When Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, recently explained to CNN that elderly voters “need more information” on his candidate, he could be excused if he was taking a veiled shot at the media in general.
Because despite a new poll indicating Sanders would fare better than both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump if an election were held right now, Clinton has been mentioned 120 per cent more often in North American print media since late November than her closest Democratic rival (according to MediaMiser’s media monitoring and analysis software).
Even more stark is his comparison to Trump, who has been mentioned 456 per cent more often in print since Nov. 29.
Sanders doesn’t fare any better in comparison to other Republican front-runners, either, with Ted Cruz being mentioned 89 per cent more and Marco Rubio being mentioned 48 per cent more in print.
The results are similar for online news and TV results, with Trump picking up 45 per cent of all online news mentions of those five candidates (Sanders had nine per cent).
Clinton was a distant second to Trump, at 21 per cent share of voice.
TV, in fact, was the only medium that didn’t put Sanders dead last in media coverage of the five candidates. That honour belongs to Marco Rubio.
In that same CNN story, Sanders campaign manager Weaver indicated his candidate has a bigger following with young people as opposed to older groups thanks to social media (and, one can infer, also thanks to the dearth of interest by the traditional media).
In that context, it’s hardly a surprise he’s trailing among senior candidate since they still read printed daily newspapers in the U.S.
