Hey, conspiracy deniers, deny this...

[renard_ruse]

NY Times finally admits its been deliberately spiking coverage of Ron Paul:

It's been obvious for almost a year now that the New York Times was participating in the media conspiracy to kill Ron Paul's candidacy by pretending it didn't exist.

In Sunday's Times, public editor Arthur S. Brisbane wrote of the decision to deep-six the only candidate in the race who has anything interesting to say.



Here's what Brisbane wrote:

In a Dec. 4 column, I wrote about journalists’ reflex to impose their own narrative on a race, a dynamic that can eclipse what candidates are actually saying. Well, as last week’s Iowa caucuses demonstrated, the Republican nomination contest steadfastly resists any coherent narrative.



Early in the campaign, The Times decided to remain low key in its coverage of Ron Paul, the libertarian Texas congressman, and Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator. Their strong showings on Tuesday, following the serial derailments of other contenders, showed just how hard it is for the paper to read the plotline of this contest.



It was obvious from the beginning that Paul was going be a factor in the race. In the summer, when he finished in a statistical dead heat at the top of the Iowa straw poll, it became obvious that Paul was going to do well in the Iowa caucuses as well, since they are just a glorified version of the straw poll. Yet the Times joined with other papers in ignoring his finish and trumpeting Michele Bachmann.



As with Sarah Palin, the members of the media love to play up the role of attractive but not-so-bright women in the Republican Party. It makes Republicans look like a bunch of rubes. Alas, Bachmann was not as popular with the voters as she was with reporters looking for a way to caricature the GOP.



As for Santorum, Brisbane makes a mistake in lumping him in with Paul. Santorum lingered near the bottom of early polls and it truly was a surprise when he rose in Iowa. Paul's showing there and in New Hampshire was entirely predictable; Santorum's wasn't.



And Santorum said nothing in the debates that made him stand out. He never departed from the party line of promising both budget cuts and a bigger military.



This was an issue only Ron Paul addressed honestly. I would have loved to see a Times article with a pie chart showing the impossibility of balancing the budget without the defense cuts Paul proposed. That would have been a real service to readers. But it didn't fit the narrative of the newspaper that did as much to get us into the Iraq War as William Randolph Hearst's papers did to get us into the Spanish-American War.



As in that instance, someone at the times needs to be told he's in the wrong line of work. And that someone is political editor Richard Stevenson. In that Dec. 4 column, Brisbane quotes Stevenson on the effort to keep Paul out of the paper:


One candidate who seems to float outside this dynamic is Ron Paul, the Texas libertarian. The Project for Excellence in Journalism says he is getting weak coverage despite poll numbers now putting him in the top half of the pack.



On this point, Steve Bowen, a Times reader in Tulsa, Okla., wrote me to say: “One must wonder about why The Times and other major media refuse to allow their reporters to cover Ron Paul in at least the amounts afforded to other candidates. Especially those who poll well below his numbers.”



Which brings us back to Mr. Stevenson and The Times’s approach to a campaign that wants to be epic but remains stuck in its pre-epic phase.



“Not all candidates are created equal,” he said. “We do not feel compelled to treat every candidate with the same intensity or seriousness as we do others.”



It's called the news business, Dickey boy. The news in this campaign is Ron Paul. The only thing that makes the debates interesting is his departure from the orthodoxy expressed by the rest of the crowd. If you've been paying attention to Paul since 2007 as I have, you'll note that many of his ideas that were dismissed four years ago are now central to the Republican debate.



But the real story in this campaign is one that makes every liberal I know uneasy. It concerns foreign policy. Paul is returning the Republican party to its roots on the question of foreign involvement. On this question there's little difference between the typical liberal and the typical "neo" conservative.



The liberals loved to pile on George W. Bush for his bungling in the Mideast, but let someone come along and propose we get out of that part of the world altogether and all of a sudden the liberals start sounding like Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld. They come up with all sorts of reasons why we need to be involved in the internal affairs of those faraway countries.



When it comes to the question of ignoring Paul, the attitude of the Times editors is rooted in the idea that some things are just not discussed in polite society. It's okay for Romney or Santorum to make the assertion that he will expand the military while balancing the budget and without raising taxes. That's false but it doesn't bother the Times.



However when a candidate says we can't afford to be the policeman of the world, that candidate is kept out of the news not because what he's saying is false but because it's true. If that candidate also proposes ending a whole passel of programs deemed untouchable by the Times, well that's all the more reason not to let readers hear about the guy.



But Ron Paul's been the only good story in this race. His views have turned out to be popular within the Republican Party - and getting more popular by the minute.



Those views are not popular with the Times crowd. But...


http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2012/01/the_times_admits_it_deep-sixed.html

 

[TexasWife25]

Who said the media wasn't purposely dismissing Ron Paul?

 

[Mike_Yates]

Ron Paul is an agent of the Jesuit order.

 

[badbabysitter]

FOX news did it too

are you saying FOX audience and the NY Times readers are the same demographic?

 

[Colonel Hogan]

NY Times finally admits its been deliberately spiking coverage of Ron Paul:

Speaking of poor journalism, it's not at all clear where Brisbane's commentary ends and the criticism of his commentary begins in your C & P.

Just sayin.'

 

[TexasWife25]

You know what

The new york times hasn't had ANY coverage of jaywalking!
http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/275593_o.gif



That's a crime I see people commit all the time!
How dare they cover things like politics, murders and corruption
but completely leave out jaywalking!

 

[CandiCame]

Who?

(Is being serious. Assumes it's someone political or an older actor.)

 

[Mike_Yates]

Jesuits and the black pope.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Speaking of poor journalism, it's not at all clear where Brisbane's commentary ends and the criticism of his commentary begins in your C & P.

Just sayin.'

Once you check out the C&P source-piece, it's worth a click through to the actual Brisbane column(s) to see what he was actually saying. It's not exactly the above, as you've probably guessed.

 

[CandiCame]

Just so everyone knows, I Googled Paul. Not my registered party, so I can't vote in the primaries. Therefore, I don't care.

Carry on.

Also, after having Googled him, I remembered seeing him on the Daily Show. That's his problem right there. He's just not a memorable person.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

Once you check out the C&P source-piece, it's worth a click through to the actual Brisbane column(s) to see what he was actually saying. It's not exactly the above, as you've probably guessed.

Kent Mesplay and Jill Stein are the Green Party presidential candidates for 2012. I wonder how many people here are aware of that, and how many of those that are learned it through the in-depth political coverage of the New York Times?

 

[shoulderblade]

Also, after having Googled him, I remembered seeing him on the Daily Show. That's his problem right there. He's just not a memorable person.

I think you are right on that.

What you want is someone who makes an impact and whom you would like to see more of.

 

[Sonny Limatina]

Kent Mesplay and Jill Stein are the Green Party presidential candidates for 2012. I wonder how many people here are aware of that, and how many of those that are learned it through the in-depth political coverage of the New York Times?

I wasn't. I don't even know who they are. But they're not news. One story in the whole cycle (at most) is all I'd expect on them.

Santorum was polling at -117,000% back in December. He wasn't news either. His surge is news, but it has to happen before it can become news.

Paul...was news. I kind of want to see him get the nomination if for no other reason than to make those who ignored him look like inept clods.

Having said that, the story of him not being a story, is now a story (as Brisbane confirms), so that's out the window too.

GOOP doesn't want Paul. The Times had accomplices, make no mistake.

 

[CandiCame]

I wasn't. I don't even know who they are. But they're not news. One story in the whole cycle (at most) is all I'd expect on them.

Santorum was polling at -117,000% back in December. He wasn't news either. His surge is news, but it has to happen before it can become news.

Paul...was news. I kind of want to see him get the nomination if for no other reason than to make those who ignored him look like inept clods.

Having said that, the story of him not being a story, is now a story (as Brisbane confirms), so that's out the window too.

GOOP doesn't want Paul. The Times had accomplices, make no mistake.

hehe... Santorum...

 

[Colonel Hogan]

I wasn't. I don't even know who they are. But they're not news. One story in the whole cycle (at most) is all I'd expect on them.

Santorum was polling at -117,000% back in December. He wasn't news either. His surge is news, but it has to happen before it can become news.

Paul...was news. I kind of want to see him get the nomination if for no other reason than to make those who ignored him look like inept clods.

Having said that, the story of him not being a story, is now a story (as Brisbane confirms), so that's out the window too.

GOOP doesn't want Paul. The Times had accomplices, make no mistake.

My point (which I didn't make very well) is that 70% of the first third of a non-incumbant party's presidential primary campaigns isn't news at all. It is a boringly choreographed melodrama in which everyone involved plays largely by the script.

Having said that, I contend that the answer to the oft asked question "what is news?" is "whatever the editor says it is." The core of the First Amendment right of freedom of the press is that it first and most obviously belongs to the man who owns one -- a press, that is.

If I misjudge the commercial viability of that which I publish, then I will also exercise my freedom to fail in the marketplace of ideas, but I have no social responsibility to give "equal space" to political candidates in a poor imitation of the FCC's equal time provisions.

Partisan's expectations of media coverage of their favored candidates are among the most skewed and irrational of all public opinions.

 

[Ohiorob]

Journalism is dead in America.

No one is reporting investigated facts and allowing the public to form an opinion.

Times is a joke....like all the rest.

 

[Liar]

Who?

(Is being serious. Assumes it's someone political or an older actor.)

It's sort of both.

 

[MeeMie]

More like New York Pravda

 

[FloridaSmoothie]

The NYT? Who would have thunk it?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

FOX news did it too

are you saying FOX audience and the NY Times readers are the same demographic?

No, but FOX has been deliberately courting moderates and Reagan Democrats by shafting the Tea party and Libertarians in order to increase market share and pick a nice moderate like Dole, Bush or McCain who can beat Obama by playing nice...



We know why the Times does it.

 

[TexasWife25]

No, but FOX has been deliberately courting moderates and Reagan Democrats by shafting the Tea party and Libertarians in order to increase market share and pick a nice moderate like Dole, Bush or McCain who can beat Obama by playing nice...



We know why the Times does it.

Because hes unimportant?

 

[unregistered]