monarchy. ;)

> hillaries victories

Hillary is a name and not a noun and it's not really a plural here either (there is not more than one Hilary) and so the grammar should therefore be:

"Hilary's victories"

Sorry I'm from quebec, I'll be more careful.

Many of the results, a number in big states, are absolute, crushing landslides.

http://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/elections-results...

Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia. Throw in very substantial margins in Ohio and North Carolina.

Makes it look like there is still a big difference between the north and the south.

This story reminds me a lot of Sanders' old quote: "The revolution will not begin at Harvard University." For how liberal the NYT (and Harvard) are reputed to be, they are actually bastions of the elite, a role that is diametrically opposed to being revolutionary.

Harvard students and NYT writers have very real vested interests in maintaining the current order, which in this cycle is HRC, the most establishment candidate in recent memory (of course, every GOP candidate this cycle is incredibly establishment too, but that's another comment).

Arguing Trump as an establishment candidate is a tough road. It seems pretty clear that the establishment would prefer almost anyone else, but their systematic oppression of moderates in their own party left them with no viable candidates this year.

I mean the primaries are already half over and they're still trying to figure out if they can make Kasich the nominee somehow.

It would be nice if we could link against an immutable version of articles (like the good old paper). Changing the content after the fact makes it hard for all parties to discuss properly.

The linked "Four Amendments and a Funeral" doesn't have much to it, but Taibbi's "Inside the Horror Show that is Congress" from the same visit to congress is my favorite non-music thing to ever be published by Rolling Stone. In it Bernie shows Taibbi how the congressional sausage is made, if you don't what the House Rules Committee does, give it a read.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-horror-...

> It's not immoral or anything, just sort of crass. And odd, that they don't care that their readers now know, too.

Newspapers and journalists love to talk about a free and fair press being essential to democracy. If you accept that, then political manipulation is an issue of morality.

The New York Times being deceptive and not caring that anyone knows is very old news. Noam Chomsky famously measured New York Times 'column inches' about the genocide in East Timor. That was in the 1980s (?).

It seems slightly odd for an article that is largely a rewrite of someone's medium post to be complaining about improper journalism practices.

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