The latest Reuters Running Poll shows Donald Trump extending his overall lead significantly over the field of candidates. Ben Carson remains second, and Marco Rubio is in third place with 10%:
![( POLL DATA )](https://6b8e213852.nxcli.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/presidential-candidates-reuters-ipsos-11-13-15.jpg)
In addition to polling, there is another aspect that needs to be discussed regarding espoused views of “conservative media”. Everyone should pay attention to the Super-PAC spending, and campaign spending, as it relates to opinions that ultimately come from those media entities.
There is massive campaign spending taking place particularly amid talk radio formats (Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, and Salem Media Networks as examples), it is disingenuous in the extreme not to notice the espoused views from punditry are impacted by the financial benefits afforded them via campaign, and special interest, ad revenues.
They are not going to cut off their nose and spite their pocketbooks. Period.
Earlier today we highlighted how Fox News specifically modified their broadcast and punditry coverage to facilitate the selling of a specific agenda regarding immigration. Fox broadcasting does not hold a monopoly at broadcasting messages based on their own vested-financial-interests.
Example:
$350,000 for ads on the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity national talk radio shows. Those early ads played a critical role in giving credibility to the candidacy of Dr. Carson and in persuading Dr. Carson to run. (link)
In addition to vested financial interests – there are ideological interests embedded within the corporate media networks and everything coming from punditry and employees within that media entity are bound to espouse an aligning view.
Never confuse the overlay of media news/current events, with modern corporate media political ideology. Ted Turner did not start CNN just to broadcast current events, he was creating a media platform.
Evolution of this approach extends beyond broadcast into social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. When you engage on those platforms you are engaging with a venue controlled by a set of ‘filters’ and objectives you may or may not agree with.
Various media platforms have ideologies behind them. The intersection of politics with that platform creates the influence – hence, Facebook Mark Zuckerburg and the left-wing social media machine.
Controlling information, controlling the platform, especially in conjunction with corporate political interests, is an ever increasing quest for those who need to influence opinion in order to advance their collective goals.
Sometimes those goals are purely political:
Sometimes those collective goals have a specific motive and intent:
![Candidate Jeb Bush attends Chamber of Commerce dinner with Fox's Rupert Murdoch and Valerie Jarrett (December 2014)](https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/grubering-us-bush-murdoch-jarrett.jpg)
…But the bottom line is all of the participants have a vested interest in influencing our opinions, and, as a consequence, our actions:
Stuart W. Epperson – Chairman of the Board – A High-Fidelity Messenger – Long before Rush Limbaugh proved that radio listeners would flock to unapologetically opinionated chat, 10-year-old Stuart Epperson was reading Bible verses from a radio station his brother built in their family’s Virginia farmhouse. By age 36, Epperson had bought an AM station in Roanoke, Va., that would be the beginning of a religious and political broadcasting powerhouse.
Salem Communications, the company Epperson, now 69, later founded with his brother-in-law Edward Atsinger, owns 104 radio stations in 24 of the top 25 U.S. markets and reaches an estimated 5 million listeners a week. The broadcaster’s stations offer Christian music and teaching, as well as conservative talk shows that engage listeners not just to consider hot-button issues like abortion and stem-cell research but also to weigh in with letter-writing campaigns and phone calls to politicians. (Time Magazine 2005 Profile link)
This is why it is important to see how challenging it is for any American Patriot, as a candidate, to break through the concentric walls of special interest and get their genuine message to the electorate.