"In the end, what all this means is that the Republican Party is going to nominate yet another "establishment candidate" for president and we will be faced with the "lesser of two evils" once again in November 2012."

Mathematical Proof Of Dramatic Media Bias And Favoritism During The Republican Debates

It should be evident to anyone with half a brain that the recent Republican presidential debates have been incredibly slanted in favor of certain candidates. The candidates that the mainstream media favor are receiving far more talking time than the other candidates during the debates. It is hard to defend the legitimacy of our political system after watching what a farce the race for the Republican nomination has become. First, the major news networks dedicate thousands of hours of "programming" to telling us that candidates such as Mitt Romney and Rick Perry are "top tier" and that nobody else has a legitimate chance. Then, once the poll numbers are skewed by that relentless coverage, they use those polls to justify giving the "favored candidates" more questions during the debates. The funny thing is that even if support for a favored candidate drops off dramatically (such as with Rick Perry), that candidate will still be given extra time during the debates. What you are about to see is mathematical proof of dramatic media bias and favoritism during the Republican debates. After reading this information, it will be hard to keep believing that our political system is fair.

It seems like the bigger the media outlet, the worse the bias and the favoritism becomes. For example, the Republican debate on CBS the other night was a total sham. During the nationally televised portion of the debate, Rick Perry got more than five times as much talking time as Ron Paul did.

The funny thing is that according to Real Clear Politics, Rick Perry and Ron Paul are nearly tied in national polls. As I write this, Rick Perry is averaging 9.8 percent in national polls and Ron Paul is averaging 8.2 percent. You would think that both candidates should be treated at least somewhat equally.

But instead, favored candidates such as Mitt Romney and Rick Perry were given huge amounts of talking time during the CBS debate and candidates that the mainstream media has disdain for such as Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann were virtually ignored.

The following is how one blog broke down the talking time for the Republican debate on CBS on Saturday night....

Rick Perry 7:45

Mitt Romney 6:30

Newt Gingrich 6:00

Herman Cain 5:45

Rick Santorum 5:15

Jon Huntsman 3:30

Michele Bachmann 3:15

Ron Paul 1:30

Does that look fair to you?

Even the candidates on the very bottom of the national polls were given more time than Paul and Bachmann. Rick Santorum is averaging 1.5 percent in national polls and John Huntsman is averaging 1.0 percent in national polls. Yet both of them were given more time than Bachmann and both of them were given more than twice as much time as Ron Paul.

Look, if they are going to distribute questions based on polling data, then they should at least be consistent about it.

The fair way to do it would be to ask all of the candidates an equal number of questions. That way each candidate would have an equal opportunity to present his or her case to the American people.

But instead, we have a system that greatly favors certain candidates over others.

The following is a statistical average of the talking time during the six major Republican debates there have been hosted by CBS, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and CNBC during the months of September, October and November. The raw data for this analysis was originally compiled by We Occupy The Web and Wes Hemings. Jon Huntsman only has data for five debates because he boycotted one. As you can see, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have received much, much more talking time during the debates than the other candidates, and Ron Paul has gotten the least talking time of all....

Mitt Romney (6:30 15:11 14:47 12:09 10:56 11:57) - 11.91 minutes

Rick Perry (7:45 11:01 07:25 11:10 13:54 14:59) - 11.03 minutes

Michele Bachmann (3:15 09:58 06:50 6:13 8:35 9:05) - 7.32 minutes

Newt Gingrich (6:00 07:53 09:10 5:44 7:32 6:53) - 7.20 minutes

Jon Huntsman (3:30 07:54 7:41 7:50 8:52) - 7.16 minutes

Herman Cain (5:45 09:06 08:23 6:23 5:42 5:41) - 6.83 minutes

Rick Santorum (5:15 09:50 05:25 7:06 7:06 6:11) - 6.81 minutes

Ron Paul (1:30 10:05 07:27 4:33 7:34 9:19) - 6.75 minutes

So why is Ron Paul on the bottom of this list?

Is it because he has been on the bottom of the national polls?

No, the truth is that he has been bouncing around between 3rd place and 6th place in national polls. If his talking time truly reflected his poll numbers then he should be somewhere in the middle of the pack.

How can we explain this discrepancy?

Well, the reality is that the big networks have their "favorites" and the other candidates are going to be ignored as much as they can.

On Saturday, proof of this was revealed to the world.

An internal CBS News email got accidentally sent to an official with the Bachmann campaign on Saturday. It was an email that contained a discussion between CBS News senior producer Caroline Horn and CBS News political director John Dickerson about Michele Bachmann.

In the email chain which is reproduced below, Horn mentioned that there was a possibility that Dickerson may be able to interview Bachmann following the debate....

“I was just speaking with Alice Stewart, cc’d here, about the Congresswoman or a senior member of her staff joining you for the webshow.”
In response, Dickerson made the following very revealing statement....

“Okay let’s keep it loose since she’s not going to get many questions and she’s nearly off the charts in the hopes that we can get someone else”
The communications director for Bachmann's campaign, Alice Stewart, believes that this email shows that there was a "planned effort to limit questions to Michele Bachmann at tonight’s CBS / National Journal Debate."

You can read this shocking email for yourself below....



Now, whether you plan to vote for Michele Bachmann or not, the reality is that all of us should want a process that is fair and balanced and that gives the American people a legitimate opportunity to decide for themselves who they want the Republican nominee to be.

But instead, the mainstream media relentlessly pushes some candidates in front of us at the expense of others.

Why in the world should CBS News give Rick Perry more than twice as much talking time as Michele Bachmann and more than five times as much talking time as Ron Paul?

Support for Perry is dropping like a rock. A brand new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey shows that support for Rick Perry has dropped to four percent in recent days.

CBS News should be absolutely ashamed of how they handled that debate.

Needless to say, the Paul campaign and the Bachmann campaign are quite steamed today.

Ron Paul campaign manager John Tate has written the following about the lack of time Ron Paul was given during the CBS News debate....

90 seconds.

That's how much of the first hour of tonight's GOP debate was given to Ron Paul. 90 measly seconds out of 3,600 seconds.

The remaining 3,510 seconds were spent with the other major candidates:

** Declaring their desire to start wars in Iran, Pakistan, and Syria;

** Rehashing their support for torture;

** Agreeing that President Obama has the right to unilaterally assassinate an American citizen without a court conviction;

** Explaining their plans to continue nation-building, policing, and occupying countries across the globe.
Whether you agree with Ron Paul or not, the truth is that you should at least want him to get a fair shake. Tate said that he actually felt sick as he watched the blatant favoritism during the debate....

It literally made me sick watching the mainstream media once again silence the one sane voice in this election.
But if you can believe it, the mainstream media does not even acknowledge that there is a problem with bias and favoritism.

Just check out what CBS News had to say about Ron Paul's debate performance....

The polls suggest Paul's brand of hardcore libertarianism has a limited appeal with GOP primary voters, and he remains a serious longshot for the Republican presidential nomination. But his goal is also to get his ideas into the public sphere, and on that front this debate was an unqualified success for him.
What in the world?

First, notice that they are once again reinforcing the notion that he is a "longshot" to win the nomination. Secondly, they actually have the gall to claim that the debate was an "unqualified success" as far as getting "his ideas into the public sphere" when they only gave him 90 seconds to speak.

What a joke.

It has been shameful how much bias and favoritism there has been by the media during this campaign already.

Time after time, the mainstream media has been caught taking down online polls if the "right candidate" is not winning. You can see one example of this phenomenon documented right here.

Not only that, the truth is that the mainstream media devotes far, far more coverage to the candidates that they like than they do to the candidates that they do not like.

For example, one scientific study found that between May 2, 2011 and October 9, 2011 Ron Paul received the least news coverage of any of the Republican candidates that are running for president.

In the end, what all this means is that the Republican Party is going to nominate yet another "establishment candidate" for president and we will be faced with the "lesser of two evils" once again in November 2012.

At best, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Perry are political moderates with deep, deep ties to the establishment. Mitt Romney is so liberal and has such deep ties to the establishment that it is truly remarkable that the American people are not able to recognize him for what he really is.

If anyone out there actually believes that things will be much different if one of these "establishment candidates" is elected in 2012, they are seriously deluded.

The reality is that not much changed when Barack Obama took over for George W. Bush. And not much will change if one of the "top tier" Republican candidates takes over for Barack Obama.

The American people keep sending new faces to Washington D.C., but they keep on getting the same results over and over and over.

It is time to wake up and realize that these "establishment politicians" are leading this country straight down the toilet.

Link:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/mathematical-proof-of-dramatic-media-bias-and-favoritism-during-the-republican-debates