Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign is launching its own 2020 newsletter which has been dubbed the “Bern Notice,” his campaign announced Wednesday.
The newsletter – seemingly aimed to combat the establishment media – will reportedly feature “scoops, insights, and news nuggets about the election,” according to speechwriter David Sirota, who teased the first edition in Wednesday’s announcement:
We are launching BERN NOTICE — the Bernie 2020 campaign’s digital newsletter giving you scoops, insights, and news nuggets about the election. Whether you are a journalist, an activist or a news junkie, this newsletter will have all sorts of goodies. You’ll get it in your email inbox, and it will be posted here on Substack.
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We will have our first edition of the newsletter out soon.
The move comes as no surprise. Sanders’ campaign has openly expressed doubts over the establishment media’s coverage and its purported attempts to dismiss Sanders and his message.
“Every time there is a story about how Bernie can’t win, it fans the flame of our base and we get more donations and more volunteers,” one Sanders campaign aide told The Hill.
“We’ll never be the favorites in the media. I get it. But when was the last time one of these pundits visited a field office or talked to a state director?” the aide asked, adding, “If the media doesn’t want to tell that story, that’s fine. It just means we have to out-hustle these other campaigns.”
The criticisms have been recent as well, with Sanders taking a shot at the Washington Post during a campaign stop in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, Monday.
“Anybody here know how much Amazon paid in taxes last year?” Sanders asked.
“See, I talk about that all of the time. And then I wonder why the Washington Post… doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why. But I guess maybe there’s a connection,” he continued.
Sirota addressed critics who often compare Sanders’ media criticisms to President Trump’s, arguing that it is “fundamentally different” because the president “hates the free press & calls it the ‘enemy of the people.'”
“Worth adding: Bernie disliking that power-worshiping media culture & pushing for a better journalism culture is fundamentally different from Trump, who hates the free press & calls it the ‘enemy of the people,'” he claimed.
“If you cant admit the difference, then you’re willfully dishonest,” he added:
Despite popular belief, Trump has repeatedly specified that he considers the “fake news media” – not the free press – the “enemy of the people”: