You don’t often hear the left praising Fox News… but supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said the network is doing better than its liberal rival in honesty.
The conservative news network is beating MSNBC when it comes to fair coverage of Sanders’s presidential campaign.
“That’s saying something,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir told Vanity Fair. “Fox is often yelling about Bernie Sanders’s socialism, but they’re still giving our campaign the opportunity to make our case in a fair manner, unlike MSNBC, which has credibility with the left and is constantly undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign.”
MSNBC has more than just credibility when it comes to the left.
They have the viewers from the left, too, with a study by the Normal Lear Center finding that liberals watch MSNBC at 10 times the rate of more conservative viewers.
Yet an analysis last year by website In These Times confirmed Shakir’s grievance.
It found that MSNBC’s core programs “focused on Biden, often to the exclusion of [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren, D-Mass., and Sanders. Sanders received not only the least total coverage (less than one-third of Biden’s), but the most negative.”
Sanders, an independent who calls himself a “democratic socialist,” is now leading in many polls for the Democratic nomination after a spectacular crash by former Vice President Joe Biden.
It would seem Sanders’s rise would be perfect fodder for MSNBC’s core audience.
Yet Shakir says the network hasn’t taken Sanders, his platform or his supporters seriously.
“They’ve been among the last to acknowledge that Bernie Sanders’s path to the nomination is real,” Shakir told the magazine. “And even when it’s become real, they frequently discount it.”
Shakir slammed MSNBC for holding “elitist” views and looking down on the Sanders campaign.
“You can feel the disdain they have for Bernie Sanders’s supporters,” Shakir said. “It’s a condescending attitude: ‘Oh, they must not be that intelligent. They’re being deluded. They’re being conned. They’re all crazy Twitter bots.’”
The left has has noticed… and they’re not happy:
MSNBC hates Bernie Sanders so much more than CNN or Fox, it's really remarkable
— Annie Shields (@anastasiakeeley) February 12, 2020
https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1227453085808762880
Can I just say how impressively ignorant @msnbc anchors and some contributors are having to be to find a way to snatch the victory narrative away from Sanders. I’m honestly in awe of the mental gymnastics and intentional obtuseness pic.twitter.com/DspTIALuIO
— Pastor Ben (@BenjaminPDixon) February 13, 2020
While Sanders and his brand of socialism are often under fire on Fox News, he also hasn’t been shy about appearing on the conservative network.
Last year, the left called on Democrats to boycott the network. The Democratic National Committee even refused to allow Fox News to host any of the primary debates.
But Sanders dismissed those appeals and appeared on one of the Fox News town hall shows last spring.
It paid off for both sides; Sanders got to spread his leftist message to the Fox News audience, and the ratings jumped as nearly 2.6 million people tuned in for the often combative discussion between the candidate and hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum.
Sanders’ appearance on CNN weeks earlier had just 1.35 million viewers.
But at least one viewer wasn’t thrilled: President Donald Trump.
Trump complained it was “so weird to watch Crazy Bernie” on Fox News, and didn’t like that the hosts and audience were “so smiley and nice” to Sanders.
So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews. Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the “audience” was so smiley and nice. Very strange, and now we have @donnabrazile?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2019
“We cover all sides,” Baier fired back.
The president wasn’t the only Fox News regular who wasn’t happy with the coverage.
“You saw crazy Bernie on the air tonight,” Sean Hannity said during his monologue later that night. “That was hard to watch… Let’s hear every communist idea we possibly can.”
With Sanders surging in the primaries, he’ll almost certainly be getting even more coverage on Fox News.
MSNBC will no doubt want him on the air as well, especially if he becomes the nominee.
But given that they didn’t give him the time of day before, will he give it to them after… or will he just tune them out?
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”