Bernie Sanders Puts The New York Times to Shame

An important and timely article in TruthDig. It's important now to understand which news sources are often compromised by large corporate interests. I highly recommend reading and listening to FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) website and their Pacifica Radio Friday radio program. They focus on calling out corruption in reporting as well as ethical journalism.

Bernie Sanders Puts The New York Times to Shame

In response to what one observer described as “anti-American baiting” by a New York Times reporter over the weekend, Sen. Bernie Sanders refused to shy away from his record of opposition to Reagan-backed death squads and coup plotters in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s.

During an interview published in the print edition of the Times on Sunday, journalist Sydney Ember repeatedly asked Sanders about supposed anti-American chants that rang out during a rally he attended in Managua in 1985, when the Reagan administration was funneling arms and money to the right-wing Contras in support of their brutal and deadly effort to topple the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

“The United States at that time—I don’t know how much you know about this—was actively supporting the Contras to overthrow the government,” Sanders told Ember, who co-authored a Times story last week detailing Sanders’s foreign policy positions during his tenure as mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

“Of course there was anti-American sentiment there,” Sanders said. “This was a war being funded by the United States against the people of Nicaragua. People were being killed in that war.”

When Ember continued the same line of questioning, asking Sanders whether he “would have stayed at the rally” had he heard the “anti-American” chants from the crowd, Sanders responded, “I think Sydney, with all due respect, you don’t understand a word that I’m saying.”

“I strongly oppose U.S. policy, which overthrows governments, especially democratically elected governments, around the world,” said Sanders. “So this issue is not so much Nicaragua or the government of Nicaragua. The issue was, should the United States continue a policy of overthrowing governments in Latin America and Central America? I believed then that it was wrong, and I believe today it is wrong. That’s why I do not believe the United States should overthrow the government of Venezuela.”