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Voters Outraged as Media Accused of Falsely, Preemptively Crowning Clinton

The move came on the eve of six primaries, including California.

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Mainstream media outlets declared Hillary Clinton had won the nomination on Monday night, which critics slammed as a blatant and despicable attempt to undermine the electoral process by suppressing voter turnout. (Photo: Jared Polin / Flickr)

The Bernie Sanders campaign and progressives across the nation expressed mixtures of frustration and contempt Monday night after major news outlets — following declarations by the Associated Press and NBC News — ignored the explicit instructions about how primary delegates should be tallied and declared that Hillary Clinton has won the nomination of the Democratic Party.

It was feared this would happen — and news outlets were repeatedly warned they would be reporting the results inaccurately if they counted so-called “superdelegates” in their totals before next month’s national convention — but they did it anyway.

The AP reported that newly captured “commitments” from superdelegates — current and former party insiders who are allowed to declare their support and ultimately cast a vote of their choice at the convention — gave Clinton on Monday enough total delegates to win the nomination. According to the prominent news agency’s count:

Clinton has 1,812 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses. She also has the support of 571 superdelegates […]

The AP surveyed all 714 superdelegates repeatedly in the past seven months, and only 95 remain publicly uncommitted.

Sanders plans to make the case to superdelegates that he is better positioned to beat Trump in November. While superdelegates can change their minds, those counted in Clinton’s tally have unequivocally told the AP they will support her at the party’s summer convention.

The move by AP, which critics slammed as a blatant and despicable attempt to undermine the electoral process by suppressing voter turnout, came on the eve of six primaries on Tuesday, including the crucial state of California. The Sanders campaign responded by saying the reporting was not only poorly timed, but wholly inaccurate.

“It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgement, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer,” said campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs in a statement. “Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination. She will be dependent on superdelegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change their minds between now and then. They include more than 400 superdelegates who endorsed Secretary Clinton 10 months before the first caucuses and primaries and long before any other candidate was in the race.”

Critics charge that by adding the superdelegates to their total count — something Democratic National Committee communications director Luis Miranda specifically told CNN’s Jake Tapper on April 28 that media outlets should not do — news outlets are giving potential voters an intentionally misleading understanding of how close the race actually is and suppressing potential turnout among those who think their votes will mean little in terms of closing such a large gap.

What Sanders will try to do from now until the convention, said Briggs in his statement, “is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump.” As the campaign has repeatedly noted, poll after poll shows Sanders doing remarkably better against the GOP nomninee Donald Trump than Clinton does.

Briggs also joined MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow shortly after the news broke to reiterate and expand on those arguments:

Outside observers, meanwhile — including journalists and commentators who have covered the race closely and progressive supporters of Sanders — expressed various forms of outrage for the announcements by AP, NBC News, and the countless other outlets which subsequently parroted their headlines.

The timing of the declarations were seen by many as a deplorable, given the stakes of Tuesday’s primary, especially in California.

“It’s crazy,” said anti-fracking activist and documentary filmmaker Josh Fox during an interview on San Francisco’s KPFK Monday night. “I want this to fire up Sanders supporters,” he added, while expressing hope that people would react to the media’s behavior by feeling even more compelled to go to the polls on Tuesday. He encouraged people to bring even more voters along. His contempt for AP was made plain in a series of earlier tweets:

Media critic and political commentator Adam Johnson, as well as political journalist Doug Henwood, added their thoughts:

Even as millions of people get ready to vote in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota on Tuesday, the AP made clear it was the pronouncements of a handful of individuals like Nancy Worley, a superdelegate who chairs Alabama’s Democratic Party, who helped “put Clinton over the top” by confirming to the news agency that she would be backing the former secretary of state. “We really need to bring a close to this primary process and get on to defeating Donald Trump,” she told the AP.

Meanwhile, the anger (and energy) was spreading:

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

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