Is the Media Trying to Hurt Ron Paul?It is time to call out the media on their inaccurate and misleading reporting. No longer can or should we as Americans allow this kind of blatant bias to be plastered all over. It hurts us as a country, it hurts us individually, it hurts us as a people. The news used to be run by people that you could trust. You could at least trust that they had, to the best of their knowledge, checked out a story for accuracy before running it. You could trust that they wouldn't outright lie to you. We need a believable fourth estate. Without an honest media we can no longer live in a free country. If the news is going to lie to you or manipulate you about one thing, you can be sure they will be lying about another.
We are starting to live in an age where the bloggers on the Internet have more credibility than the official news teams you see blasting on your television set at night. It becomes very dangerous when we are misled. We trust the news to tell us the truth, if they don't, then we have no idea what is going on in the world. We become confused. We enter a zone where we don't know what to believe. If you are constantly bombarded with false images, then your view of the world becomes false. Therein lies the real danger. Once the people have a distorted view of reality they are easily manipulated. We are being told all day long that the world is a terrifying place to live and we as a people end up being happy to give away our liberties in order to get some safety. As Benjamin Franklin said, those that would give up liberty for safety deserve neither. Well, we are well on our way to getting neither.
As Ron Paul begins to do better in the campaign, the attacks against him are going to get stronger and stronger. A few days ago, it turned out that a person sent spam with Ron Paul's name on it, supposedly touting Ron Paul as the guy to vote for. The paper that wrote it ended up printing a retraction because Dr. Paul's campaign had nothing to do with it.
Now, a local NBC station is doing the same sort of thing. KXAN.com news out of Austin, Texas ran an article today with the nasty headline "Identity thieves contribute to Ron Paul Presidential Fund." Keep in mind that a large majority of people only read headlines as they skim through the news. Ok, now before you look at the article. Think about that headline for a second. What do you think happened? Do you think that thieves are making contributions to Ron Paul? Do you think that a lot of the cash he is getting he is getting illegally? Do you think that Ron Paul may not be doing well at all, is he only doing well because thieves are stealing people's money to donate to the campaign. You did hear that he raised over 5 million dollars last quarter. I guess you now have to wonder how much of that money came from thieves? Right? Or perhaps you came up with your own negative image? How many of you think that this is a positive story about Ron Paul?
Ok, so here is what did happen. Some thieves stole a bunch of credit card numbers. They wanted to see if the cards were active. In order to check to see if they were good, they looked for a website to test them out on. They picked the Ron Paul campaign. They took the card numbers and donated five dollars on each as a test. If the donation went through, then they knew that card was good. Then they tried another number and another. This is a known tactic of thieves and happens on many other websites including other presidential campaigns as KXAN reports.
The Ron Paul campaign said they discovered these odd donations over the past few days. They are now working with the banks to get all of the stolen money back to its rightful owners. So, instead of a headline like: "Ron Paul campaign thwarts thieves" also a titillating headline that would have drawn many to their website if that is their excuse, we get the misleading one that implies somehow that Ron Paul did something wrong or the campaign is only doing well because thieves are giving them a great deal of money. That story also showed up on Google news with that ugly headline. Since many people don't read past the headline I can only guess the amount of damage that has been caused to Dr. Paul.
The entire article (ok, now I will link to it) was actually about credit card theft and identity theft and how you have to be vigilant in protecting yourself. But you sure wouldn't know it from reading the headline.
I for one am sick of this! I am not going to take it anymore. I think it high time that we as Americans demand that our news tell us the truth without twisting it into something unrecognizable. I will be calling the station to complain about this and from now on, every article I see that is blatantly manipulating the truth. Perhaps if they get enough angry callers, they will stop their shenanigans. I also suggest that people boycott any station they discover has been anything less than 100% honest. I mean, really, what is the point of watching or reading a bunch of half truths and biases and manipulations? I don't want to be manipulated. Do you? The world is confusing enough without being outright misled. I don't have the time to personally check every story to see which ones are accurate.
Now, technically, KXAN.com did not lie. I am not saying that they did. I am saying that their headline was misleading and hurt the Ron Paul campaign, a man who is running for President of the United States, hurt the U.S. people by possibly turning them off to what could be a wonderful President, and that their headline had very little to do with the content of the story. Their headline was pure sensationalism and then they put the Ron Paul website picture directly on top of a picture of the victim of identity theft - implying guilt by association perhaps? In all honesty, the story had almost nothing to do with Ron Paul. It is as if a drug dealer stole money and deposited it in a bank and the headline appeared: Bank of X uses money from drug dealers to finance mortgages. Technically that headline would be true as banks use deposits as part of the financing for loans to other customers, but it would hardly be fair to Bank X or their customers.
Update: After numerous calls to the station that began within two hours of the headline's appearance, the headline has remained in place now for over 36 hours doing untold damage to the Ron Paul campaign.
A follow up to this story:
A friend of mind called them and she lives in Austin, and after three days of promising to change the title, they have decided to give us the finger.
When I called the snotty girl who answered the phone snickered at me and said, "you aren't even in our viewership area". I snapped "where do think I am reading this? In Austin? Do you not know what a website is and who your viewership area is for your webpage?"
These are some really rotten folks.
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Jennifer Reynolds, Gambling911.com
Originally published November 4, 2007 10:08 pm ET
