This circular argument is exactly what I don't like about the current primary process. Candidates are declared to be "second-tier" because they aren't brought up much in the media, and then the media ignores them because they're "second-tier"! It becomes a preposterous situation where Republicans allow the mainstream media to decide who in their party is "electable".
Take Duncan Hunter as an example. Almost everyone on FR supports him, or would support him if not for the fact that he's not widely considered "electable". But that's not because his ideas are worse than Rudy's or McCain's. It's because the media pimps Rudy and McCain, so the people who don't pay much attention to anything but sound bites think Rudy or McCain are their Republican choices, so in the polls the people who haven't heard any other names pick someone like that. The media takes that as their cue to continue to ignore the other candidates whose politics would be more aligned with their base, but who get ignored, get low poll numbers because of it, and continue to get ignored based on those poll numbers.
Whether you love or hate Ron Paul, his supporters' strategy of coming out in force to win various online and real-life polls (a strategy borrowed from Freepers, BTW) is a smart one. It becomes increasingly hard to ignore the so-called "second tier" when one such candidate keeps winning the media's own polls. The media has resorted to deriding their own polls; they may very well be correct that their polls are being "freeped" by Ron Paul supporters, but in doing so they make their own bias so obvious that hopefully people will start to judge candidates by their ideas rather than by who the media tells them is the most popular.
I'd call it despicable. We never tried to influence a presidential primary campaign.
This is a serious issue not some American Idol contest!
Ron Paul should be kicked out of the Republican Party.
In the case of this “study”, what you say is true.
And probably in what passes for political “coverage” you are also correct.
But there is also real “news” stories, and to some degree those are controlled by the candidates, not the media. The candidates can make news, they can get out and do things that can’t be ignored.
A guy in our local PWC republican committee, kind of a shoot-from-the-hip gossipper most of the time, has appeared on the national TV shows more than Duncan Hunter lately, all because he formed an organization to fight illegal immigration, and then worked his butt off to get the word out.
He actually is a supporter of Tom Tancredo, but Hunter’s position on the issues is also stellar. But Hunter isn’t really mentioned much in the discussions about illegal immigrants that happen surrounding this local group, while Tancredo is mentioned sometimes.
I’m a believer that to some degree you can make your own hype. Frankly, the media has been trying to ignore Romney as well, and the reason it’s Rudy/McCain/Romney and not just Rudy/McCain is that Romney refused to be pushed into the 2nd-tier category. He also had money, which helped.