Bernie Sanders is a totally legitimate presidential candidate. And it's time the press started [View all]

[cali]

treating him like one.


ay Rosen, the New York University journalism professor, has a useful concept for describing the ideology of journalists: nested spheres of legitimacy. These have to do with the way ideas are presented in a piece of journalism. The idea of women's suffrage is presented as non-controversial, thus placed in the "sphere of consensus." The idea that aliens control the government, say, is presented as nuts, thus placed in the "sphere of deviance." The latter ideas are openly presented in the news as illegitimate or insane, if they are not ignored altogether.

What ideas go in which sphere is an inescapable part of journalism, though most reporters don't acknowledge they're doing it. And at the moment, the idea of Bernie Sanders as a candidate is getting placed in the deviant sphere. As Steve Hendricks noted, the media has mostly presented Sanders as a non-serious kook:

The Times, for example, buried his announcement on page A21, even though every other candidate who had declared before then had been put on the front page above the fold. Sanders's straight-news story didn't even crack 700 words, compared to the 1,100 to 1,500 that Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton got. As for the content, the Times' reporters declared high in Sanders' piece that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination and that Clinton was all but a lock. None of the Republican entrants got the long-shot treatment, even though Paul, Rubio, and Cruz were generally polling fifth, seventh, and eighth among Republicans before they announced. [Columbia Journalism Review]

Indeed, if anything Sanders is more credible than the likes of Paul and Cruz. He has risen markedly in the polls of late, where his support has about tripled since the end of last year. He's doing particularly well in New Hampshire, where a recent poll put him in second place at 18 percent support. As an opponent of the Iraq War and a longtime advocate for more progressive policy, he has a natural constituency in the liberal left, where he is genuinely admired.

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http://theweek.com/articles/556667/bernie-sanders-totally-legitimate-presidential-candidate-time-press-started-treating-like