 Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir appeared on CNN and he was asked about Bernie Sanders claim that Corporate media is biased against him and he had a pretty interesting conversation with CNN's Brian Stelter where he brought up some of the points and criticisms of corporate media that I've been talking about on this program for years and This was fascinating. Let's watch What is the the heart of the critique about what Sanders calls the corporate media? What do you want people like me to do differently? Well, Brian, this isn't a personal commentary on you or any other journalists There's many wonderful talented journalists out there But in about you know a minute or so or two minutes or so you're gonna cut to commercial breaks And you're gonna see some pharmaceutical ads You're gonna see a lot of ads that are that are basically paying your bills and the bills of this The entire media enterprise and what that ends up doing is incentivizing you and others to make sure that you're asking the questions and driving the Conversations in certain areas and not in certain areas right now, you know, What evidence do you have of that? I don't actually know what ads run during the breaks. I actually don't see the commercials I don't know what runs And I'd already so I've reached out to Phil Griffin the head of MSNBC and happy to talk to Jeff Zucker and others It isn't about you Brian But about how these media structures are set and operated and the biases that I believe are Embedded within them about I think that's really interesting segments worthy, right? I mean, that's really interesting where you're covering and what aren't so what do you think is not being covered that needs to be covered more What are those topic areas? Well, I mean one one classic area of course is you know We're going across the border right now talk about prescription drugs Do you know why you pay so much more ten times more in America on prescription drugs than any other country? Does anyone know that or understand why do you know what the Trump administration is doing about that? Do you even know who the head of the Health and Human Services Secretary is? Do you know his background that he worked in the pharmaceutical industry? I mean these like I think Donald Trump turns out these tweets and attempts to distract all of us And there isn't a basic conversation around the fact that he's betraying the working class by having Selected a group of people to run his government who come from industry who benefit industry and that story is not told From the press don't you know all that from reporting? No, I that's not how I know it. I've done my own research and we've done our own research to know it But reading stories, but reading news stories about it Yeah, and I would argue to you and you know this well Brian the TV is a certain medium that has an influential power And I and I'm making more of a critique here of what media TV media decides to cover and it tends to be a game It tends to be a gotcha We're I appreciate that Donald Trump's tweets are important and we'll have a conversation about that But it also belies a conversation that he doesn't want to have And and I think that that's what I think I you know me Bernie Sanders a lot of us feel yeah It gets obfuscated is that many viewers lives, right? Many viewers agree with you. Yeah, the objects of sensationalism It's a problem. You know the question is whether it's I think effective for you all to call it out Maybe it is Trump has won support from his fans by attacking the media. Maybe that's what you think will work as well I mean so we're not playing a game here All right, it is it is truly based out of conviction and sincerity that we do see biases operating against the campaign But also against the issues we care deeply about you rarely see pundits on TV talking about the value of Medicare for all You see a lot of people criticizing Medicare for all You don't see the people talking about the value of canceling all student debt You see people criticizing it and why is that right? Just ask yourself it's you're taking on corporate power You're taking on the established You know establishment across the board and all we're arguing for is can we have a fair shake? So that was great work to Fieze he said basically everything that I would have said had I been in that situation So he first starts by calling out these perverse incentives that are created by Advertising dollars going to CNN Because if you obviously have a large multinational corporation spending millions potentially billion dollars billions of dollars advertising on your network You know, you might not necessarily be as inclined to criticize them as you would other companies And then to that Brian Stelter responded by saying what evidence do you have of that? I don't actually see the commercials First of all common sense because obviously if somebody gives you money You're gonna feel more inclined to be nice to them. Are you not? That's just human nature Second of all, even if you don't see the commercials and you probably don't even know all of CNN's advertisers Brian Stelter You were hired specifically because you won't rock the boat Your bosses know that you're going to read whatever's on the teleprompter And you're not really going to challenge power in a meaningful way Otherwise you wouldn't have been hired because think about it There's a reason why people like Medea Benjamin for example of code pink hasn't been hired to be you know CNN's foreign policy corresponded It's because the defense contractors that advertise on CNN probably wouldn't feel too comfortable spending money on a network If there was an explicitly anti-war message being broadcasted relatively frequently They'd spend their money elsewhere now since this is the case This creates incentives for CNN to not hire people like Medea Benjamin It's why MSNBC fired Phil Donahue for being against the Iraq war It's why you know Gerald Friedman and Matt Brunig are never brought on to talk about health care Because if they start bringing on these voices that actually Say things that go against the interests of companies that may want to advertise on CNN well then that Costs them money Because if you are actually telling the truth about health care for example about Medicare for all You don't even have to advocate for Medicare for all But if you're just laying out the basic details and facts about Medicare for all since the facts are not going to be Beneficial to health insurance industry executives. Well, then if CNN does that for example CNN will lose out on advertising dollars. They know this Brian Stelter knows this. He's not dumb He's not naive. It's just that he is you know He's in that bubble to where he truly probably believes that he's doing something great And he's probably better than most CNN pundits even though the bar is so low But I mean the point is that CNN, you know, it's not like they never do good work It's just that they disproportionately most of the time will choose to play it safe now Brian Stelter then actually surprisingly admitted that sensationalism is in fact a problem because Sensationalism is what drives ratings which means that advertisers flock to CNN in the event their ratings are high based on sensationalism Because they want their ads placed on the networks with the most eyeballs watching It's why advertisers continue to flock to Fox News in spite of all the numerous Controversies that you see with you know, Laura Ingram and Tucker Carlson espousing straight up just white supremacist rhetoric the advertising dollars go where the eyeballs are It's as simple as that but an issue that's inherent with sensationalism is that when you have a sensationalist bias Does that yield you better ratings? Yes, but the issue is obvious I mean other more important news topics end up getting ignored for you to cover something that is just more sensationalist For example, how often do we hear about the war in Yemen the genocide? That's being carried out by Saudi Arabia and they're using our weapons How often do we hear about the health care crisis not very frequently because you know These aren't necessarily the topics that are sexy that will yield Good ratings for CNN so they stay focused on the more safer subjects that you know We'll get them the most ratings and in turn get them the most advertising dollars You know and the thing that was weird about this exchange was that Brian Stelter questioned whether or not it's effective To call out, you know the sensationalism issue in other words He's asking, you know, is it helpful to your campaign to bring up, you know Some of these problems that are inherent with corporate media. That was kind of a weird question to ask Basically saying do you really think it's gonna help you if you criticize me someone in the mainstream media and the aggregate corporate media? That was weird But faiz responded saying you rarely see pundits on TV talking about the value of Medicare for all You see a lot of people criticizing Medicare for all and really this is one of the main issues because it's not just that You know, they're not talking positively about Medicare for all They don't have to advocate for Medicare for all. They just are expected to lay out the details of Medicare for all What it does and doesn't do but they don't do that instead the media which is supposed to be educating people is actively spreading misinformation Oftentimes pushing talking points that come directly from the health insurance industry why Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they have Advertisers in that industry now again, you know I don't expect Brian Stelter to know the ins and outs about all of the advertising dollars that are flowing to CNN But I do expect his boss to know I do expect executives at CNN to know and certainly if they need to They can rein him in if he starts going to rogue it starts actually speaking too much truth to power and towards the end That's why I think that faiz really nailed it because he said look, this is what it's about These networks these corporate media news outlets, they don't want to challenge the status quo Which is why you oftentimes don't hear from voices that are really speaking truth to power. I mean we never hear from Bernie Sanders unless they're taking an adversarial stance against him We're not hearing from progressives running for Congress like McKayla Wilkes Anthony Clark Shea hid but our we're not hearing from them We're not hearing from people who are actually challenging the status quo and it's because CNN doesn't want to challenge the status quo because there's this perverse incentive to put profits Over educating the people like ideally speaking, you know the news and their job should be to educate people, right? That's their one job make people more educated so that way they have as much knowledge as possible When they enter the voting booth, but this just demonstrates how capitalism corrupts everything it touches It's that corrosive because rather than focusing on the delivery of news CNN is focused on ratings because they care more about profits and You know news and corporate media isn't the only thing that capitalism has corrupted. It's corrupted our entire democratic process So now money equals free speech like do you understand the problem here now? The solution is you know, we need to invest more in indie media as Individuals we need to try to support these shows and like them whenever they post videos and The good thing about indie media is we're not as susceptible to the forces of capitalism But that's not to say that indie media is perfect because you know oftentimes these are channels like mine run by one person So human error can and oftentimes is an issue oftentimes these new shows are personality driven Oftentimes we have our own biases that may solely you know, what we're trying to communicate with regard to information You know, we still there's this sensationalist bias in YouTube as well because we're trying to make sure that we put out video and news that generates clicks So clickbaits a problem. So I mean, it's not perfect, but certainly Indy media is better than corporate media in the sense that you know, we are able to dissect The truth from the bullshit so we can use you know a factual basis That's created by real journalists and then use our commentary to give people kind of like a jumping off point and get them to Not maybe take what we say But ideally to think for themselves and construct their own opinion and be more informed overall as they enter the voting booth So overall corporate media is garbage Because you know, we live in a capitalist system where we all have the desire to make money because our survival is Contingent on us making money and you know, if you're already rich Then you want to make more money because that's just the perverse incentives that capitalism creates and in corporate media It's no different their goals to make money not to deliver the news not to be objective and not to educate people And so what faiz is doing here is calling that out and saying hey do better, but it's tough You know, how do you do better when their whole model and survivability hinges on them? You know not speaking truth to power not rocking the boat. It's tough How do you get them to actually see the light? Well, we need indie media to grow so, you know, they're forced to compete with us, but I mean we're just We're dwarfed in comparison with these corporate news shows, right? We're dwarfed they have billions of dollars. We don't have that We can't compete, right? These are not Million-dollar enterprises here these indie news shows are scraping by with patreon dollars and advertising From YouTube the good news is, you know that tie between Advertisers and us is severed by using YouTube as kind of a proxy But I mean the same time, you know, it's not it's not reliable So it's just it's tough, right? The goal ultimately is to get people to think for themselves based on an educated opinion that they form But you know when there's so many bad faith actors so many capitalistic forces that want them to take the position that would yield You know a profit for them whatever special interest that may be, you know People are getting conflicting opinions on things that may not necessarily be in their interest. So it's tough We're fighting information warfare here and a gigantic disinformation campaign But we've just got to keep pushing through and you know shining a light on this just so that way maybe the viewers of CNN see Oh, maybe advertising dollars do create perverse incentives for CNN And maybe I shouldn't take everything they say is gospel if we can just kind of get people to think in that way Maybe plant that seed. I think overall we'll all be better off Slashed humanist report to support the low-radix humanist report sad my views a much higher