Ron Paul on Fox News Los Angeles at the USC Rally

Especially given that this was FOX's LA affiliate. LA and NY are the two traditional "A" markets for broadcast. Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, etc being "B" markets, and so on according to population and thus advertising value per affiliate. That drives the whole business. It is much more prestigious to be a corespondent for an "A" affiliate than a "C" affiliate, This means there's more competition for those spots. It also means those corespondents have a better chance of making it to the head office (national programs.) Case in point: I grew up in Washington, DC which at the time was, i think a "C" market, though a special one because of the national element. Lea Thompson was a crackerjack investigative reporter with the local NBC. She eventually left to take a spot with the NY local, and from there wound up in national programming (Dateline, I think.)

So the young lady doing the piece at hand is in one of the two most important and thus highly scrutinized affiliates for FOX. Her piece was definitely a softball for Paul given the tenor of FOX reporting and opinion to date. The question is, "Why?". It could be that this reporter has a great deal of journalistic integrity, and perhaps less of an industry survival instinct. It could also be a sign of media discovering their ignore and smear tactics were backfiring and actually enhancing Paul's support. Obviously I believe the latter, and I hold that this belief is justified by some of the other softening in the media towards him, though none yet to this extent.

I question the tactical value of positive media coverage. I would almost like to see more coverage ridiculing freedom. I think it has a tendency to make people wake up, take a look at Paul, and follow the generally held belief that the media lie.

Regardless, I believe that before too long other candidates will attempt to adopt some of Paul's agenda, at least publicly. Then the media will likely claim that Paul is "unelectable", and anyways you can get most of the things you like about Paul in candidate Y now and Y is "electable". This is much more dangerous to Paul than either of the above tactics.

The point is that I want the genuine Paul article, not some Romcainiani who has "seen the light" of voter desire. I consider it too likely that another candidate will forget the popular mandate they adopted to get elected and govern according to their habit.