Web 2.0 vs ABC and CNN

I find it ironic that western news often complains about censorship in Chinese media, at least the Chinese are straight forward about it. In America, you don't get censored, you get ignored or manipulated. Which is worse? You tell me.

As of this moment the two most popular candidates making their rounds on the internet are Ron Paul (Republican) and Mike Gavel (Democrat) as a result from their excellent showing at their respective presidential debates. Unfortunately, it seems that because they aren't the main-stream media's favorite candidates, they have been getting less than fair treatment for reasons beyond me.

Ron Paul has been doing exceptionally well on the internet, thanks to sites like youtube hosting clips of him in action at the presidential debates. Though I have not watched much of the other candidate's performance at the debates, what I have seen so far pales compares to the brutal honesty and truthfulness of Ron Paul's comments. If you have not seen this man in action, I recommend that you watch one of his debates. There is plenty more material of him at youtube and I also highly recommend that you watch some of his other debates.

As a result of Ron Paul's excellent showing at the debates, Ron Paul's website has been fielding the most internet traffic to his website according to alexa, an internet traffic tracking page, as the figure below indicates (data current as of June 6th).

Despite his strong showing at the debates and the internet, the traditional media-sites such as CNN and ABC news have been actively trying to limit his success by deleting comments relating to Ron Paul on their websites. In addition to this, a CNN political blog is attempting to downplay his successes in online polls which have been hosted at CNN, ABC and a variety of other sites by mentioning that

"For the three GOP debates so far, Paul has won or placed high in most of the unscientific online surveys including ABC’s, MSNBC’s, FOX’s, and unscientific polls conducted on a number of blogs...

In virtually every scientific national poll — generally regarded as the best measurement of public support for a political candidate — Paul registers, at most, between 1 and 2 percent. Do the debate numbers reflect something different than the national polls? Is it too early to tell?"- CNN Political Ticker Blog

This is the first time I have ever heard the term of an "unscientific online survey" versus a "scientific national poll," it makes me wonder how is an online survey not national or how a national poll is more scientific. In so far as that I am aware, these sites have never mentioned the "unscientificness" of these poll until this circumstance and online polls on other topics are often included in television broadcasts. The slant these websites present to the news and the candidates that they subliminally support is disturbing.

Mike Gravel, the Democratic presidential candidate has been facing similar issues with the media. After his good showing at the first Democratic debate (I also recommend watching his debate videos), he too also had a surge of traffic and publicity on the internet in May. CNN attempted to exclude Gravel from the debate which caused an online uproar and various online petitions to finally have him included in the New Hampshire debate hosted on June 3rd. Despite this, Gravel was shafted for debate and answering time from the 2 hour debate as indicated in the following graph.

I would find it rather suspicious that CNN is giving the most time to the tier 1 candidates instead of allowing all other candidates to have a equal amount of speaking time. It should be evidently clear about the bias and the control that the media on information and presidential candidates.

Fortunately, for us, we do have the internet, where the dissemination of information is not centralized and open to everyone that has an opinion to make it heard. It cannot be as easily filtered like the news that we see on TV. Despite all the filtering, video clips of Ron Paul and Mike Gravel have been making the rounds on the internet thanks to youtube and other video hosting sites, in addition to all the user aggregated news sites and blogs.

It is ironic to think that, the internet is far more democratic than the traditional democratic process. This is web 2.0, run by the people... and I believe, that this is the future of democracy.