The Democratic primary field may be narrowing, but Andrew Yang still can’t get the media’s attention. According to the New York Times (12/19/19), which breaks down the debates by speaking minutes, Yang, polling at fifth of the seven participating candidates, with an average of 3.5%, came in last in the December debate at 10 minutes, 56 seconds; that’s nearly a minute less than Tom Steyer (polling at 1.5%), and far below centrism poster child Amy Klobuchar, who is neck-and-neck with Yang in polls but clocked a whopping 19 minutes and 53 seconds.

It’s part of a pattern for Yang. In the November debate, he also came in dead last on speaking minutes, at 6:48, despite polling higher than fellow debaters Klobuchar, Steyer, Tulsi Gabbard and Cory Booker. He also had the fewest minutes in the September and June debates. Business Insider (11/23/19) found that Yang has consistently received less speaking time at the debates than one would expect, given his polling numbers.

By FAIR’s count, he’s been given 37 prompts across the six debates; Klobuchar—who has consistently polled below Yang for months, though her numbers have risen slightly to match his in recent weeks—has gotten 54. Booker and Beto O’Rourke, who didn’t even appear in all six debates and have polled at or below Yang’s levels since September, received 43 and 36, respectively.

...

Cillizza’s arguments seem to depict journalists as quite an intellectually challenged crew. In reality, it’s not that they can’t work to get a sense of a new candidate, or to cover “radical” political ideas; it’s that the news organizations they work for give them no incentive to—no conspiracy necessary, just an unhealthy bias toward the political establishment. Witness: A search of all CNN transcripts after Cillizza’s September 4 mea culpa found not a single instance of Cillizza mentioning Yang’s name on the air.

Echoing Cillizza’s third point, New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore (9/3/19) suggested journalists may be ignoring Yang because he has “no plausible path to the Democratic nomination,” given that his support mainly lies among millennials and Asian-Americans, and that if he had a breakout debate performance “his media coverage will skyrocket.” How Yang might be expected to have a breakout debate when the moderators keep him on the sidelines isn’t clear.

But the idea of a candidate having “no plausible path” to victory is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Journalists decide a candidate can’t win, so they don’t give the candidate coverage, which means the candidate can’t reach voters, influence the political discussion and rise in the polls. The whole point of the primaries is to let voters get to know the candidates and decide for themselves who is electable—the last thing people need is journalists narrowing the field for them.
...
https://fair.org/home/media-leave-yang-out-of-candidate-conversations/