Monday, August 15, 2011

It Bothers Me That Ron Paul Gets Less Coverage

I'm not a Ron Paul supporter. But while he came in second in the Iowa straw poll, all the media seems interested in talking about is Mitt Romney versus Rick Perry. Look, they reporteded every utterance by  Sara Palin for the last 2 years. They've lately been giving Michelle Bachman the same platform. Donald Trump was treated as serious and viable.Wolf Blitzer is the Donald's lap dog, for chrissake.

If they can do all those things, then they can cover Ron Paul every bit as much. He's more popular than most of these other folks. And even if you don't agree with him, it's easy to see that he's a more useful voice. On issue after issue  he makes decently-reasoned cases for his positions that go well beyond the talking point pablum of a Palin, a Bachman, a Perry. That deserves an audience.

I don't want major news outlets to decide what the story is going to be. It's not their role to cut to the chase. Right now, they are supposed to be telling the story of which folks Americans might prefer to be the protagonists next year.

6 comments:

  1. Ron Paul gets zero coverage because he'll never be president.

    In contrast, Sarah Palin received so much coverage because she NEARLY DID become second in line to the presidency. She's also a telegenic woman who says unbelievably stupid things -- ideal media fodder.

    Paul's a 76-year-old congressman from Texas whose followers are largely socially-maladjusted libertarian zealots, dedicated though they certainly are.

    "Right now, they are supposed to be telling the story of which folks Americans might prefer to be the protagonists next year."

    They aren't "supposed" to do anything. This is a for-profit enterprise. There's no governing body of journalistic ethics that they have to answer to.

    Ron Paul is fringe, and will remain so. Therefore, there's little value in covering him as much as other candidates. You can call this unfair, and it may be, but the media's purpose isn't to be fair. It's to make money while superficially displaying an artificial "balance" rather than true objectivity.

    The only true concern is butts in seats and eyes on tubes. I would have thought that somebody as cynically cranky as you would have accepted this already.

    Ron Paul's quadrennial quixotic exercise in how not to run a presidential campaign hardly warrants more than passing mention.

    Even if he were to somehow miraculously win the GOP nomination, a sizable number of Republicans wouldn't vote for him, or worse, would vote for Obama because of Paul's radical stances on foreign policy and domestic issues.

    Believe it or not, most Republicans don't see the value in abolishing the Department of Energy and the FDA, much less completely disengaging militarily from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya while accepting that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons. These are DEAL BREAKERS for people that would otherwise nominally support him because of party affiliation.

    He's not running a presidential campaign. He's running a narrow contrarian ideological insurgency, and it is treated as such -- by ignoring it.

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  2. _____
    Ron Paul gets zero coverage because he'll never be president.
    _______

    That shouldn't be up to the media. And you are wrong about journalistic ethics. All major media groups have written policies that are largely similar. If you claimm 'em, you should try to follow them. I don't have a clue why you think that I should not complain, simply because there are no police. That's deeply cynical. I flat-out deny that I am a cynic or that anyone can prove otherwise. I'm a proud skeptic. If you don't know the difference, that's YOUR problem.

    ---
    The only true concern is butts in seats and eyes on tubes. I would have thought that somebody as cynically cranky as you would have accepted this already.
    ___-
    It's quite true that their first concern is ratings. But that relates directly to avoiding alienating the eyeballs that they are selling. In the absence of media police, the only viable means to police media is to criticize them in order to slowly erode their credibility. Like it or not, the media needs some ongoing measure of credibility or their entire enterprise collapses. I am happy to agree that their credibility has been weakened, but they still have plenty, which is why people keep watching.

    The rest of your post is a fairly garden variety rant against Ron Paul based on a subset of his positions which you find very objectionable. Which may be true, but is not relevant to my post. I don't support Ron Paul. What I support is the idea the people are the ones making the decision, and so they haver a right to expect that candidates get coverage commensurate with the level of support they enjoy among the people.

    Anyone who disagrees with this notion doesn't really believe in democracy. Jack, do you believe in democracy all the time? Or only when its convenient?

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  3. "That shouldn't be up to the media."

    It isn't. The media's lack of attention reflects reality, that is, his extremely unlikely prospect of being the GOP candidate:

    http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=669534

    "I don't have a clue why you think that I should not complain, simply because there are no police"

    I didn't say that, though. I explained why things are as the are. You're welcome to your complaints but complaining in the absence of understanding isn't useful.

    I think we can agree that it is not cynical to accept reality however different we wish to make it.

    What media credibility is at stake for ignoring Ron Paul? None, really, because he's neither influencing nor altering the nomination race. He's not factoring in the race in a meaningful way, and his hyperzealous followers are advantageous in contests like the Ames str a poll.

    Why would they worry about journalistic credibility NOW, when they successfully ignored Paul the last time he ran and lost?

    Highlighting Paul's extreme fringe positions isn't some low-blow. These views are germane to his lack of coverage -- he has no mainstream appeal.

    The idea that he should be accorded coverage proportional with his polling is frankly laughable. Why should a given media organization devote ~15% of their broadcast time or print space to him when they can more thoroughly explore the candidates that actually have a chance to win?

    "Anyone who disagrees with this notion doesn't really believe in democracy. Jack, do you believe in democracy all the time? Or only when its convenient?"

    I'd take offense to this non-sequitor insult if wasn't so ridiculous. Of course I believe in democracy, I'm just not so naive as to believe the free-market concerns of private enterprises don't consequentially factor into journalistic and editorial coverage of the democratic process. And I've been around long enough to know that shaming and complaining is useless.

    If you hate the coverage, stop watching and start supporting non-profit journalism. Otherwise you're wasting your breath.

    If you believe that money corrupts government function and political

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  4. Wow, commenting via iPad can be a chore. My last sentence was meant to be a critique of money's corrupting influence in all dimensions of politics.

    I think that's something we can agree on.

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  5. ____________
    Highlighting Paul's extreme fringe positions isn't some low-blow. These views are germane to his lack of coverage -- he has no mainstream appeal.
    ____________
    I didn't say it was a low blow. I said it wasn't relevant. His level of,popular support IS WHAT IT IS, regardless of how you view some set of his positions. Like I said before, what I support is the idea the people are the ones making the decision, and so they haver a right to expect that candidates get coverage commensurate with the level of support they enjoy among the people. You haven't really addressed of refuted that in any way that's meaningful.

    I don't agree with you that Ron Paul has no "mainstream" appeal, whatever you think mainstream means. He holds a number of positions that are pretty popular. He's against high military spending on foreign wars, which most liberals agree with. He's pro-life with a very reasonable rationale that I bet many pro-choice folks would have a hard time refuting. He dumbfounded Piers Morgan for example.

    QWhat Ron Paul is is this:he's inconvenient for the neat little partisan boxes and and hardened narratives of the media and the 2 major parties. He's the only candidate that I have heard both liberals and conservatives occasionally say decent things about.

    ______
    The idea that he should be accorded coverage proportional with his polling is frankly laughable. Why should a given media organization devote ~15% of their broadcast time or print space to him
    _________

    Umm, what? I never said that he deserves a percent of coverage for each point he polls. My point is that airtimewise he should be covered just as thoroughily as other candidates of similar popularity,



    Why should a given media organization devote ~15% of their broadcast time or print space to him when they can more thoroughly explore the candidates that actually have a chance to win?
    ______

    Because they're not the ones who decide. WE are. Paul's views are not on many issues, very "fringe" at all. Under your rationale, what justifies covering Michelle Bachman or Rick Santorum or Donald Trump?

    See my post above, which links to John Stewart essentially duplicating my point on the Daily Show last night. Also, ask yourself whether you are really familiar enough with Ron Paul to be sure he has no insight to offer.


    _____
    Why would they worry about journalistic credibility NOW, when they successfully ignored Paul the last time he ran and lost?
    ______

    A fair point, but I would ask what you mean by "successfully." This biased coverage didn't go unnoticed last time. And this time it's getting some attention.

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  6. I think this discussion largely misses the point. The media isn't failing to cover him because he won't win, they're failing to cover him because he won't make them any money. It's the invisible hand (which is ironic since that's such a big part of libertarian philosophy). He has complex policy views that don't condense well into soundbytes, and those are hard to sell to a 30-second audience.

    By the way, I find this frustration with the media for not covering Paul to be akin to Justin's railing on donklephant about companies sitting on cash and not hiring people. It's the same argument...they should do X because X has value to society, but of course they won't because X won't make them money.

    --mdgeorge

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