A Bernie Sanders interview Cable News would Never Air

First this, from yesterday in the Chicago-Sun Times: Why the major media fail to see how Bernie Sanders can win (by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton):

The major media have come to see much of America through the eyes of the establishment. That’s not surprising. After all, they depend on establishment corporations for advertising revenues, their reporters and columnists rely on the establishment for news and access, their top media personalities socialize with the rich and powerful and are themselves rich and powerful, and their publishers and senior executives are themselves part of the establishment.

Bernie Sanders' recent interview was about cable news and the corporate media in general, and how they influence publican opinion and rig elections — because they are more or less an arm of the two major political parties, and therefore, part of the "establishment" (See the BIG 6 list at the bottom of this post, the 6 corporations that control 90% of the media.)

Mainstream "journalists" such as Anderson Cooper on CNN or Rachel Maddow on MSNBC (and their paid pundits that they have on a "guests") would never hold this discussion with Bernie Sanders on their cable networks — because their bosses would never allow it, because their "news" is censured to best benefit the corporations, that are the media.

If it wasn't for the internet, no one might have ever known who Barack Obama was in 2008, and Hillary Clinton (because everybody knew Bill's wife) might have been elected President back then. If not for the internet, because most people only had the major 3 television networks or the 3 major cable news stations to watch, very few people would even know who Bernie Sanders from Vermont was in 2016.

But because Bernie has become so popular as more and more people are hearing his message — online, and after seeing him in the democratic primary debates — the major media (almost reluctantly) has almost been forced to acknowledge him during the primary elections. Realistically, it's pretty hard to completely ignore him while he's running for president when he's been wining millions of votes.

Nowadays, people can go online and see Bernie's speeches from 30 years ago, and many of Hillary's too (except for those that she made to the bankers).

But the corporate media is constantly trying to frame the narrative and influence public opinion every time the media interviews him, and one can tell just by the sort of questions they pose to him: "Donald Trump said women who get abortions should be punished; what do think about that?" (Here's exactly what he said) — rather than ask him this, "There are millions of children living in poverty; how would you fix that?" [Update: Saturday, April 2, 2016 - 3:15 p.m. PT: As I was writing this, Bernie Sanders was on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, and low and behold, (along with other gotcha questions) she asked him about Trump's remark on abortions. Does she ever have Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton on her show to ask them about raising the cap for Social Security?]

The mainstream corporate media has also been very selective as to what they report, such as ignoring good polling results for Bernie, while over-emphasizing Hillary Clinton's polling numbers — or by over-emphasizing the number of superdelegates she has, rather than just comparing pledged delegates won by each State for each candidate (because superdelegates don't matter until the convention next July).

This is how The Young Turks is different. It is an online "progressive" news network of 32 YouTube channels, 12 of which they own and operate. The main channel, which deals chiefly with politics, entertainment and hard news stories, has 2.7 million subscribers (If not for the big corporation Google — the new company company Alphabet, there would be no YouTube, then what would we do? And this blog is owned by Google too! But even then, it's sometime a struggle to deal with YouTube's "fair use" policy, because the major media has copyrights that use to ban online redistribution.)

Cenk Uygur, the main host of The Young Turks, recently had Senator Bernie Sanders on as his guest for a 30-minute interview on March 23, 2016. As of this post on April 1st, The Sanders interview has had over 1.3 million views on YouTube alone — and thousands of comments. A few outtakes are embedded below in a 12½ minute video — but if you have time, the full interview is here at YouTube.

In a telephone interview with Joe Sandler Clarke at The Guardian, Cenk Uygur says:

I think we’re going to topple all the old media. Poor CNN doing all their shows based on insiders, appealing to, at most, 2% of the audience: what a horrible, losing strategy. The average age of their audience is 64 years-old. Our average is under-35. Of course, they have a couple of billion dollars, which helps, but I don’t see how they’ll compete with us in the long-run.

Here's how Uygur describes "the establishment":

In the media, the best example is CNN. You’ve also got the Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, etc. In politics, basically all the Democrat and Republican politicians. The rich and the powerful who have a stranglehold on power and manipulate the system to their benefit. People say it’s ironic that we criticize the mainstream media and then get most of our stories from it, but that’s not fair. First you have the distinction between TV and print. TV is a wasteland. It’s a bunch of news actors that read off a prompter. We almost never rely on TV news, because they almost never break a story. In terms of print, it’s a complicated game. There are a great number of outlets that we rely on and are an essential part of our democracy. The AP, Intercept, McClatchy News, the Guardian, there’s a wonderful list of people who do great news gathering. The right-wing wants to destroy all the media and replace it with their propaganda. We don’t want to destroy it, we want to make it better.

Six years ago Uygur while doing his work at The Young Turks, he also had a hosting gig at MSNBC, before he resigned, saying that his bosses had told him his confrontational style was not going down well with "the people in Washington" (aka "The Establishment")

Since then, MSNBC has gradually fired or demoted many of their liberal/progressive hosts that worked on the channel alongside Uygur. MSNBC, which is owned by Comcast and supports Hillary Clinton, fired the host Ed Schultz the very next day after he criticized Hillary Clinton for her support of the TPP trade deal — a trade deal that the corporate media wants (but rarely reports on.) And Bernie Sanders just happened to be the guest on Ed's show that day.

The Big Six	Media Monopoly Outlets
Comcast	NBCUniversal (a joint venture with General Electric from 2011 to 2013), NBC and Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, 26 television stations in the United States and cable networks USA Network, Bravo, CNBC, The Weather Channel, MSNBC, Syfy, NBCSN, Golf Channel, Esquire Network, E!, Cloo, Chiller, Universal HD and the Comcast SportsNet regional system. ( Comcast also owns the Philadelphia Flyers through a separate subsidiary.)
The Walt Disney Company	Holdings include: ABC Television Network, cable networks ESPN, the Disney Channel, A&E and Lifetime, approximately 30 radio stations, music, video game, and book publishing companies, production companies Touchstone, Marvel Entertainment, Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios, the cellular service Disney Mobile, Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, and theme parks in several countries. Also has a longstanding partnership with Hearst Corporation, which owns additional TV stations, newspapers, magazines, and stakes in several Disney television ventures..
News Corporation	Holdings include: the Fox Broadcasting Company; cable networks Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, National Geographic, Nat Geo Wild, FX, FXX, FX Movie Channel, and the regional Fox Sports Networks; print publications including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post; the magazines Barron's and SmartMoney; book publisher HarperCollins; film production companies 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios. As of July 2013, News Corporation was split into two separate companies, with publishing assets and Australian media assets going to News Corp, and broadcasting and media assets going to 21st Century Fox.
Time Warner	Formerly the largest media conglomerate in the world, with holdings including: CNN, the CW (a joint venture with CBS), HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim, HLN, NBA TV, TBS, TNT, truTV, Turner Classic Movies, Warner Bros. Pictures, Castle Rock, DC Comics, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, and New Line Cinema.
Viacom	Holdings include: MTV, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, VH1, BET, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, and Paramount Home Entertainment.
CBS Corporation	Holdings include: CBS Television Network and the CW (a joint venture with Time Warner), cable networks CBS Sports Network, Showtime, Pop; 30 television stations; CBS Radio, Inc., which has 130 stations; CBS Television Studios; book publisher Simon & Schuster.
Note:	Although Viacom and CBS Corporation have been separate companies since 2006, they are both partially owned subsidiaries of the private National Amusements company, headed by Sumner Redstone. As such, Paramount Home Entertainment handles DVD/Blu-ray distribution for most of the CBS Corporation library.

* And for all we know, there are probably thousands of subsidiaries, that when broken down within the corporate maze, might even own the local bakery across the street from you. By the year 2096, with all the mergers and acquisitions, the U.S. might have one big corporation owning one political party.