Before I clarify the data, let me take the “I’m not the crazy one” victory lap that’s become ritual for Bernie supporters, whose persecution complexes are as warranted as they are overwrought.

It’s difficult to tell how much anti-Sanders media bias is real and how much is an impression created by the online Bernie bubble. And I could entertain a debate over whether news media’s disapproval of his candidacy is a reasonable reaction to a misfit in the race, or a smear campaign explained by the class interests of news corporations and those they hire (it’s that one.) But wholesale dismissals of our criticisms about anti-Bernie media preference are bad faith or delusional (and offensively boring when paired with an “absolutely Trumpian!” remark.)

There seems to be a change of strategy since the 2016 cycle, which gave us the Washington Post’s often-cited “16 negative stories in 16 hours.” Better to go with a “Bernie blackout” in a crowded field — just pretend he isn’t there. His events and achievements were under-covered in 2016 as well. Another common grievance is airtime for empty podiums during his speeches. But now examples of headlines and highlights bizarrely omitting Bernie’s name keep coming in, even when he outperforms the subject(s) by the exact metric or in the exact poll being discussed. The most recent example, when The Hill described a poll that showed him beating Trump in Iowa as “Trump edging out Warren and Biden,” led me to investigate.

These charts show the candidates arranged by their polling performance (the average of Real Clear Politics polling scores each month from January to October 2019) and their coverage (mentions of their full name in TV captions from 1/1/19 to 10/18–19, tracked by the TV News Archive). There are a number of points to keep in mind: