Bernie Sanders hasn’t changed his opinion of television over his 40 year rise from “radical protestor” to political lightning rod for Democrats tired of the same old same old.
The New York Times reports Sanders’ views on news media have remained constant since he wrote an op-ed in the Vanguard Press in 1979 where he compared commercial TV to heroin and alcohol and said “television is the major vehicle by which the owners of this society propagate their political points of view (including lies and distortions) through the ‘news.'”
“As Mr. Sanders sees it,” writes the Times. “The profit-hungry billionaire owners of news media companies serve up lowest-common-denominator coverage, purposefully avoid the income-inequality issues he prioritizes and mute alternative voices as they take over more and more outlets.”
Since his election to the Senate in 2006, Mr. Sanders has argued that conglomerates exercise outsize news media control even in the Internet era. He fought against the loosening of rules prohibiting a single corporation from owning television and radio stations and newspapers in the same broadcast market. He said he was troubled that President Obama would appoint the former head of two industry lobbying associations to regulate the industry. And in 2015, Mr. Sanders joined five other liberal senators in taking credit for preventing Comcast’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable.