Bernie Sanders on Guns

You know that Senator Bernie Sanders is making inroads on the Democratic Presidential Primary when you see the latest polls on Iowa and New Hampshire which show Sanders narrowing the gap with front runner Hillary Clinton. Also stories in liberal websites like TheDailyBeast.com  have become more like Hillary attack ads such as the following graphic:

The headine is Bernie Sanders parrots the NRA . Reading the piece one would get the impression that Senator Sanders votes en masse against gun control. This is far from the facts. Politifact shows that Sanders has a long history  of voting for gun control measures about half the time with votes for background checks and banning the sale of assault rifles occurring often. It is no surprise that Sanders gets a D rating from the NRA. But it is a surprise that theDailyBeast omits these facts  leaving it up to readers to get the more balanced view of facts from The Tampa Bay Times Politifact website which shows in detail all of the Bernie Sanders votes on gun control. Also In contrast, a more complete story by NPR shows a much more nuanced view of how Sanders the politician has approached gun control; particularly in recent years.

Summary

After reading this and other stories, political analyst Cliff Schecter has dropped a couple of big notches in my assessment of his ability to deliver a  political analysis with probity and fairness. Ditto for theDailyBeast and their coverage of the 2016 Presidential races. In contrast, I have found the Tampa Bay Politifact organization to be like the CBO-Congressional Budget Office,  a good source of balanced accounting and fact checking information.  And if you are looking for a summary of all the latest 2016 Presidential polls,RealClearPolitics does a top notch job both in summary and details. Yes Dorothy, there are some reliable media sources for basic political information.