<\/a>In theory, Americans love the underdog. In practice\u2014especially in 21st century media coverage of political campaigns\u2014underdog candidates might as well be wearing Harry Potter\u2019s Cloak of Invisibility.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a particularly egregious example: In the August 2010 primary election in Missouri, Democratic candidate Arthur Lieber won the right to appear on the November ballot as the Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, versus then-incumbent Republican Todd Akin. The next morning, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Akin was running unopposed in November.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s about as bad as it gets, but it\u2019s not the only way that mainstream media\u2014and political parties, too\u2014demonstrate bias against candidates who are running against the odds.<\/p>\n

In 2012, in the same Congressional district, Democrat Glenn Koenen defied conventional political wisdom, thinking that the then-open, newly redrawn district was winnable\u2014with a little luck, a strong Democratic message, and some media attention. He was wrong, but not for lack of trying.<\/p>\n

Without the requisite five-figure media budget, he did all the other right things: speaking engagements, candidate forums, press releases, interviews, etc. But as soon as Republican political insider Ann Wagner joined the race, the state Democratic party gave up, calling the race un-winnable. Newspapers and electronic media barely acknowledged Koenen\u2019s existence, while slavishly covering Wagner\u2019s every move. The Post-Dispatch invited Wagner in for a sit-down with the editorial board. Koenen got a 15-minute phone interview with a lower-level reporter. Television and radio outlets assigned reporters to cover the race, but none of them covered Koenen. The final insult came during the week before the November election, when, on its editorial page<\/a>, the Post-Dispatch ticked off a list of Wagner\u2019s negative points, as opposed to Koenen\u2019s positives\u2014and then endorsed Wagner.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is not just a Missouri problem\u2014it just happens that these are the stories I know best. [I live in Missouri\u2019s 2nd District, and, by the way, Arthur Lieber just happens to be my spouse.] Both of these candidates joined the fray for good-citizen reasons: to make sure that there was a Democrat in the race\u2014when no one else came forward, and when the state Democratic party made no effort to find or support anyone\u2014and to try to make the point that political campaigns need to focus more on issues and less on money. Both were serious\u2014as in serious about issues\u2014candidates that deserved a hearing. Undaunted by previous media inattention, Lieber<\/a> is doing it again in 2014.<\/p>\n

Why does the mainstream media ignore the underdogs? Koenen says, \u201cIt\u2019s all about conventional wisdom: The powers that be decide early on who is going to win, and they don\u2019t want their narrative disturbed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Money\u2014or, rather, the lack of money\u2014is also a major contributing factor. In a recent interview, Koenen asserted that mainstream, corporate media are closely aligned with America\u2019s economic elite. Corporate media regard their own bottom-line as paramount, he said, and that translates into a similar view of political campaigns: more money equals more success. The more corporate the campaign, the more mainstream media understand it and pay attention to it.<\/p>\n

“The media are complicit in the corporatist approach to elections,” says Mikel Weisser<\/a>, a progressive Democrat running this year for U.S. Congress in Arizona’s 4th District. “For them, it’s only about advancing the corporate agenda. They’re only interested in you if you have money. If you don’t, they ignore you or discount what you say.”<\/p>\n

Weisser calls the media response to his campaign “dogged indifference,” explaining that the reporter from the Arizona Republic assigned to his campaign doesn’t respond to his emails or phone calls, and “acts as though there is no Democrat in the race.” Weisser ironically notes that the most media attention he’s received was from the Washington Post, which called out his campaign website as one of the most poorly designed in the country.<\/p>\n

The current generation of news reporters also contributes to the problem, adds Koenen.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s young reporters come from middle- and upper-income families who can afford to send their kids to college,\u201d he says. \u201cThey haven\u2019t experienced and don\u2019t buy into the struggles of people who don\u2019t have as much money. They\u2019re more concerned about people above them on the economic ladder. They\u2019re aspirational. Concern for the underdog is no longer in their bones the way it used to be for reporters who had to work their own way up. Their reporting reflects that viewpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

Applied to political reporting, that disconnect with economic underdogs makes reporters and their bosses see low-budget campaigns as losers.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the matter of energy. \u201cUnfortunately, some reporters take the path of least resistance,\u201d says Lieber. \u201cIt\u2019s just easier to report on the more visible, high-dollar campaigns of people with a lot of built-in name recognition.The real losers are the voters, because they don\u2019t get the opportunity to find out that they have other choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it\u2019s not going to get easier very soon, especially in light of recent Supreme Court rulings that have opened the floodgates of corporate political donations, and have reinforced the notion that the candidate with the most money deserves to win.<\/p>\n

So, you\u2019ve got to applaud candidates like Koenen, Lieber and Weisser for hanging in there against the odds. \u201cWe have to stay in, to make sure that our ideas get a hearing,\u201d says Koenen. \u201cFor the system to work, ideas have to be valued as much as money. I was naive about the media when I ran. We have to keep pushing the media to do the right thing. Someone has to fight the fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In theory, Americans love the underdog. In practice\u2014especially in 21st century media coverage of political campaigns\u2014underdog candidates might as well be wearing Harry Potter\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":29551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2109,162,119,573],"tags":[2491,229,2055,120],"yoast_head":"\n