When it comes to Primetime Programming on CNN and MSNBC, The Bernie Blackout Appears to be Back. Greg06897 Follow Feb 22, 2019 · 3 min read

Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for President only two days ago but already a trend from his last campaign is back. Primetime shows airing between 8pm and 11pm EST on the two “liberal” cable news networks, CNN and MSNBC, are ignoring him. These primetime shows average the highest ratings and most viewers of any shows on their networks and as a result they have the biggest impact on shaping opinions and narratives which is why it is crucial that we hold them accountable for what they choose to cover and what they choose to ignore.

Early Tuesday morning, Bernie first announced his candidacy for President and over the next 24 hours his campaign went on to once again shatter political fundraising records by raising a whopping 6 million dollars. The Democratic runner up in 2016 and one of the most high-profile and well-liked politicians in the country, Bernie’s campaign launch and historic fundraising achievement should have been a big news story, yet it was treated as anything but. While CNN and MSNBC did cover the story during the day, the coverage was short, hidden in the second half of programming, and mostly negative. But hey, at least there was coverage.

When Primetime hit, things drastically changed.

Over the six hours of primetime coverage on CNN and MSNBC, (three hours on each network) Bernie Sanders was covered for an almost non-existent six minutes. Putting it another way, Bernie received one minute of coverage for every millionth dollar he raised.

Chris Hayes was solely responsible for the little coverage that Bernie received and even then his coverage was quite weak. Hayes introduced a panel consisting of Michelle Goldberg and Alicia Menendez, both of whom are far from Bernie surrogates or supporters, and unsurprisingly they spent the majority of the segment downplaying Bernie’s appeal and his chances in 2020. Hayes was then followed by Rachel Maddow who not only didn’t cover Bernie’s campaign, she didn’t even mention his name in passing at any point during her program. Next up was Laurence O’Donnell who did the exact same thing as Maddow in never even uttering Bernie’s name.

Over on CNN, things were even worse. Anderson Cooper gave no mention of Bernie, Chris Cuomo only very briefly mentioned his name in passing for less than 20 seconds while joking with Don Lemon near the end of his show. And Don Lemon never mentioned Bernie in his first hour, let alone in his second hour airing after 11 pm.

I went to bed that first night frustrated and irritated at what I had seen and made sure to tune in the next night to these same shows to see if after Bernie’s 6 million dollar number had been widely reported there might be a change. Unfortunately, their coverage of Bernie on Wednesday was just as bad, if not worse.

Once again Bernie’s coverage was next to non-existent with CNN never mentioning his campaign at any point during any of their primetime shows. MSNBC was once again a bit better than CNN, though still pretty terrible, as there was no mention of Bernie at all from Chris Hayes, a 4 min segment from Maddow, and no real mention by O’Donnell although Bernie’s name briefly came up in a conversation w Robert Reich about socialism as well as briefly during a story about social media. Overall, being generous to how O’Donnell covered Bernie, there once again was 6 minutes of coverage over 6 hours of primetime cable news tv.

So for those of you keeping score at home, on the first two days of Bernie’s 2020 Presidential campaign, MSNBC and CNN primetime shows covered Bernie Sanders for twelve minutes over twelve hours worth of television. And if you include Don Lemon’s extra hour, they covered him for 12 mins over 14 hours worth of programming.

And as bad as MSNBC’s coverage was, it actually paled in comparison to CNN which over 8 hours of programming from 8pm through midnight, ran zero segments.

In other words, if you were someone who only very casually follows the news and only watches CNN during those hours, you wouldn’t even know that Bernie was running.