On The Listening Post this week: Unelectable or frontrunner? Why is Bernie Sanders getting such a tough ride from US corporate media? Plus, the satirists mocking Angola’s elite.
Sanders vs Bloomberg and the corporate media machine
We’re in the early days of the US election season and the battle for the right to take on Donald Trump currently looks like a two-horse race.
On the progressive side of the Democratic Party, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. To his right, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In the coverage of the two candidates – whose politics are poles apart – the US news media are showing their corporate bias. Sanders is a democratic socialist, Bloomberg is the 9th-richest person in the world.
Sanders relies on a huge grassroots following and record-breaking fundraising; Bloomberg is already out of pocket to the tune of $350m on an advertising blitz.
Despite leading the pack as far as opinion polls are concerned, Bernie Sanders is being cast as unelectable in much of the media coverage.
Months ahead of the November election, for a lot of voters, the US news media is already an election issue.
