General

Ron Paul ruins the story, no more and no less.

Bogart — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:20:29 GMT

The main media dislikes Ron Paul because he screws up their Presidential Candidate Story Line/Octagon UFC match:

Demubiican (Ms Pants Suit, Barack Not Hillary, Mr. $400 Hair) - Against War (Somewhat) for Welfare Programs (Big Time) vs Republocrat (Rudy, the old guy (Not Ron Paul), North East Mormon, a POW, bunch of other folks) For War (Big Time) against Welfare Programs (Somewhat)

Enter Ron Paul who is consistent in his views against War (Really) and against Welfare (Really). So the Media does what it does best: Ignore, then mock, now listen to and soon to challenge.

The other issues is that the main media can not really challenge Ron Paul on his biggest things without sounding like idiots because they are asking questions whose answers are simple to understand and COMPLTELY CORRECT. For this they will not forgive him.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

pazlenchantinrocks — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:24:18 GMT

Here is a nice little gem from the media war...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tZNlXSn_vC8

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

MetalCanuck — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 17:03:02 GMT

Wow good one, I never thought about that. The world would possibly be A LOT calmer under a RP administration.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

measles — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 18:27:25 GMT

Most libertarians don't like being told what to think (or think about), and perhaps this turns them away from mainstream media.

The media presents no real solutions because it fails to address the real problems in our society, i.e. distribution of wealth, the inadequacy of education, the immorality of the war, etc.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

measles — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 18:20:56 GMT

Stranger:
By swearing to wipe out political activity, Ron Paul is directly threatening the wealth of the media. If he succeeds, there will be little need for a "national press".

LIbertarianism is not anrchism, therefore, it is not the wiping out of political activity. Ron Paul wants to give to the states the powers to decide things like education, gay marriage, etc. (as the constitution does not explicitly give these powers to the federal government), so this would actually increase the amount of political activity and discourse. Instead of one federal ruling on education, media could cover what's going on in each of the 50 states, in turn creating more of a multi-linear discourse within the United States rather than the assumption that all Americans have the same interests in mind.

I think that the real threat of Ron Paul to the media is that he challenges their corporate interests. Many media outlets are owned by the same companies which profit from the military industrial complex, hence the pro-war bias that has been so common in certain media outlets for the last few years. They don't want him to be president because he would end the war and abolish the reserve, whose shareholders also have a great investment in the media.

If you look at independent media, there are multiple discourses taking place and more than enough news to cover, whereas in coporate media, we often get stories that are all along the same lines of discussion. It is the corporate media who keeps this discussion narrow and it is people like Ron Paul who want to widen it. They attack his supports as extremists because they bring up issues not currently included in the mainstram dialogue, and issues which quite frankly corporations often do not want addressed. An example: Mike Gravel has asked his and Ron Paul's supporters to try to get them an hour of airtime to debate issues that the debates run by major media outlets don't bring up in their debates. Their ideas will not be heard in corporate media debates because the questions they're answering won't be asked.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

Anonymous Coward — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:01:33 GMT

Steve Bachman:
Fox News, on the other hand, seems to want to actually attack and discredit him.

I'm having a hard time trying to think of a group outside the current administration that Fox News doesn't attack and try to discredit.

Dalai Lama maybe since he's Bush's golden boy as of late...

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

Steve Bachman — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:00:09 GMT

Interesting take.

It seems to me that most of the big media in the US wants to just ignore Ron Paul and hope he goes away. Fox News, on the other hand, seems to want to actually attack and discredit him.

I believe Gandhi said something like: First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you. Then, you win.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

Stranger — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:55:41 GMT

EotS:
I often think of this question, and I have difficulty answering when my friends ask me "why don't I see Ron Paul on TV anywhere?"
I'm not completely comfortable with the "war on Ron Paul" approach, that the media and government are in cahoots and they want to keep him out. It's a very hard position to take without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

It's not nutty to believe people protect their own interests.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

EotS — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 04:05:29 GMT

I often think of this question, and I have difficulty answering when my friends ask me "why don't I see Ron Paul on TV anywhere?"

I'm not completely comfortable with the "war on Ron Paul" approach, that the media and government are in cahoots and they want to keep him out. It's a very hard position to take without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

I do believe the party would like to keep him out, and that the major media are essentially statists.

But mostly, I think they want to talk about what sells, and RP's low numbers in the "traditional polls" don't equal sales dollars to network news. I do believe the grassroots campaign will roll on, and I think we'll actually see more media coverage as it gains steam.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

greendinjin — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:59:44 GMT

xahrx:
A libertarian oriented news channel could be a real threat to the established networks and cable channels, reporting on the same issues but with a minimal government bias, which could draw a lot of their audience and break the stranglehold they have on national debate.

The problem is that most people don't realize that there is any demand there at all; besides, most libertarians use the Internet rather than traditional media for their news (although it could be argued that the only reason why that is true is that the traditional media don't have what they're looking for).

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

xahrx — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:40:44 GMT

thompsonisland:
Anyway, they would all still have jobs regardless of who is in office. I don't think they care whether they are reporting on something meaningful intellectually, or utterly vacuous.

They'd still have jobs. But going by what was going on when I left school and from what I've heard and seen since, journalists these days are almost taught from the beginning that their job is to hilite problems and improve the world by doing so. They're taught more feature writing techniques than the old hard news, lead line fact focussed and tight style that was the regular in Woodward and Bernstein days. And when you combine that with their majority liberal ideology, and their near universal big government bias, you get a media that considers itself an unofficial wing of the government. It all comes down to power, Paul threatens their power by making their hard fought for audiences and political access worth a lot less than they are now.

Something else occurs to me: those audiences and the media's hold on them are threatened by Paul to some extent. If it gets exposed that there is a significant libertarian population in the US some media mogul may come along and capitalize on that, similar to the way Fox News capitalized on what was, at its birth, a marginalized audience for conservative bias. Think about it. A libertarian new channel would be a network that after a school shooting would't be afraid to point out that the shooters already broke a myriad of existing gun laws which didn't do diddly to stop the shooting. They wouldn't shy away from mentioning it if an armed citizen stopped the shooting. They wouldn't merely repeat government press releases on the war on drugs. You might actually get a reasonably accurate accounting of government spending and the people who benefit from it. Civil liberties violations would be much more prominently reported as well as the government's active role as being the main violator of such liberties. They might actually have the guts to challenge the weeping and sick props politicians pull out to try and sell their legislation.

A libertarian oriented news channel could be a real threat to the established networks and cable channels, reporting on the same issues but with a minimal government bias, which could draw a lot of their audience and break the stranglehold they have on national debate.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

thompsonisland — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:32:58 GMT

Do you think maybe they are also just totally intimidated by him because he takes the discourse so far out of their comfort zone that they don't know how to confront it? He's so foreign to them that they instinctively marginalize him - I don't really think most of the commentators are subtle enough thinkers to see how he threatens their current approach. I think the Old Media are mostly just followers - they want to be in the club. Ron Paul is outside the club, and they don't want to look stupid by supporting the guy who isn't guaranteed to either win or lose respectably, in their book.

Anyway, they would all still have jobs regardless of who is in office. I don't think they care whether they are reporting on something meaningful intellectually, or utterly vacuous.

BTW - Clearly I am making vast generalizations here. There are smarter and more honest reporters, and dumber and more sheeplike reporters. I think I refer more generally to the tone that the corporate executives wish to set, which is to be comfortably in the middle of the pack where they can attract the most advertising dollars.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

Brett_McS — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:00:37 GMT

Stranger: "Whatever the issues of the day may be, war, terrorism, health care, global warming, etc, if political power is involved in making decisions over it, the public must buy the media's products to be informed of it."

This is certainly the way the media have become to operate these days, where journalism is synonymous with tarting up government press releases. But that's just the rule of laziness. If there weren't government press releases to be had they would have to revert to actually sniffing out the stories themselves. In fact in this case there would be more justification for a press corp than there is now. After all, we can get the government's press releases ourselves from the .gov sites.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

Stranger — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:27:28 GMT

DBratton:
Stranger:
By swearing to wipe out political activity...

By swearing to do what?

Stranger:
He is not part of the debate because he proposes to destroy the debate permanently.
He has proposed no such thing. What are you on about?

Subtlety is apparently a scarce talent.

Re: The media's war on Ron Paul

DBratton — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 05:28:30 GMT

Stranger:
By swearing to wipe out political activity...

By swearing to do what?

Stranger:
He is not part of the debate because he proposes to destroy the debate permanently.

He has proposed no such thing. What are you on about?