So I put out a little hype about the December 16th Tea Party fundraiser, engineered fully by the grassroots supporters of Dr. Ronald Earnest Paul. I just wanted to reflect on its success.

The single-day fundraiser broke the ALL-TIME RECORD for a single day fundraiser for a political election with just over $6.0 million in a single 24-hour period. This massive haul broke the previous record of $5.7 million set by John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election.

The number of individual donors exceeded 59,000 people, a massive swell of coordinated individual support. This for a candidate who is generally ignored by the old media (TV, radio, newspapers). This group was coordinated totally via online and word of mouth methodologies. Over 24,000 of these donors were first time donors to the Ron Paul presidential campaign, marking great growth in the donor-base.

This boost has allowed for some nice coverage in the traditional media, but in my mind, the story is underreported. This should be a huge story. A dark horse candidate, with little old media coverage, surging to the all-time record for a single-day donation, spurred wholly by spontaneous grassroots support! To me, this is a huge story! But, for the most part, the big media sits on its hands. Whether this is by design, or out of ignorance is anybody’s guess, but either way, it reflects poorly on the old media outlets.

In college, I studied media as a large part of my major (communication) and I have been an ardent observer of media trends and general activity for years. At the current juncture, I believe the old media has become so boxed in in support of the status quo, that they are unwilling to stick their necks out even one inch, regardless of how rotten the status quo gets. In my mind, the old media is rapidly losing relevance and trust, and they are further sinking their own ship by failing to keep pace with the movement towards individually-tailored and honest, open media.

The old paradigm is rapidly being eroded by shoddy journalism, lack of awareness, lack of diligent honesty and an unwillingness to question the status quo on any basis. The questionable coverage on the part of this huge Ron Paul fundraising story is just one further example.

So, for those of you out there, take the time to be a diligent, self-educated individual and don’t be a big-media sheep/lemming. What they are feeding the people is just crap. A good anology would be eating McDonald’s as your staple diet. Pretty soon you will rot away. Take the same care in relation to your interaction with the news media. Not so much of the mainstream junk…

Cheers!

Kemp

Filed under: Politics, Social Mood, Entertainment