Media Blackout

By Erik Wemple
As everyone now knows, the media ignored Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul in the aftermath of his virtual tie with Michele Bachmann in the Ames straw poll. Blogs were all over it last week. Jon Stewart did a segment on the matter, as did Piers Morgan. There was even a study about it. Just yesterday, Howard Kurtz’s CNN show “Reliable Sources” drilled in on the Ron Paul media problem for the second time in as many weeks.

At what point does the fact of the Ron Paul media blackout become the a Ron Paul media bonanza?

Basically, yeah, the media have been ignoring Ron Paul, and a lot of the bandwidth went to Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin.

Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) also went to additional efforts to assess the amount of coverage Paul received immediately after he narrowly missed a straw poll win. If anything, Paul's coverage was even further diminished:

Hey guys,

In light of the recent Jon Stewart rant about the Ron Paul media blackout, I have taken the analysis one step further and compared Ron to the newest member of the 600 home run club.

The link is here: http://hpronline.org/united-states/the-libertarian-perspecti...

P.S. If you missed it, I even sat down with Tom Woods for an interview. Link: http://hpronline.org/united-states/the-libertarian-perspecti....

I watch the debates and the only person who has anything in the form of an educated position, is obviously, Ron Paul. When he speaks on foreign policy, we all hear (and understand) his discussion on blowback.

In our good Doctor's campaign, we are starting to see the actual blowback from the media's poor decision to ignore him. What I want to propose is that we take it all a step further.

Read this article by the Chicago Tribune and then email the author and tell him he's wrong.

But BE RESPECTFUL! We do NOT need anyone bashing Ron Paul for his supporters. Ron Paul is a good man who has gotten a very bad name from his supporters. Please ask yourself, What would Ron do?

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2011/0...

http://youtu.be/DcE8PTid6qU

The gig is up folks. The game is rigged. The emperor has no clothes, and people are starting to take notice. I make no apologies for my diehard support of Ron Paul and I won't - but the original intent of this blog was not to be an explicit endorsement of Paul. I feel a little reluctance to AGAIN feature him but things are getting serious, fast, and I am not ashamed to dedicate so much space on this blog to his cause.

More: http://thegldnrule.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/something-is-goi...

Obviously we're getting our point across! And lots of good comments too!

Is Ron Paul the victim of a media blackout?

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The Republican congressman and 2012 presidential candidate was shut out of the Sunday public affairs shows this past weekend despite his neck-and-neck second place finish to tea party favorite Michele Bachmann in...

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/news-media-treating-ron-...

"Ron Paul is getting more publicity out of not getting publicity in the wake of his virtual tie with Bachmann in the Ames poll than he’s gotten to date. Suddenly everyone’s noticing the “mainstream” media is trying very hard not to notice the twelve-term Texas congressman and libertarian icon, despite his success in quadrupling his previous Iowa showing and barely being edged out by Bachmann."

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/08/16/the-media-is-t...

http://youtu.be/XBKJuYzw5R4

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Ames Straw Poll Graph & Info here

Thanks to Mike Morgan for the following head's up:

The LA Times/Bloomberg issued a press release on June 11 about the candidates running for President in both parties. It is a pdf document that you can read here. It begins, "As found in previous polls, Republicans are not too satisfied with their field of candidates compared to their Democratic counterparts, especially the conservative element of the Republican Party."

So far so good. Then it goes into an analysis of the Big 3 (the Rudy McRomney Trio) and on to the results of a Republican poll it conducted. All nine other candidates are listed as choices *** including Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich -- who aren't even running -- as well as "don't know" and "other" -- but not Ron Paul, who swept the three debates according to online polls.