02
Jan
They Report, They Decide?
Should Big Media decide for the rest of us who is — and more importantly who is not — a viable candidate for president? It’s bad enough that thus far the reporting of this year’s quadrennial presidential pursuit has been even more insubstantial than ever, focused on the horse race, the fundraising, the polls, the pundits, the haircuts and assorted other bits of silliness –- anything other than actual issues of concern to voters and importance to the world. Now we find Big Media, (specifically its Fox/ABC News wing,) determined to narrow the field of presidential candidates before any of us, other than a handful of white people in Iowa, even get a chance to vote!
Both television networks plan to winnow out presidential candidates they deem unacceptable and prevent them from participating in important debates to be held this weekend — just before the crucial New Hampshire primary. Fox has invited just five of the seven remaining Republican candidates to a forum with Chris Wallace scheduled for Sunday in the Granite State –- only two days before the nation’s first presidential primary. Although Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and even the barely breathing Fred Thompson were all invited, two current candidates, both current Members of Congress, were not — Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul.
The Fox excuse? “Space is limited” in the “souped-up bus” that is serving as a mobile studio. As a result, Fox executives say that, for space reasons, they decided only to invite those candidates who had received double-digit support in recent polls. Forget the fact that Ron Paul actually is ahead of Thompson (6 percent to 4 percent) among all New Hampshire voters in the most recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, or that the two were tied with the support of 4 percent of likely voters… Forget as well the fact that Paul recently shattered the record for online fundraising in a single day, raising nearly $6 million in 24 hours – a little more than a month after he amazed the pollsters, pundits and political professionals by hauling in $4.3 million during the same time span. (Not bad considering that on the day that John Kerry accepted the 2004 Democratic nomination, he raised $5.7 million on the Internet — the biggest online fundraising day on record until the supposedly non-viable Ron Paul surpassed it.) But consider at least these facts: in just the last three months, Paul collected more than $19.5 million, bringing his total for the year to more than $25 million. More than 130,000 contributors gave to Paul during the fourth quarter, including more than 107,000 new donors.
“This is exciting. It’s crazy. I can’t imagine any other Republican raising this kind of money this quarter. This means Ron Paul’s message is really resonating with people,” Jim Forsythe, who leads Paul’s New Hampshire MeetUp group, told the Washington Post.
But Big Media doesn’t seem as impressed – at least now. Remember just a few months ago, however, when how much money a candidate was able to raise was the Big Media imprimatur of viability? Now that Ron Paul has vaulted near the top of the fundraisers, it seems the bar is being moved, and is set a little higher for him. Could it be instead that his stance on the issues is the real barrier to letting American voters see and hear him debate on Fox News just before the crucial first presidential primary takes place? After all, it’s no secret that Paul’s outspoken opposition to the Iraq war, to mention just one ‘deviant’ policy position, is what really sets him apart from all the other Republican candidates.
Paul’s spokesman Jesse Benton says the campaign has been trying to reach Fox News representatives to get an explanation for the decision, but calls have not been returned. (Meanwhile Rudy Guiliani has appeared so often on the Fox News channel – run by his close friend Roger Ailes – that it’s rumored he’s having a private line installed in the Control Room there.) Is Fox prejudiced against Paul because of his perceived lack of viability – or his policy stances? “There very well might be some bias,” Benton told the AP. “Ron brings up some topics that aren’t very popular with Fox News, as in fiscal responsibility and withdrawing from the war in Iraq… that does leave us scratching our heads a little bit about whether it was deliberate. Based on metrics, I don’t see how you can possibly exclude Dr. Paul.”
Based on metrics, you can’t… And if the small size of the mobile studio is really the issue, I’ll gladly chip in to help rent a larger space if necessary. But if Ron Paul isn’t added back into the debate, I’ll also gladly join his supporters, who have begun calling for a boycott of Fox advertisers. After all, whatever happened to “We Report, You Decide?”
For their part, ABC executives say they will decide who gets to show up for their back-to-back, primetime Republican and Democratic debates Saturday in New Hampshire – but only after the results of Thursday’s Iowa caucus are known. To participate in the ABC debates, Republican and Democratic candidates must either place first through fourth in Iowa, poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major New Hampshire surveys, or poll 5 percent or higher in one of the last four major national surveys.
ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson defended the network’s decision to determine who was a viable candidate before any actual voters — except for Iowa caucus-goers — even had a chance to cast a ballot, and contended that the new ‘viability’ criteria were still inclusive. “You will have had a year’s politicking,” Gibson told the Associated Press. “You will have had, I think by count, about 641 debates. You will have had national polls and state polls and one state’s vote. I think that’s pretty indicative.”
Sorry, Charlie – but nobody asked what you think. Once every four years, you’re supposed to ask us what we think. You report, remember. We decide, right? Right??
One more reason to fight for a free press and against media consolidation. We are thoroughly sick of the msm trying to tell us what we think and so-called pundits ignoring what is in plain sight and engaging in wish fulfillment. Boycotting the remaining debates is a good start toward opening the eyes of the establishment. They HATE to lose money.
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:17 pmI made the same point as does Rory — but with regard to the Democratic field and Bill Richardson, who is the most qualified and most experienced candidate among all the Democrats and Republicans — with the Jan. 2 issue of my e-mailed e-zine, The Green-Dog Democrat.
My intro to the issue’s commentaries points out a couple of problems: The first is that reporters and pundits and talking heads and editors and news directors and bloggers take it on themselves to tell the country who the top candidates are — issue positions and qualifications be damned. On the Democratic side, for months it’s been Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards — no one else need apply. The second is the possibility that folks in Iowa (and New Hampshire) may not hold onto their independent thinking and pragmatism and instead pay attention to the reporters and pundits and talking heads and editors and news directors and bloggers who have no business deciding who will be the candidates.
The issue is posted on MyTown at http://www.mytown.ca/green-dog/.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 pmnice riff on this piece, Rory:
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002651201.
Or did you have another source?
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:42 pmWhen we see public perceptions being manipulated this blatantly directly on the heels of media-baron Rupert Murdoch’s incorporation of the (already right-wing) WSJ into his existing stable of far-right propaganda outlets, it certaibnly dims hopes that whoever succeeds Bush in the coming election will have any hope of getting a less militant message of America’s place in the world through to the public.
With the hiring of William Kristol at the NYTimes, we see that even the Grey Lady — the “paper of record” — will now become the soapbox of PNAC/Likudnik foriegn policy that has been at the center of every debacle undertaken by the Bush Administration.
No. We’re nowhere near being out of the woods in the foreseeable future. Only a wholesale revolt against the powers that choose not to observe the same laws they use to beat down opposition to the far-right designs of Perle, Wolfowitz, Kagan, Feith, Bolton, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Armitage, Libby, Abrams, and other PNAC members who have been behind the ‘clash of civilizations’ that only they, Likud, and Osama bin Laden actually look forward to.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:55 pmThe importance of the “YOU report -WE decide” concept can hardly be overstated and is hugely under-appreciated. Take a break and try this instructive thought experiment: Imagine how different our election process would look if for the first 3-4 months ideas and supporting arguments were grouped by subject and presented for evaluation with no attribution, a la carte, sort of like we’d like our cable choices to be.
Effects of money, smears and spinning on voter deliberations would be effectively minimized. What a concept; ideas and solutions evaluated on actual merit with minimal distraction, deliberate or otherwise. Once a clear picture of that idealized process has been enjoyed, start adding one by one the usual batch of trappings. Start with the authors of course, then add the usual smears, lies, hype, etc. and finally, the effects of media agenda and incompetence.
As individual citizens we can’t be blamed for the grotesque aspect of American democracy today. But as a nation of citizens Constitutionally equipped with all the tools we need to rehab our democracy, we bear an absolute and inescapable responsibility to wake up, get smart and act as an informed citizenry. The alternatives are becoming more obvious and odious, each and every day.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:03 pmThis current situation is not democracy at all, It is one of the hall marks of a republic decaying into empire. Hillary Clinton is an unindited co-conspirator. W. Bush his a carreer criminal etc. Yet the people who own the earth have decreed them our leaders.
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pmWhat is telling is that the people allow government to slip into the hands of the the rich. That is part of press failure to inform as well as the people’s failure to act on the information.
Historically the best Man for the job never gets it. It seems there is always something missing. It is difficult for anyone to clean up the mess a former President regardless which party.Anything worth doing is never completed in one life time or one generation. Hope is what’s left, how much garbage are you willing to eat before you find the truth? We all need to become more harmless, what we do to others we do to our selves. The fool always lights the fire He will burn in. Usa lights a lot of fires all over the world.It all starts with the individual, You and I, there is lots of work to be done. Thankyou
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:28 pmMr.O’Connor has here accused several network tsars of having violating the rights of candidates and voters alike. The FCC has a fairness doctrine, of course, that was supposed to prevent such intereferences in elections from happening–does anyone recall how poorly that has worked for years? Well, clearly it’s being ignored again. So what’s he’s really said here, at some length, is that “somehow it works” taken as an elective or governmental process doesn’t work at all–especially not when airtime, published page time and podium time is being allotted by uncredentialed nobodies to their favorite upon no principle whatever. Such choices are being made under no regulations that can protect individuals’ rights–candidates and voters–but rather I argue under a nameless “bossism”, or statist dictatorship over the process that is both sickening, unAmerican and unconscionable. The election is supposed to end when voting by individual selves has been completed; it is supposed to be conducted under objective news reportiers’ coverage, separatelty, in each state in the Union/empire. This is done so that the final result leads to a choice made by informed voters, not by those making sure they never get to hear the truth. It is the candidates who need to convince each voter that they have that truth, that character, that vision. Electability in other words has to proceed in the real world from one man’s demonstration of concepts, character and vision that is accepted, rightly or wrongly, as true by individual voters; one cannot reverse the process and allow unqualified and non-defining demi-bureaucrts of meda tsardoms (unregulated and unAmerican) to decide whos is “electable”–and then go on to reverse their own whim and give leading status, biased reportage, lies, extra airtime headlines and innuendo only to their favorites. Our elective system is as broken as our anti-individualist Constitution post-1994 has been made to be; and this well-argued piece makes two truths clear: it doesn’t work somehow, and it doesn’t work at all if interfered with by categoryless control freaks and would-be interferers in an already compromised process.
January 3rd, 2008 at 6:37 pmIf being hated by the gas bags, the prima donnas, the Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer types, then it isn’t Ron Paul that should be your candidate, it’s Hillary Clinton. Clinton is easily the most hated of all the candidates; hated so much, that the hatred against her exceeds the hatred for all the other candidates combined. That’s one of the ways I know that Hillary is easily the best candidate of all. Win or lose, this contempt by the Star Media Whores, is absolutely air-tight evidence that 1) if she loses, she will have lost by way of a assault on her campaign, by Obama and Edwards, and 2) by a viciously biased attack on her from nearly all of media. She could easily have withstood #1, but together with the #2 attack on her campaign, she will have been bound to lose.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:00 pmC. Coit’s efforts to equate Hillary with Bush, are as idiotic as they are devious. Bush and Hillary are not comparable, they’re opposites. Hillary would “accomplish” or protect(though the other, current democratic presidential candidates pretend that they will or can) everything Bush has undone or sought to destroy.
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:07 pmHey again, Rory–Had to laugh at Dr. Paul coming in ahead of Rudy. SEE: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=703433
January 4th, 2008 at 12:19 amAs for the FCC fairness doctrine referred to by another commenter,it was abandoned in the 1980’s. See FAIR’s rundown, The Fairness Doctrine–How We Lost It, How We Can Get it Back” from 2005:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2053
Perhaps we should resurrect that grand old law–the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?
The thought of busting up these media conglomerates warms me to my toes.
January 5th, 2008 at 8:39 pmThanks for writing about this despicable treatment of Ron Paul. It certainly extends to Dennis K and Mike G, but for Paul, who’s grassroots supporters raised record-breaking sums for his campaign, there is absolutely no excuse for them to ban America from hearing Dr. Paul’s message.
There’s always a flip side to everything and in this instance, I see it as a waking up time for Americans, who’ve been slumbering away in front of their television sets for decades. Believing that television is giving them objective news, they’ve brainwashed themselves into a stupor and while asleep, the shadow government has crept in and taken over our government.
I just pray that it’s not too late to turn things around. Obama, who’s looking like a frontrunner at this point, has several neo-con advisors-specifically, Dennis Ross and Susan Rice, and it appears he’s not being upfront with his supporters or the American people about his true agenda.
Ron Paul is the only guy I can think of that embodies “what you see is what you get.” He’s upfront about everything he believes in, no matter how popular or unpopular his views may be.
This former liberal Dem is devoting full time to helping get Dr. Paul’s message out. We’re in desperate need of a doctor to do radical surgery on the out of control cancer in this country.
Thanks for “listening.”
January 8th, 2008 at 12:54 pmThe ABC News producer (in NY) who yanked Ron Paul out of the ABC coverage in New Hampshire was John Banner. EXPOSED!
January 10th, 2008 at 2:22 pmInteresting that you would write this after saying on Al Jazeera’s Listening Post that a Ron Paul election would be a “farce.” You said after insinuating he would use Swift-boat tactics to make the opposing candidate look like an “oaf,” which he wouldn’t. Ron Paul’s the last candidate who would use ads like that.
So what do you care, Rory?
January 11th, 2008 at 4:09 am