Sanders campaign manager says Fox News is 'more fair' to Bernie than MSNBC

The Bernie Sanders campaign and the Vermont senator's supporters are fed up with MSNBC, after what they perceive as months of "slights from MSNBC's stable of hosts and commentators," Tom Kludt writes at Vanity Fair. Sanders and his campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, requested a meeting with MSNBC president Phil Griffin last fall to see if the liberal cable news network would "change the tone and the tenor of the coverage that we receive," Shakir told Vanity Fair. "They've been among the last to acknowledge that Bernie Sanders' path to the nomination is real, and even when it's become real, they frequently discount it."

Things haven't improved since then, as far as Team Sanders is concerned, and "the constant diminishment of Bernie Sanders on MSNBC" is "actively damaging" the Sanders campaign and "hurts his case for electability," Shakir told Vanity Fair. CNN is at least making "efforts to try and diversify their voices" with pro-Sanders hires, he added, and even Fox News has been "more fair than MSNBC" to Sanders. "That's saying something," Shakir added. "Fox is often yelling about Bernie Sanders' socialism, but they're still giving our campaign the opportunity to make our case in a fair manner, unlike MSNBC, which has credibility with the left and is constantly undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign."

The Atlantic's Christopher Orr agreed with Shakir that it's "saying something," but maybe not in the way Shakir intended. "'Network that desperately wants Trump re-elected gives favorable coverage to Sanders,' says Sanders campaign manager, without a whiff of irony," he tweeted, paraphrasing Shakir's comments, probably a little unfairly. MSNBC, for its part, has previously shrugged off the criticism from Team Sanders as attempts to work the ref. "A presidential campaign complaining about tough questions and commentary speaks for itself," an MSNBC spokesperson told The Daily Beast last July. You can read more about the Sanders-MSNBC tensions at Vanity Fair.

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