Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: How the Media Is Ruining This Election

[oberliner]

91. Even some supporters of his didn't think it was his best interview

It's certainly fair for reporters to criticize him if they see fit. Certainly you aren't suggesting that all coverage of Bernie Sanders must be uncritically positive. There were folks who said he stumbled a bit, and there were other folks who said he did just fine. I think it's fair to say that while he did an excellent job with most of the interview, there were a few questions that he could've answered a bit better. Bernie Sanders isn't perfect, and it's okay for commentators to express dissatisfaction with things he says, just as it's okay for other commentators to argue that his answers were great. You know there are Sanders supporters out there who will defend him 100 percent on everything (just as there are Hillary and Trump and Cruz supporters who do the same for their preferred candidate). In this instance, both those who felt Sanders did not do well in the interview and those who felt he did do well in the interview were able to make their respective cases in major US publications. Also, anyone who wants to read the full transcript can do so and draw their own conclusions.

In terms of Trump, I do think that "he's winning despite this" is, in fact, the story. The "this" in question has been regularly identified as hate speech by folks in the mainstream media. What is surprising to everyone is how well he is doing in spite of (or because of) this rhetoric, and I do think it is the duty of the media to try to figure out why this is the case, instead of pretending that he is a joke candidate who will eventually fall away, which is how he was covered in the beginning.