BuzzFeed Declares Paul Ryan A ‘Champion Of The Poor,’ Offers No Supporting Evidence

[TomCADem]

You just have to love the media's new found embrace of sponsored content, which allows paid propaganda campaigns to be disguised as news. Publish a story, then use services like Taboola to push the content onto other news sites so that they are "recommended" to you. Likewise, you have Buzzfeed leading with stories without any type of authentication.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/12/20/3094291/buzzfeed-paul-ryan-god/

If your only recent impressions of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) came from BuzzFeed, you’d be inclined to think that the former vice presidential candidate has made a major shift in policy to start focusing on poverty in the United States. You would be wrong.

On Friday, BuzzFeed ran a glowing profile of Ryan, entitled “Paul Ryan Finds God,” that portrayed him as a man who was inspired by religion and the ascendancy of a new pope to become a caretaker for the nation’s poor. But the piece, similar to another article that ran in the Washington Post last month, offered up no substance to show that Ryan’s policies have changed or that his religious outlook is any different than it was during the 2012 campaign. Rather, it relied on quotes from Paul Ryan’s own supporters — former campaign staffers and members of President George W. Bush’s cabinet — to demonstrate that Ryan has shifted his focus.

Media reports have long treated Ryan as a straight-talker willing to speak bluntly even to his political detriment. BuzzFeed’s piece — which characterizes Ryan as someone sneaking around to serve the poor via covert speeches and donations of neckties to schoolchildren — was no exception. Focusing extensively on Ryan’s new effort to cast himself as a poverty crusader with a new anti-poverty plan whose details are not yet known, the article gave a brief nod to the “skeptics” who believe these showings are a “savvy move in a self-interested rebranding effort,” then promptly summarized the speeches and tie-sendings as part of Ryan’s effort to “lead the restoration of compassionate conservatism with a heartfelt mission to the poor.”

One of the reasons Ryan has apparently had a “spiritual epiphany” to care about the poor, as the BuzzFeed piece tells it, is because of the new pope, Francis. The piece quotes several Republicans who say Ryan is inspired by the church and by Francis. But Ryan’s on the record quotes about the pope — who has vocally denounced the idea of trickle-down economics that Ryan and the GOP endorse as “a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power” — tell a different story. Ryan subtly disparaged the pope earlier this year, saying that he doesn’t understand real capitalism because, “The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in Argentina… They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don’t have a true free enterprise system.”

[madamesilverspurs]

1. Pssssst, BuzzFeed . . .

Making more poor people hardly makes you their champion. Higher numbers, in this case, are a losing score.

[Squinch]

2. Now, be accurate: he's a marathon winning champion of the poor!

And I am the queen of Lichtenstein!

I am totally serious!

[csziggy]

6. Ryan's a champion at creating MORE poor people!

He seems to even better at it than the average Republican.

[madrchsod]

3. shocking! it is just shocking!

i`m thinking the buzz is trolling for controversy to boost it`s comments section.

there`s a lot of competition for benjamins in the elite under 100 in the alexa traffic rank.

[lame54]

4. That's because he does their dishes...

[LeftofObama]

5. I saw that article and I thought

WTF, Buzzfeed! When did you become so right wing?