Corporate media self-flagellates over Trump, but where is Bernie Sanders’ apology?

Pundits shamelessly chase clickbait and protect their access to power at the expense of our democracy

What does Bernie Sanders have to do to get some positive coverage from the corporate media-ocracy?

After Sanders crushed three Western states and brightened his prospects for winning the nomination Saturday, all Meet The Press’s Chuck Todd wanted to talk about Sunday morning was why Sanders allows his massive crowds to boo poor Hillary Clinton and what his terms for surrender will be when she’s crowned the Democratic nominee in the fall.

Similarly, this morning’s Washington Post online had two analysis pieces on Sanders’ three walloping West Coast victories. One, which was tagged with the positive-sounding headline “Bernie Sanders’s huge Washington win was exactly what his campaign needed” begins with this sentence: “At the end of the day, the extent of Bernie Sanders’s win in Alaska doesn’t really matter at all.” (TLDR: too far behind, Surrender Dorothy).

The second WaPo piece was (apparently re-)titled “Why did Bernie Sanders dominate Saturday? Caucuses in states with smaller black populations.” This ‘why Sanders dominated’ analysis never mentions that Washington State helps anchor the U.S. “left coast” for progressives, who overwhelmingly favor Sanders, or that surrogate U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who won her last Hawaii race with 74 percent of the vote, campaigned hard for Sanders on national security there.

Loading up the pre-typed narrative for whenever Sanders wins big, the article’s original headline had been “Why did Bernie Sanders Dominate Saturday? Caucuses in Whiter States,” according to the increasingly invaluable NewsDiff. Whoopsie. Alaska, according to CNN, is the most diverse place in America. No, Hawaii is, according to NPR, noting that 75 percent of the state is made up of racial minorities. And Washington State was just 71.6 percent non-Hispanic white in 2012, making it the country’s 25th most-diverse state.

But apparently because there are fewer black voters, these three victories are hollow and uninteresting to the Washington Post, which billionaire Jeff Bezos acquired in 2013. “It was the sort of night that he needs more of. But which he’s almost certainly not going to get,” author Philip Bump editorializes.

Voters ought to be getting a lot more contrition than we are about the corporate media’s shameful abandonment of fair and responsible journalism during the 2016 primaries. Motivated by clicks and views and angling to maintain their own access to power, they have driven our democracy into a ditch by fueling Trump, shielding and bolstering Clinton and all but ignoring Sanders.

Related: If Trump and Clinton are the best we can do, Go home, Democracy, you’re drunk

One wonders whether the media were so wrong about Trump never becoming the nominee that they can’t allow themselves to be wrong on the Democratic side too, driving their prognostication batting average from .500 to zero for the 2016 primary.

But a more compelling rationale is that the corporate media are protecting their most valuable asset: access to power. The major media power players both know and fear Bill and Hillary Clinton, who reportedly keep an Excel ‘hit list’ of friends and betrayers drafted in 2008 in the waning days of her loss to Barack Obama.

At long last, on the GOP side of the ledger, we’re getting a chorus of media mea culpas over Trump’s “$2B in free media” rise, including Nicholas Kristof ruing his role in ‘My Shared Shame: The Media Helped Make Trump,’ while Fortune goes with Yes, the Media Is Partly to Blame for the Rise of Donald Trump.

The media shamefully feasted on clicks and views from his deplorable clown show of a candidacy, nourishing him with what every bloviating misogynist bigot needs: non-stop attention, whether it be positive or negative.

But when will Bernie Sanders get his apology?

Since the beginning of his underdog campaign, on the relatively rare occasion the Vermont senator has been discussed, it’s to face a firing squad of televised talking heads insisting he has no chance to win. He’s a socialist dreamer whose supporters are unrealistic parasites who want free stuff.

If Sanders does manage to edge out Clinton and dump the Trump, the talking heads are gonna have a whole lotta ‘splainin’ to do.