Does Sen. Bernie Sanders hate the media? According to Paul Heintz, the political editor for Seven Days, the answer is yes.

In this interview for On the Media, Heintz shows Sen. Sanders’ penchant for calling out the media and his ongoing distrust of it. He argues that “the media have never really noticed how Sanders sees them. Because they’ve never really bothered to see past the surface of his disdain.”

In his own words, Sanders says in a speech in 1985

Obviously you would be very excited if we stood on our heads and held a press conference swimming in the lake because that would be a news story. It would be very exciting.

<“Absurd!” is shouted off mic>

That is not absurd! That’s what’s news.

“Five lunatics were swimming today in the ice-cold water of Lake Champlain and all the news media was there and they talked about tax reform while you were there.”

Of course we know that the media’s interest in the novel guides them more than the media’s other responsibility to the public: to provide it with the news it needs, not just the news it wants to consume.

'Whether it excites us or not is not the purpose of the news' Share on X

Heintz’s study of Sanders is exhaustive, going back through a long political career in Vermont. He highlights how the media doesn’t even recognize that they are the problem. This was clearly the case from the first Democratic debate in which the media mistook Sanders’ defense of Hillary sick-of-your-damn-emails Clinton, for a charge against the Republicans when Sanders was directly attacking the media.

Sanders’ response was to say to the media that the emails are a non-issue precisely because they are used by the Republicans as a wedge and are without merit. At this point, he seems to be arguing, to address the emails as if it were news and then getting the Democrats to comment on it is not news. It is playing out a Republican attack more than it is news. The fact that virtually the entire media industry cut out the lines in which Sanders directly criticizes the media, playing only the applause line and the handshake, and then running it as a defense of Hillary against Republican attacks proves Sanders’ point for him.

Heintz’s response to this, however, doesn’t go far enough below the surface of Sanders’ disdain either. Rather than entertain the validity of Sanders’ argument about the media, Heintz lays the purpose of Sanders’ attacks at the altar of politics and narcissism. He suggests that the only idea of journalism that Sanders could get behind is a straight release of his public statements. That seems unreasonably harsh and strangely deaf to Sanders’ criticisms themselves.

The argument Sanders has made for 30 years is that journalists are more likely to think something is news based on a wrapper of sensationalism rather than the substantial story inside. He is arguing that some news does seem old or is not “new” but that it remains news because it is essential for the people to know about it.

Of course the media is interested in the novel! Heintz admits that in the interview. But the historic purpose of the media is to inform.

Whether it excites us or not is not the purpose of the news: that is simply how the articles get read and the posts get clicked. That isn’t the reason you produce them. You produce them to inform the public. Heintz can argue that Sanders being in support of tax reform is not news, but that is the tail wagging the dog. What is news by the classic definition is that tax reforms of the last 35 years have yielded tremendous income inequality. That a politician running for office wants to deal with that is also news.

In this way, Heintz is completely wrong. On Sanders’ critique and what news is supposed to be.

If Bernie Sanders as a character is the news, which he is to Heintz, then certainly it seems like his arguments are not news. Stunts like the one he suggested he should do 30 years ago would be. Only the most cynical won’t admit that.

Of course, Sanders doesn’t want to be the story, he wants economic inequality to be the story. That it so rarely is, should tell you all you need to know about Bernie Sanders and about the media.