What liberal media?

Posted by WMD | The Sunday August 5th Republican debate on ABC provided viewers with an opportunity to vote online for the candidate they liked best. Once again Texas Representative Ron Paul came out well ahead the other so-called front runners. At last count that online poll had Paul with 34,015 votes out of 53,435 cast so far. Second place (5,838) went collectively to voters waiting for Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich to enter the race and those saying they intend to vote Democratic. Romney was a distant third at 4,245 votes.

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In case you missed the other debates their online polls has similar results:

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- California on May 3rd by MSNBC

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- South Carolina on May 15^th by Fox News

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- New Hampshire on June 5^th by CNN

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In each of these the preference expressed by viewers was clearly on the side of Ron Paul. If we really had a "liberal media" wouldn't you expect them to be shining the spotlight on the dark-horse underdog who is upsetting the Rudy McRomney apple cart? But that’s not how the media is reporting it.

ABC News completely ignores the results of its own online poll instead pushing the results of an ABC/Washington Post poll. conducted of the Iowa Republican Caucus. The results this time show Romney in the lead….without the competition of Ron Paul even having been in the offering. That’s right, they conducted the poll and left Paul off the list of choices.

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Subsequent news reports completely ignore Paul’s presence at these debates and the strong positive response he gets from the audience. I can’t even provide a link to the AP story our local paper ran since they did not have it on their website. So you’ll have to take my word for it – there wasn’t a single word mentioned about Ron Paul even being at that debate let alone taking the lead in the poll of who “won”.

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Even on ABC News' own website report of the debate there is absolutely no mention of Paul by name... but they were nice enough to include his photo.

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Why isn’t the so-called liberal media reporting on Paul’s popularity? A virtually unknown congressman is getting more attention from The People than the pre-ordained, so-called front runners. Now that’s what I call news!

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Seems I’m not the only one to notice Paul has been categorically ostracized by the Republican Party and news media. This was already covered by OpEdNews.com in May and bears repeating.

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Media is supposed to serve the public interest and report what is happening in our communities, in our country and in the world. Instead they manipulate, homogenize and sanitize information. The mainstream, conservative corporate run news media is ignoring the truth, deliberately working to mold the facts and influence public opinion. No wonder print and television news is suffering financially.

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People, especially younger citizens recognize the conservative mainstream media news reporting process as corrupt. It’s easy to see why non-corporate online news sources are growing in popularity since they bring us the news we need to hear, not what conservative corporate interests want us to hear.

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What we do want is for the news media to return to the ethics of journalistic professionalism. No more editorializing disguised as reporting. Just give us the truth, report the facts and let each and every American decide for ourselves.

Comments

[PK]

I am a huge Ron Paul fan, so I think we're on the same team, but I have to strongly disagree. There is DEFINITELY a heavy bias to the left in the MSM. I think that the reason that ABC is now actively beginning to try to silence Ron Paul is because they are sensing his growing support. He presents the biggest threat to the left BY FAR. He is a passionate and effective communicator of free-market economics. A man like Paul is the left's greatest fear. Make no mistake, the left would much prefer a sellout like Romney to a true believer and advocate like Paul.

The only reason the left throws Paul a bone every now and then is because they think he won't win. They are simply hoping that in the process he'll make the Republican frontrunners look bad (like Nader did for the Democrats).

If he does win the Republican nomination, you will probably see more vigorous attacks on him from the MSM than you have ever seen on any other candidate.

[Brad]

Absolutely, the media is going to go after Ron Paul if he gets the GOP nomination. The one time the Republicans actually nominated a supporter of free markets, the media declared open season on him and started a smear campaign accusing him of wanting to start a nuclear war even though he was running against a warmongering president that had started the Vietnam War.

[tom edmondson]

A powerful group on the order of the Neo-Cons of today paid for a study just before the 1900 century change to determine how many major newspapers they would have to own to control what America read. (Newspapers were THE source of information back then). The answer was 25. The cost was a few million dollars. The purchase was made and for over 100 years the important issues have been determined for readers by editorial staff and writers who do what they are told. I am 78 and have followed FDR's State Fascism, following Wilson's 'safe for Democracy' One World War, the UN's Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars. Those who CANNOT learn the lessons of History are doomed to repeat them. It will be our fate unless we elect Ron Paul to the presidency. It will require real money and effort, but I sincerely believe, with God's help, Americans can reach back and make it happen !

[danb]

I agree with PK... kinda... if there is a liberal media... which I'm not sure of.. They would want to promote the warmongers with no chance of winning... instead of the pro-freedom, anti-war candidate, Ron Paul.

[Stephen]

What we need is REAL PEOPLE TV. That is to say, our very own Television Station. No. NPR doesn't count. I'm talking about TV that brings news of what's going on throughout this country to the attention of the people. A no-holds tell it like it is TV channel. A channel that would expose all the nonsense going on in this country.

[Steve LaBianca]

I agree there is a bias in the MSM . . . it is a STATIST bias. Whether it is left leaning or right leaning is more a function of the current political climate, but the statist bias is prevalent during ALL political climates. I can only say that I am extremely pleased that Ron Paul seems to be getting much more traction now, than when he ran for president in 1988 as the Libertarian Party nominee, and appeared on 46 state ballots plus D.C. and Guam. The general population has been becoming more and more anti-war as the Iraq and Afghanistan "campaigns" are producing only death and wasted financial resources. I commend Dr. Paul in seeing that he could cultivate this anti-war climate. I hope he rides it all the way to the white house. America needs this man as president.

[Chris]

Why is anyone surprised by this behavior. Even worse was done to Alan Keyes. He was refused by the media even to participate in debate. I will vote for Ron Paul, but I wish Alan Keyes was his running mate.

[Woman of Mass Discussion]

I think we have a couple of different issues at work here and it's important to distinguish between them.
Assuming the MSM (and its alleged liberal agenda) wants to silence Ron Paul requires we first establish Who benefits by silencing Ron Paul and why?
The Republicans want and NEED to knock out any candidate they feel their political machine cannot control. Paul plays by his own rules, not the GOP's and certainly not the neo-cons'. Voters know this about Paul which is why he polls so strongly after these debates. We're tired of politics as usual, we want change, and Ron Paul offers that. And THAT is what scares the Republicans to death. So it is in their best interest to ensure he is marginalized and gets as little media attention as possible. Why else would they deliberately exclude Paul from the Republican Iowa Caucus poll?
Seems logical then, that the right, the GOP, the conservatives (and especially the neo-cons!) would benefit more from his censure at this point in time than the left (Democrats). This is political strategy pure & simple.
If Paul won the GOP nomination (yet was the weakest of the GOP candidates) then why wouldn't liberals WANT him to win the nomination? It certainly would make the November 2008 election a slam dunk for the Democrats. If the media were truly controlled by liberals they'd be bending over backward to ensure Paul got more coverage (i.e. set him up nicely for the ritual sacrifice on Election Day).
As for anticipating vigorous attacks on Paul...It’s not the media, per se, that does the attacking. It's the other candidates from either side. The MSM (and the corporate media moguls who own it all) decides whether or not to cover it and, if so, in what depth.
The broader issue, and main point I was trying to make in my original blog post, was the MSM is actually conservative. Actual systematic analysis of the MSM over time supports this. There will be a detailed post on BuckNakedPolitics on this soon, so I won't go into it here. I will include information about who actually OWNS the MSM since that is vital in identifying its "bias". (Whoever owns the media, controls the information; whoever controls the information, controls what is perceived to be the truth. When you control the truth you control what people think or "know". You can see that this is a critical point.)

[Steve LaBianca]

Many excellent points wmd, but I think it is important to distinguish neoconservatism with true, or traditional right wing conservatism. BTW, I am not a conservative just as Friedrich Hayek had stated in his "The Constitution of Liberty". I am a libertarian, which is much more an outgrowth of classical, enlightenment liberalism in the Jefferson tradition, than conservatism.

In today's political climate, which had been dominated by neoconservatism in many respects, supression of Ron Paul's candidacy is mainly coming from the neo-conservative right. The modern "liberal" left however, though somewhat in agreement with Dr. Paul on war, stand in opposition to his "laissez-faire" economic beliefs of the Austrian School of Economics, pioneered in America by Ludwig von Mises and furthered by Murray N. Rothbard, Hayek and other prominent free market economists. At what point do leftist begin to oppose Ron Paul, because of his non-activist government beliefs of opposing coerced wealth redistribution, and egalitarianist inspired government regulation? I believe it is happening already, but the FLOODGATES OF ATTACKS will come at him from the left if he secures the Republican party nomination. As a footnote, neoconservatism is an outgrowth of former leftist/socialists who saw some of the futility of such socialist schemes, and changed their minds about the workability of socialism. So, neoconservatism isn't really from the right at all.

[Woman of Mass Discussion]

The "flood gates of attacks" are part of the routine. That is simply the way the political game is played. Do you think Ron Paul would NOT do his best to draw clear distinctions between himself and whoever the Democratic candidate is?

Politics has gotten ugly and so divisive that it makes it easy to understand why there has been an increase in the registration of voters identifying themselves as "Independents". Frankly, I think this is good and would love to see the rise of a truly viable and competitive third party.

On your other point: Neo-conservatism, which wants to bill itself as more maintstream, is certainly anything but that. I agree that it is a whole different genre of conservatism. Hard to say exactly when it emerged but it certainly was culitvated and given it's "clout" through a think tank calling itself the Project for the New American Century. Until we completely vote them out of the White House and out of Congress we will continue to see more of what we've had in the past seven years.

[Steve LaBianca]

I certainly agree that Ron Paul would need to distinguish himself from leftist Democrats; I only meant to distinguish the less vicious (and less numerous) attacks from the left at this point, from attacks that will grow exponentially if Dr. Paul became the Republican nominee.

PNAC, which has many prominent conservatives is basically headed by Bill Kristol, but the term neoconservatism was probably first used by Irving Kristol (Bill's father), and is loosely based on the ideas of Univ of Chicago professor Leo Strauss.

On your point of a "viable and competitive" third party, I myself am a life member of the Libertarian Party, but through its 35+ year history, it has not achieved widespread influence. There is a "reform caucus" within the LP which is trying to "mainstream" the party, but I believe that this effort will fail to make the party more "viable", and in the course of its "mainstreaming" may ultimately destroy the "vanguard of liberty" aspect of the party as well.