In case you missed it, Britain has a new leader of the opposition. The news media doesn’t know quite what to make of him, even though the major political story in the UK seems to reflect a resurgence from the left. Consider this: when Jeremy Corbyn threw his hat into the ring for the leadership of the Labour Party, the British media and even the liberal news outlets initially wrote him off as a fringe anti-establishment leftist candidate, out of touch with the political mainstream. He then proved all the experts wrong and won on the first ballot. In the US, another candidate largely dismissed by the media for being too liberal, Bernie Sanders, continues to draw huge crowds to his rallies. Meanwhile media outlets seem transfixed by the shiny empty object that is the Donald Trump campaign, not to mention the never-ending saga of Hillary Clinton’s email. The populist trend also consumes European countries like Greece and Spain, where leftist anti-corporate movements that have plenty in common with Corbyn and Sanders have burst onto the scene, not because of, but despite their treatment by mainstream news media.

One cannot blame the British news media for failing to predict Jeremy Corbyn’s victory. Even Corbyn himself, the slightly rumpled, unabashedly leftist candidate in a party that has grown more centrist in recent years, said that he did not expect to become the leader of Britain’s official opposition. In the immediate aftermath of his victory, Corbyn said that much of the media — and even the MPs — were out of touch with most voters’ daily lives.

“MPs are a bit cut off. But if I may say so, some of the editorial rooms in some of our broadsheet newspapers are even more cut off. They simply do not understand what’s going on out there. They just don’t get it.”

Jeremy Corbyn has a strong hand and has won a massive mandate, yet he is actually in a weak position when it comes to political capital, because he now finds himself surrounded in Parliament by the Labour Party, most of whom are quite despondent about the fact that he is their leader. He is also being scrutinized by the journalistic culture of Westminster, which will hold him to the same standards as other senior politicians who are more seasoned in the rules of the media game and the British political establishment. To say the least, he has a small margin for error in the realm in which he operates.

Corbyn’s success however comes about in part because of his slightly antagonistic relationship with the media. It appears that Corbyn has no media strategy at all; he simply appears to be disinterested in the press, and does not feel obliged to talk to them. By treating them so carelessly, he manages to expose their irrelevance to substantive reporting. The people who support Jeremy Corbyn are the same people who are distrustful of both the media agenda and the prevailing political culture in the UK. The fact that he did not try to placate the media right from the start built a certain level of respect for his platform, establishing his credibility in the eyes of the many people who are forming a new powerful voting bloc that fundamentally distrusts these institutions. British news consumers are left to wonder how much of Corbyn’s meager press coverage so far comes down to his lack of conventional media savvy in a country that has produced polished soundbite machines like David Cameron and Tony Blair. And how much of it comes down to plain old political ideology? Approximately forty percent of the British newspaper market is still controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Seventy percent of all newspapers sold in the UK are considered right wing, and their influence goes well beyond newsstands.

Many young voters are saying that the media is obsessed with delivering the news in the old way: focusing only on the binary opposition between left and right without any consideration for the larger scope of issues they really care about. This attitude is rendering the old-fashioned media out of their list of news options. News media is molded to reward the confrontational candidate, and Corbyn or Sanders in their seemingly disarming approach are forcing the media to rethink the way it reports. It is through its traditional formality that media seeks to preserve its credibility. But in the larger picture of journalistic ethics, candidates like Corbyn and Sanders are stripping the credibility from mainstream news organizations by ridiculing the robotic formalities that serve their shallow analyses of the issues. They are forcing journalists to accept that some of the rules they assumed were an indispensable part of the game are no longer applicable in an anti-establishment political environment. Some of the conventional practices about polish, soundbite preparedness or political correctness need to be thrown out, at least when dealing with these candidates.

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator trying to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for the White House, has a hill to climb, media-wise. His speeches are laden with socialist policies designed to bridge the expanding gap between the rich and poor in America. From the outset, despite attracting the largest crowds of all the other candidates, Sanders could not attract a proportionate amount of media attention. He is not just running against Hillary Clinton’s grandiose brand, he is also competing for media coverage against the Donald Trump campaign on the Republican side. Sanders constantly complains of the media obsession with, and addiction to, conflict and entertainment instead of the real policy issues that the country faces.

How does Sanders compare? He has only gotten a shocking total of 8 minutes on network news (about 1.5 percent). This is equivalent to the amount of time the news has devoted to Gov. Chris Christie (who is polling below 4 percent) and far less than the 43 minutes of coverage devoted to Jeb Bush, who is polling less than 10 percent.

The US media is infatuated with Donald Trump. The always-quotable billionaire is all over American airwaves and he is showing well in the polls, which might not be a coincidence given the overwhelmingly disproportionate coverage he has received. Trump is a polarizing figure, but he is just one of thirteen Republicans in a race for the White House, not to mention the Democrats and their candidates. There is no journalistic justification for the amount of attention the US media is giving The Donald other than, well, reality TV entertainment. I must admit I find it hard to stop watching the circus myself. Donald Trump is the poster boy for the relationship between the mainstream media and the entertainment culture, which rewards intellectual laziness and erodes political awareness. The one positive aspect about Donald Trump’s candidacy is that with his outrageous language and views (and his over-proportionate coverage because of both), he has made clear how much the culture of journalism has lost its engagement, journalistic integrity and ability to meaningfully dissect the monumental issues and policy challenges confronting the United States. As Bernie Sanders points out,

“The media is giving up to a large degree any pretense at serious journalism, and you’re moving into the trend of the USA Today — simple, and stupid, and color pictures,”

Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have much in common. Both are old-school socialists whose policies are being reflected through the lenses of media outlets looking for a neo-liberalist approach to economics and more accustomed — even addicted — to the bombastic, theatrical brand of politics that a candidate like Donald Trump delivers. The members of the media find themselves explaining why these candidates are so popular and then dismissing their ideas as “fringe,” which is not an easy thing to do. It is in our nature to gravitate towards confirmation bias and sensationalism. It takes a certain force of will to consume information that might be boring, even if it is critical for making intelligent and informed political choices. We know why news works like this. Balance ratings, viewership and profit margins dictate that priority be given to topics that generate more buzz. Controversial candidates get more attention simply because they are damn good entertainment, but I’m afraid it is only just that. This is also why alternative sources of news media and other platforms are becoming much more important to an electorate that is looking not just to be entertained, but to be informed.