Yesterday's LA Times had this front page story about Senator Warren's excellent third quarter fundraising haul. The article managed to downgrade and avoid saying Warren's haul was second to Sanders. The headline should have read, "Sen. Warren's excellent fundraising haul still second to Sen. Sanders." A sub-header could have read, in a moral universe, "Despite corporate media hailing Warren and criticizing Sanders throughout the quarter." However, corporate media executives do not believe in a moral universe, and neither should we when reading their employees' (reporters') work.
I believe this is an excellent news article to dissect how corporate media bias operates. In this article, the second place fundraiser, Warren, is listed first in the headline and again in the article's first paragraph. Warren is also the candidate highlighted in the first paragraphs of the article, complete with her campaign manager's effusive quote for his candidate. This is all placed in at the beginning because people rarely read past the beginning of such articles, as people rarely go to the continued page inside the front page section of a newspaper. The article reads as if it is completely fact based when the placement and phrasing are clearly persuasive writing designed to influence thinking beyond the article itself.
Deeper into the article, an opinion is offered through general, unsourced cherry picking of alleged polling data designed to favor Warren, again the second place fundraiser, plus one sentence about how it is good for voters to switch from Sanders to Warren because, after all, they are the same. The reporter or editor are saying, You can trust us. We know what we're talking about. Warren is better than Sanders. Vote for her if you want a progressive.
The greatest phrasing slant is how the article has to finally mention Bernie was the top fundraiser in the quarter. The third paragraph in the article states: "The (Warren's) amount is close to the haul by her Senate colleague and fellow progressive Sanders, of Vermont, who earlier in the week reported raising $25.3 million." This is very awkward phrasing, designed to avoid saying, straight up, Bernie hauled in the most money--and again, notwithstanding all those doom and gloom stories about his campaign failing that appeared nearly every day in the quarter in most leading newspapers, especially the Washington Post.
This is how the corporate media generally operates (one finds exceptions, of course, but we are talking about the overall narrative one sees with op-eds and broadcast cable news). It is standard procedure for at least 120 years. See as examples: Upton Sinclair's "The Brass Check," George Seldes' "Freedom of the Press," Chomsky/Herman's "Manufacturing Consent," Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency," and Robert Parry's "Fooling America."
It is not a situation where the article contains false or "fake" news in any sense Trumpists mostly mean when they use that "fake news" mantra. Instead, what we see, as critical readers of this particular Los Angeles Times article, is a slanted headline and slanted phrasing in the article, cherry picking of information, and highlighting who corporate media has been shown to wish to promote in the past several months, Warren, and who corporate media wishes to not promote, which has fairly consistently been Sanders. See here for a Sanders' campaign compilation of only the tip of the iceberg of bias corporate media has shown. And let us note how information is simply not provided. Example: If Warren had more donors overall than Sanders, that would be mentioned and perhaps highlighted. Since that is not true, it is ignored. And let's get specific here: Bernie had 1.4 million donors giving an average of $18, and largely from working class people. Warren had less than half, just over 500,000 donors, donating an average of $26, with far more in the professional classes than working classes as donors.
I remember my Dad telling me how, when he stationed in Texas and Oklahoma in 1956 during the Eisenhower-Stevenson election campaign, several newspapers would never refer to Stevenson by name. Stevenson would merely be referred to as "the President's opponent." Back then, one referred to the "capitalist press" as opposed to "corporate media." As I say, one has to translate corporate/capitalist speak in newspaper or media reporting. It is not necessarily the reporter's fault, either. Editors often determine headlines and order of paragraphs, and edit sentences.
With this Los Angeles Times article, I expect there was probably a lot of editing work.
