#LetYangSpeak What the Silencing of Andrew Yang Taught Us

NOTE: While I did support certain candidates in the 2019–20 Democratic primaries because of their ideas (e.g. UBI, anti-war, broad tent approach), it doesn’t mean I endorse their other positions.

Welcome to TaraElla Report Radio, a podcast style program where we discuss big ideas to see if they can contribute to more individual liberty and equal opportunity. Unlike many popular channels out there, this show is a dedicated non echo-chamber.

Today, I’m doing an episode of the WikiEqual series, where we look at mainstream media bias.

After last week’s 2020 Democratic candidates’ debate, Andrew Yang complained that his microphone was not working during the debate, making him unable to speak up for much of the time. As a result, he was only able to speak when the moderators specifically asked him questions, which again did not happen much. In the end, he had only a few minutes of speaking time in total. After Yang spoke up in public, another candidate Marianne Williamson also confirmed that her microphone wasn’t working during the debate. Supporters of Andrew Yang have since used the hashtag #LetYangSpeak to publicize the incident, hoping to draw attention to the disadvatage he faced during the debate.

In fact, supporters of Andrew Yang already have plenty of reasons to believe the mainstream media doesn’t treat him fairly. For example, despite his clear popularity, he is not given much coverage in the media. While other candidates like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg have all benefitted from widespread media coverage, which saw them rise in the polls, the lack of coverage on Yang represents a systemic disadvantage for him. In fact, during this cycle, there have been several other candidates who have also had disproportionally little coverage, and looking back to 2016, we saw the same happen to Bernie Sanders. All this has made more and more people realize that the media does play favorites, and this has a very big and very unfair impact in the real world.

I guess the old media creating an unfair playing field is nothing new. As an independent musician, I have long been very aware of how every popular song out there is only popular because the big media players have promoted it. In other words, big establishment media has almost absolute power in determining mainstream music tastes. It would be just logical to assume that the same has always applied to politics too.

Of course, Wikipedia’s reliance on the establishment media as reliable sources should also be seriously questioned. Furthermore, the very fact that the biggest websites can still push this attitude on the people means that we still need to raise further awareness about the issue.

Originally published at http://taraellastylia.blogspot.com.

TaraElla is a singer-songwriter, independent journalist and author, who is passionate about free speech, liberty and equality. She is the author of the Moral Libertarian Horizon books, which focus on developing a moral case for freedom-based politics in the 21st century.