This has been especially apparent in the last couple of weeks. The Republicans in Iowa had a straw poll for their party's presidential candidates -- something they have been doing for many years now. And while winning the straw poll there doesn't guarantee a candidate will win the Republican nomination, or even that they will win next year's Iowa caucuses, it does give a quick snapshot of how the candidates stand in mid-America at the present time.
This straw poll is heavily covered by the media, and it's outcome is debated for weeks on the major media outlets. This year the straw poll was virtually a tie between two candidates -- Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul. Although Bachmann got the most votes (4,823), she only bested Paul (4,671) by a scant 152 votes out of the 16,892 votes cast. That's less than a 1% difference between the two (actually 0.90%). It couldn't be any closer.
All the other candidates were way behind those two. Tim Pawlenty, who dropped out because of his poor showing in the poll, finished third with less than half the votes of either Bachmann or Paul. And the rest finished far behind even Pawlenty. That would lead a reasonable person to expect that the major media would be full of talk about Bachmann and Paul, especially when discussing the Iowa straw poll. But that didn't happen.
There were three Republican candidates being discussed after the poll, and Ron Paul was not one of those three. All the media pundits and talk shows wanted to talk about was Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry -- in spite of the fact that both Romney (567) and Perry (718) did poorly in Iowa. Ron Paul, who got more than five times as many votes than either Romney or Perry, was ignored.
This is not my imagination. The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted a sample survey of the coverage, and what they found was rather shocking. Here is what they looked at: the three network panel shows on August 14th, the morning and evening network news programs on August 15th, and four hours of primetime and one hour of daytime coverage from each of the three major cable news networks on August 15th.
And here is what that sample showed. Rick Perry was mentioned 371 times, Michele Bachmann was mentioned 274 times, Mitt Romney was mentioned 183 times, and Ron Paul was mentioned 29 times. Finishing in a virtual tie with Bachmann in the Iowa straw poll had earned Paul no respect at all. He was pretty much ignored in the discussion of who could win the nomination.
And that's nothing new. The media has been ignoring Ron Paul all year. From January 1st through August 14th, most of the other candidates have been mentioned prominently in news stories far more than Paul. Here are the numbers:
Mitt Romney...............120
Newt Gingrich...............112
Michele Bachmann...............108
Donald Trump...............94
Sarah Palin...............85
Tim Pawlenty...............52
Jon Huntsman...............44
Rick Perry...............33
Ron Paul...............27
Rick Santorum...............21
Herman Cain...............11
This is pathetic. Gingrich's campaign has been dead for a while now and he was never rated very highly. Trump was a "maybe" candidate for only about a month. Pawlenty and Huntsman have never scored as highly in any poll as Paul. And Rick Perry has only been a candidate for about a week. Yet all of them were covered more by the media than Ron Paul.
Of course this is nothing new for the media. Instead of just covering all the candidates in a roughly equal manner, they feel like it is their duty to decide who the real candidates should be and then only cover them. This is wrong. The news media does not have the responsibility to choose the candidates that Americans should consider. Their responsibility is to cover all the candidates and let the American people choose who they want. In choosing who deserves coverage, the media has abdicated it responsibility and failed in its mission.
And this doesn't just happen in everyday news coverage or the talk shows. It is even worse when it comes to the political debates -- especially the national presidential debates or the statewide gubernatorial debates. The media usually limits participation in the debates to those who they think "have a chance to win". Candidates from minor third parties (like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party) are not allowed to appear and have their views heard by the American people. How are they expected to garner support when the media shuts them out?
It is the job of the media to cover politics, and electoral politics are a very important part of that. But they were never meant to be the gatekeepers of electoral politics -- deciding who gets to be covered or heard and who doesn't. It is important to the protection of our democracy that this be changed -- especially in light of the failure by both major parties to address the serious economic problems facing this country.
Ron Paul has not been treated fairly, but his being ignored is only a symptom of a far bigger problem with the media.
Like you, I like some of Ron Paul's positions on the issues (though obviously few, if any, of the same ones you do). And as far as the media all but ignoring him, I'm a little frustrated by that too.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, here are a few reasons that he hasn't gotten more press than some think he should.
1) Success in the Iowa Straw Poll doesn't necessarily translate into success in either the primaries or the general election. Pat Robertson handily one the first Iowa Straw Poll in 1987. Phil Gramm ended up in a dead heat with Bob Dole in 1995. And although George W. Bush won in 1999, the runner-up, Steve Forbes, faded pretty quickly. And who were the top two candidates in 2007? Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Huck got a definite bounce out of his showing, but would he have fared as well as he did in the primaries if he hadn't hired Ed Rollins to run his campaign later that year?
Bottom line: If you can't organize a big enough barbeque or bus in enough voters to do well in the Straw Poll, that's usually enough to eliminate a weak candidate. But being successful in this unique venue doesn't mean you can go on to win the nomination, much less the election.
2) Some of Paul's positions are so outside the mainstream that the press is loathe to even mention them. Calling for an full audit of the Federal Reserve has limited bipartisan support (even Bernie Sanders has called for the same). And although I agree with Paul on this, few Republicans or Democrats would support opening such a huge can of worms.
3) Last, but certainly not least: Today (August 20) is Ron Paul's birthday. That in and of itself wouldn't adversely affect his candidacy, but the fact that it's his 76th birthday might. He'd be 77 by election day next year. That's three years older than Reagan was the day he was inaurgurated for his second term.
Slightly off topic, why hasn't the press reported on the following:
ReplyDeleteWhich candidate holds a Bachelors degree in mathematics and a Masters in computer science?
Which candidate worked in ballistics for the Department of the Navy?
Which candidate served as board member and later as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City?
Ron Paul='s cutting aid to Israel. Israel controlls our press, there fore Ron Paul gets no attention. Not so difficult really.
ReplyDelete