What is the worst moniker Bernie Sanders could assign someone? Koch Brothers-like.
Sanders did just that with “corporate media” on Monday in New Hampshire, telling an audience in Conway that groups like the Koch Brothers — Republican moneymen who plan to spend upwards of $900 million in 2016 — Wall Street and media stand in the way of the “political revolution” he is trying to drum up.
The line was not a one off: Sanders delivered anti-media remarks at every event he headlined in New Hampshire over the last two days, telling audiences that his campaign is not just against politics as usual, but against the way media covers campaigns.
Sanders has long been a media critic — primarily about the focus on personality and fluff — but the independent Vermont senator’s trip to New Hampshire made clear that his 2016 bid would regularly use crowd pleasing anti-media rhetoric.
“The American people, I think, increasingly understand that corporate media is prepared to discuss everything 24 hours a day, seven days a week except the most important issues facing the American people,” Sanders said Monday during a town hall in Conway. “Increasingly what media sees campaigns being are soap operas and football games, rather than a serious discussion about the serious issues facing America.”
Sanders used similar lines in Salem, New Hampshire, on Sunday night, lamenting the fact that Republican candidate Marco Rubio hitting a child in the head with a football during a trip to Iowa got “more coverage than Marco Rubio’s position on Social Security.”
And on Monday in Berlin, Sanders complained that journalists weren’t talking about serious issues “because big money owns media.”
Sanders said Monday that the rhetoric was his way of pushing reporters to cover more substance.
“I don’t have a problem with the way I am covered,” Sanders said after his Salem event.
But Sanders’ lines prove it’s not just conservatives who see a boon in media bashing.
“It fires me up and resonates hugely with me,” Barbara Bosen, a New Hampshire Democrat, said after Sanders’ Berlin event. “Media should give him more time because he is coming up in the polls to where he is almost passing, if not passing Hillary Clinton.”
Standing outside Sanders’ event in Conway, Rebeca Valente, a 22-year old from Boston, said she turns to Facebook for news on Sanders, not traditional media.
“I follow a lot of different news media outlets and it seems like he doesn’t get the news media he deserves,” Valente said.
At Sanders’ Salem event, a few supporters waited by the press check-in table to see which outlets were represented — and who didn’t show up.
“I am not having a great political season having every evening news showing me what new horrendously off color joke Donald Trump has told or what hand-picked audience Hillary Clinton is talking to,” said Kate Savage of Jefferson, New Hampshire. “This absolutely fires me up.”