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Will Bernie Sanders get a fair shake?

On Tuesday, a United States senator formally launched a presidential campaign. The senator is one of just two Democratic candidates officially seeking the presidency. Straight out the gate, he already has more on-the-ground support than roughly half of the current and likely Republican hopefuls -- including Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Rick Perry -- and just less than Ted Cruz.

Yet when that senator announced his intention to run, late last month, the news was buried on page A21 of The New York Times, despite the fact that almost every other campaign launch, including Cruz's, was featured prominently on page A1. The Washington Post began a profile of the "unlikely presidential candidate" by labeling him "an ex-hippie, septuagenarian socialist from the liberal reaches of Vermont who rails, in his thick Brooklyn accent, rumpled suit and frizzy pile of white hair, against the ‘billionaire class’ taking over the country." By Tuesday, it had dubbed his bid "by-all-accounts-doomed."

These examples of Bernie Sanders' treatment -- or mistreatment -- by the American media were flagged last week by the Columbia Journalism Review, and addressed again on Tuesday by The Week. The concern: That the same press corps that monitors Hillary Clinton's every move and marvels at every Republican hopeful's most minor statements has already written Sanders out of the 2016 campaign.

"The Times’ reporters declared high in Sanders’s 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," CJR's Steve Hendricks wrote. "The Post’s pieces didn’t lead with Clinton’s hippie past or her age (she will be a septuagenarian in 2017) and didn’t say she rails when she discusses her more ardently held positions (she has a couple)."

The treatment was even worse on television: "ABC’s World News Tonight gave his announcement all of 18 seconds, five of which were allotted to Clinton’s tweet welcoming him to the race," Hendricks observed. "CBS Evening News fitted the announcement into a single sentence at the end of a two-minute report about Clinton."

Over the weekend, CNN's Brian Stelter tried to ask Sanders how he felt about the media's treatment of his campaign. The senator chose instead to talk about issues like income inequality, the disappearing middle class, and climate change, which he felt were being ignored by a media too preoccupied with "the political gossip of a campaign."

If the national media is preoccupied with the political gossip of campaigns, Sanders' is not yet among them. No one expects him to get as much coverage as Clinton, whose ascension to her party's nomination is reportedly a foregone conclusion. But the basic laws of editorial judgment suggest that he should get at least as much fair-minded coverage as Ted Cruz -- especially since he is Clinton's only primary challenger to date -- and significantly more than, say, Donald Trump.

The point isn't that Sanders may have a shot at becoming the Democratic nominee. The point is that the media's job is to write about campaigns, not to write them off.