The Inquisitr reports:
On [December 7], Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders won the readers' poll for TIME's Person of the Year, which was conducted online.
The 74-year-old Senator won by [a] landslide, beating out other world-renowned leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and even U.S. President Barack Obama.
[...] Bernie Sanders won [with] more than 10 percent of the total online votes, while his closest contender, Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist that fights for the education rights of girls in her country, only got 5.2 percent of the votes.
Aside from beating the U.S. president in the online poll, Bernie Sanders also overran his toughest competitors: Donald Trump (1.8%) and Hillary Clinton (1.4%).
[...] No U.S. presidential candidate has ever won the Person of the Year award prior to the results of the election. However, the fact that Sanders topped the poll is testament that there are still people who will choose to go for someone with whom they share similar views as opposed to someone who is "popular". [Submitter's quote marks; see "Nate Silver", below]
But while Sanders' cause may be noble, which is mostly likely why he earned the top spot in the Person of the Year online poll, it wasn't enough for him to take home the prize. Reportedly, Sanders' name was taken out of the short list from which the editors of TIME [were] supposed to make their choice for Person of the Year.
[...] TIME released the names of the eight finalists for the annual award on [December 8] [...] Sanders and his runner-up Yousafzai were not included in the list of finalists. The finalists included Putin, Trump, Rouhani, former Olympian and transgender Caitlyn Jenner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, Black Lives Matter activists, and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, leader of jihadist group Islamic State.
On [December 9], TIME announced the winner during NBC's Today show. Angela Merkel was the unanimous choice of the TIME editors, making her the second individual woman to ever win the award.
The editors second choice was Trump.
This complete disregard for the readers' poll is hardly unprecendented, as demonstrated by the results from 2006:
Hugo Chavez wins "Person of the Year" poll; Time magazine ignores result
Unsurprising to many, AlterNet reports that Trump's presence in corporate media's coverage of the presidential contest is wildly disproportionate to his acceptance by USAian voters.
Trump's true level of support, [according to phenomenally accurate pollster Nate Silver, is] 6 percent to 8 percent of the electorate--or roughly "the same share of people who think the Apollo moon landings were faked", the pollster said.
Previous: Bernie Sanders Leads TIME Magazine's Person of the Year Readers' Poll
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TIME Magazine reports:
With eleven days left to go before TIME's 2015 Person of the Year poll[1] come to a close, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the upstart candidate for president, holds a wide lead over global notables among TIME readers even as he trails Hillary Clinton in voter polls and fights a long-shot battle for the Democratic nomination.
The self-described "democratic socialist" currently leads Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist, with 11% in the TIME reader poll compared with her 5%. Sanders also leads Pope Francis and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama and is far ahead of entertainers like Adele (2%) and Jennifer Lawrence (1.7%).
[...] Hillary Clinton has earned 1.3 % of the vote.
[...] Sanders is also beating Donald Trump in the reader poll.
[...] Voting on the reader's choice poll ends Dec. 4 at 11:59 p.m. and the winner will be announced Dec 7.
[1] JavaScript-driven
While TIME says that Hillary's popularity in national voter polls is still higher than Bernie's, they fail to mention that Hillary's numbers are slipping while Bernie's numbers continue to climb.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @12:28PM
It's like just about any vote, it just makes you feel like you participated, but the people in control are going to make some decision unrelated to your opinion anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday December 14 2015, @02:30PM
Now, I'm a sanders supporter, approximately speaking, but I can understand an editorial board not selecting someone for recognition their achievements and impact based on their current popularity in an election. Sanders has a much bigger popularity contest to win coming up.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Monday December 14 2015, @03:09PM
I agree with you here. Its like when Obama got a peace prize before he even took office.
Lets give these awards to people that have done something, not to candidates.
That being said, that there is so much hand wringing over an essentially meaningless title is completely useless.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday December 14 2015, @06:05PM
> Its like when Obama got a peace prize before he even took office.
When your memory lies, Google is your friend.
Obama got the fourth "you're not W" peace prize in 2009, right AFTER he took office. (the first three recipients were Carter, the IAEA, the IPCC).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @09:34PM
The Nobel Foundation Taken to Court on the Peace Prize [dissidentvoice.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @09:27PM
I can understand an editorial board not selecting someone for recognition [of] their achievements and impact based on their current popularity
Bernie has been a public servant since 1981.
Representing the people of an area that has a heavy Republican presence, this guy fights against the overt greed-driven anti-worker mean-spiritedness that has become so common in Lamestream Media and government.
He is the inverse of e.g. Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
Bernie's message is drawing crowds of 20,000 and more.
No other candidate comes close.
Finding a venue large enough to accommodate all the folks who want to attend is the biggest hurdle his campaign encounters.
If TIME's recognition is supposed to represent the zeitgeist, Bernie is the poster boy.
...but we have to recognize the demographic of readers of TIME.
Other guys with important messages which Lamestream Media did their best to marginalize: Eugene Debs (we got WWI and the Red Purge instead) and Henry Wallace (we got the Cold War, the Deep State, and Taft-Hartley instead).
N.B. I don't think Bernie goes far enough (e.g. not rejecting war) but he has a message that folks should hear and think about and no one else among the Reds and Blues seems to think that government should be giving consideration to Joe Average (instead of just Wall Street and megacorporations).
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @09:51PM
One of the issues is the first past the post system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE [youtube.com]
As an extreme example lets say you have twenty candidates. Lets say 10 percent of voters vote for candidate one. 85 percent of voters are split evenly between twelve candidates and the rest are split evenly between the remaining candidates. So it looks like this
Candidate 1 --> 10 percent
Candidates 2 - 13 --> 85 percent
Candidates 14 - 20 --> 5 percent
So candidate one only have ten percent of the vote. Now lets say the other 90 percent of people absolutely hate candidate 1. They can't vote against candidate 1 and so their votes get split between other candidates. Candidate one wins despite the majority of people disagreeing with him/her. But they had little choice, they can't vote against a candidate so they must split their votes among other candidates.
Had everyone been able to vote for another candidate after their favorite candidate was eliminated someone else would have been elected. and that's what the alternative vote simulates. It finds the next candidate that the majority of people who are split when it comes to their first choice would choose as their second (or third) choices and hence finding a candidate that most people can agree (more) upon.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday December 15 2015, @12:53AM
One of the issues is the first past the post system....Had everyone been able to vote for another candidate after their favorite candidate was eliminated someone else would have been elected...
So preferential voting [wikipedia.org] may be a way of efficiently voting against as well as for someone?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 19 2015, @04:02PM
A problem with first past the post is that votes for someone else get spread across multiple other candidates which diminishes the effect of their intent to be votes against someone.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fadrian on Monday December 14 2015, @12:42PM
Everyone knows that anyone further left than center-right is never going to be Time's "Person of the Year". It goes against the nature of the lapdog press to not uphold the system.
That is all.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday December 14 2015, @01:48PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Informative) by jcross on Monday December 14 2015, @02:16PM
The fact that the leader of Islamic State was on the short list tends to reinforce your point.
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Tuesday December 15 2015, @12:01PM
It's neither a compliment nor an insult - it means the most influential person that year, good or bad.
Here's the list of previous winners [wikipedia.org] - notice 1938, 1939, 1979, and 2004.
Strangely, there's also a lot of bullshit winners, like 2002, 1988, 1966, and A LOT of president-elects that had not yet taken office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @04:25PM
Guide to moderation for this article:
Lapdog, Troll = person who doesn't agree with me
Insightful, Informative = person who habitually make excuses, just like me
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @05:24PM
Where's the 'Lapdog' moderation option when we need it?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 15 2015, @05:08AM
This whole business of picking out one person to lionize is goofy, and so typically American. Eastern cultures are less individualistic. One thing the comic book super hero genre is, is a reflection of desire for heroic individuals. Time Magazine may as well edit the photo of their person of the year to stuff him or her into Superman's blue and red suit. It wouldn't be any goofier.
No national political candidate or officeholder is a solo act. They are merely the front person of a team. The whole reason someone whose most refined skill is acting, rather than, say, policy analysis or diplomacy, reading people, or researching facts, could win high political office is that acting is an important talent for the person who is the public face of a team. Anyone remember that when Reagan was elected, there was some doubt about his qualifications, since he was "only" an actor?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Monday December 14 2015, @12:50PM
To help judge the (lack of) importance of Time magazine in the 2010s,
http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2012/magazines-are-hopes-for-tablets-overdone/magazines-by-the-numbers/ [stateofthemedia.org]
So about 1% of the USA population subscribes, 99% of the population don't care.
In terms of relative importance, "Better Homes and Gardens" crushes them almost 2:1 and even "Good Housekeeping" beats them.
Generally when a lasagna recipe is the most interesting and informative part of an infotainment product, it can be safely ignored (think of legacy local news, or daytime tv talk shows, or women's magazines). So Time is less important and relevant than lasagna recipes. Hmm.
Hey Time magazine, whats more important in a switching power supply design for an RF amplifier, the quiescent current or the output voltage ripple? Oh wait the opinion of journalists is useless in any field that any of us personally understand. But, um, I'm sure they're real experts in every field I don't know. Sure. In fact I bet they're experts on whats cool and important. Err. Maybe not, maybe not at all.
Just saying that the opinions of some journalism majors that no one reads anymore might not mean much.
They probably are trolling, because nobody would pay attention to a dead magazine unless they generated coverage by "screwing up" probably intentionally. My guess is the "votes" went into /dev/null and they picked a winner and rolled dice for a number. I mean, its a dying magazine in a dying industry, they're not too worried about their reputation a decade from now.
Given that, the best way to react to Time's tantrum or whatever is to ignore them. They'll go away soon enough.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Geezer on Monday December 14 2015, @01:57PM
This, sir, is an offense to perfectly respectable lasagnas everywhere.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Monday December 14 2015, @02:35PM
Oh lasagna is not offensive, or at least I didn't try to imply that. Some of my best friends are lasagnas. I was trying to run with the hideous pun that lasagna recipes are the "copypasta" of the dying legacy media. Any time you need bland inoffensive filler on the daytime talk show they'll roll some filler footage of some middle aged woman pontificating on the fine art of lasagna manufacture.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @01:10PM
Once in a while, it's entertaining, but don't flood the site with juvenile flamebaits, especially from the same senders.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @02:37PM
Don't you mean:
especially from the same Sanders?
Eh? Eh?
I'll leave now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @03:03PM
When making a lame joke, make it ridonculously lame so it circles back.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Monday December 14 2015, @05:41PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2, Informative) by snick on Monday December 14 2015, @02:06PM
Online polls aren't worth the paper that they aren't printed on.
Irrespective of who should be person of the year, anyone who takes guidance from an online poll deserves what they get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @02:37PM
irrespective again? I thought we all agreed not to irrespective anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @06:33PM
irrespective again? I thought we all agreed not to irrespective anymore.
Did I miss the meeting again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @10:00PM
All the intelligent, fully-literate people did have a meeting on that. Did snick not get an invite? Shame.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @09:37PM
In the comments to the previous story, it was noted that identities of voters were authenticated, [soylentnews.org] so, spamming the survey was limited--if that's what you were thinking.
-- gewg_
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @02:34PM
I'm pretty sure Bernie only won because he promised free stuff to everyone who'd vote for him.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @03:24PM
If they did, then Ron Paul would've won, probably with votes from many of the same people who stuffed the box for Sanders this year.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AndyTheAbsurd on Monday December 14 2015, @05:55PM
They did and here are the results [time.com]. Ron Paul didn't even make the list. (Paul Ryan did, though.)
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @04:01PM
Time has always said that the poll results will not determine who they give the titles to. Each year they say right up front that the editors make the decision. The poll is just a way to sell page-views and generate media buzz around the Man of the Year award. It isn't a popularity contest folks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday December 14 2015, @07:18PM
Yes, and the decision is based on usefulness as propaganda.
Now I'm not asserting who the propaganda benefits. To decide that I'd need to review their historical decisions and the context in which they occurred, and I'm not that interrested. The exclusion of Sanders coupled with the inclusion of Trump, however, certainly gives a context within which to evaluate their leanings. (It would have been quite reasonable to either exclude or include both. To select one as an option and exclude the other, however, is clearly biased.)
N.B.: Hitler was once Time "Man of the Year". So without reading what they had to say about the individual in an article which now won't be written, you can't be sure that they would have been laudatory. But they *will* the selected individual much free advertising, even though it's not guaranteed to be favorable.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @07:54PM
> the decision is based on usefulness as propaganda
Time's criteria for the award is that the person must have a big impact on the world. For better or for worse.
Trump beats Sanders by a million miles. The guy has done an enormous amount to legitimize the racist elements of the GOP. He made explicit what the GOP leadership has been doing implicitly for decades. He's radically shifted the overton window [wikipedia.org] to make outright racism something that people will accept as legitimate topics for debate. He has given a voice to the worst elements of the american psyche. If we are lucky that will provoke a backlash like France just gave Marine Le Pen over the weekend. But we have a significant chance of going in the other direction and having to relearn the racist consequences of Lindbergh's pro-nazi America First Committee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @09:44PM
My suggested dept. was
from the in-case-you-think-your-opinion-matters-to-corporate-media dept.
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Hartree on Monday December 14 2015, @04:14PM
So, is this like when Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf won the People Magazine online poll for the most beautiful person in 1998?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Monday December 14 2015, @04:33PM
Sanders was never going to win the Person of the Year because he doesn't satisfy either of the criteria.
1. The Person of the Year must move units. The slot for Person of the Year is normally a very slow selling issue because few major stories tend to break this time of the year. It was the major reason for starting the practice. Much like Sports Illustrated began an annual swimsuit issue stuck in a slow slot when almost every major sport was out of season. Sanders is not interesting enough to move issues right now. The last debate was such a snooze they cut it short and nobody will likely even bother to start watching the one this weekend. (Note btw, CBS and now ABC signed on to a Democratic Debate and yet none of the Republican ones have been carried on a major broadcast net... yet have pulled much higher ratings despite that media bias. Just an aside.)
2. The pick should be likely to have lasting name recognition value when in years to come they look back in various retrospective articles and special issues. Sanders, having already endorsed Hillary and thus able to win only should Her Majesty become too ill to continue, is headed for a footnote in the history books. While it might be in the villain category alongside another German head of State to win the honor, Auntie Merkel is assured of being remembered at this point. For good or ill she has changed the world. Which is also why Trump did not win. If he fails to go all the way next year, he too will be a trivia question twenty hears hence and should he win there is always the next several years to put down the historical marker after he actually does great deeds. For should he win we can expect great things from him as well.... perhaps dark deeds as well but great ones nevertheless.
(Score: 2) by Nollij on Wednesday December 16 2015, @02:49AM
Not necessarily. Barry Goldwater lost in a landslide, but he's still notable, and for many of the same reasons as Trump.
There are many theories about Trump's lasting effect on the election system, but there are very few that put him in the same category as other failed nominees.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday December 14 2015, @05:02PM
An even better response would be: "Whats a Time Magazine?". Aside from being a mediocre news magazine no one really cares about it aside from its overinflated ego due to people getting some "X of the X" oped piece and their mug on the cover.
Boo time, boo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @05:15PM
is of course too-small-to-succeed...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @07:27PM
If I were Time, I would use a "group phenomenon" label to describe "The D.C. Outsider" as Person of the Year and include both Sanders and Trump. Time has used group phenomenons before as POTY* (Person of the Year). While Sanders is a career politician, he's never really been part of the established power brokers of DC.
People are fed up with gridlock, silly political games, and political double-speak, and that's why Sanders and Trump have an unexpected appeal. Trump is not afraid to say un-PC things and Sanders is not afraid to use the "S" word (socialism) and call out inequality, angering the people who usually fund campaigns in the process.
* No word-play or pun intended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @10:38PM
Explain to me how Bernie Sanders, a man who has been in congress for 24 years, can even remotely be considered a "D.C. outsider"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @06:27AM
He is (or was) an independent for those 24 years. He's not well integrated into the traditional power structure of the Senate. Or, more importantly, his attitude towards politics/governing is that of someone not captured/compromised by the system.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @12:43AM
Ever since Time was "revamped" and relaunched in 2015, it has looked like BuzzFeed: The Print Version. Most of the writers sound like they wish they were writing for BuzzFeed, or Variety, or TMZ. The cover design quality has gone down the toilet, as evidenced by the cover with Palmer Luckey. I remember one cover story penned by Joel Stein about employment testing, and how pervasive it was becoming; the abrasive proselytizing went on for about 8 pages. Then, in an editorial near the end of the magazine... Joel Stein talking about how he felt desperately insecure as a writer for an "old-fashioned" paper publication, and how he was out there testing the market. So not only was he not eating his own dogfood advice, he was also shamelessly showboating about how he's ultra-insecure about his own employment. I also saw another column from some baby-boomer-aged columnist who was talking about how she wanted to be so much like the millennials, and saw that "millennial beards" are the new thing. I threw the magazine back down on the coffee table after glossing over this for 4 seconds, and never turned back.
Time and National Geographic are being pushed through a face worth than death, albeit for different reasons. I keep telling my grandmother that I don't want a subscription to these magazines. If you can, please have your relatives cancel their subscriptions. Rupert Murdoch and the current incarnation of Time, Inc. don't deserve any money for the travesty they have committed upon the periodical industry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @12:56AM
Be glad it isn't newsweek. That magazine has never been worth the paper it was printed on.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arslan on Tuesday December 15 2015, @02:04AM
First off I'm not American, but who tf is Bernie Sanders? I can see he's a US presidential candidate in the summary, but what has he actually done or is this a case of his fanatic followers flooding the polls?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 15 2015, @06:55AM
He's currently #2 in the running for the Democratic nomination. It's really unclear if he can pass Hillary, or how he would fare in the general. But, at this point, he's probably a more real candidate that Jeb Bush.