Supposer there was a race between a group of people.

Now further suppose this. Every time one runner gets incrementally ahead of the other runners, he is given help of some sort. That is imagine that as a runner or runners get out ahead, they are given outside boosts to push them even further ahead. And imagine this, those runners who are behind are penalized by being held back a little bit so they get even farther behind.

That’s often how it feels to me when I watch the Republican debates. Ron Paul is getting less time in these debates than he was when there were even more people in the contest. The justification is that he is behind so he doesn’t deserve as much time as the others.

Thanks to the Internet this might not be holding Ron Paul back, but it’s certainly unfair.

The reasoning for this goes something like this, well we all know the two front runners are Romney and McCain with Huckabee a little bit farther behind and Ron Paul a distant last. So we as the media need to inform people about only the winners with a real chance, so let’s not waste too much time on hopeless causes like Ron Paul. We need to focus only on candidates who can win so people can learn about them.

But the reality here is this. The media is making a claim: Ron Paul can’t win. Then, based on this claim, they are setting into course a series of events that will help make the claim even more true. How can that be fair?

The media is not only reporting the news, it is inadvertently creating the news.

Look at this recent story as reported over at gamepolitics.com:

As GamePolitics has noted, Yahoo! Games issued a summary this week detailing its view of where the top three candidates from both parties stand on video game issues. Left out of the Republican mix was Ron Paul. Yahoo! instead rated John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, who are, in fairness, the leading vote-getters at this point in the primary cycle.

See, there’s that argument creeping up. “in fairness, the leading vote-getters at this pointing the primary cycle.”

What’s fair about that? Just the opposite argument could be made. As non-mainstream candidates have a hard time getting their message out, the media should emphasize them over mainstream candidates in order to give them a fair hearing.

Maybe there are several people out there interested in a particular issue, who haven’t had a chance to hear what Ron Paul has to say. Maybe if the media went out of its way to make sure people could hear this message, people might decide they like it.

Look at it like this, if the media’s job is to inform people with useful information, then emphasizing lesser known candidates that the average person is not so aware of would be the thing to do. What people need to know about are options available they hadn’t previously been aware of. That’s real news. One could argue that in a debate the media should actually give more time to lesser known candidates to make sure everyone understood all the options available. Instead, they just hit people over the heads with what they already know. These are the leading candidates, these are the leading candidates, these are the leading candidates. That’s news? That’s useful?

Ultimately though, if the media actually did what I suggested, and a lesser known candidate then began to take the lead, the previously leading candidates would say they had been cheated. Media bias and so on.

Hm. So what’s to be done. Hey, I’ve got it. Here’s a really novel idea that perhaps no one has ever though of before. Treat all candidates equally.

Gasp. Let’s say that again.

Treat all candidates equally. I mean, they’ve all done what it took to qualify. Let’s save the polling for the … well for the polls. Let’s not have the TV call the election before it’s been done. I mean, isn’t that a bit much? Do we really trust the media that much?

What a concept, what an idea. Treat the candidates equally — now why is it so hard for the media to do this?

I’ll have to save the rest of my thoughts on this for another day.

For now, let me just say, let’s be grateful for the Internet.