Various groups affiliated with Ron Paul announced on Sunday the former congressman and presidential candidate’s latest post-retirement venture, The Ron Paul Channel — a subscription-only channel set to launch this summer.
The new channel, whose slogan is “Turn Off Your TV. Turn On the Truth”, features a promotional video filled with Ron Paul clips, and says it will be “an innovative, new, interactive channel from America’s visionary voice of liberty.”
More details were revealed by Paul on Monday morning in an interview with libertarian scholar Thomas Woods.
The former congressman from Texas described how the idea to launch a new media channel came to him,: “I was at a debate one time, a couple years ago, where I didn’t think I got a fair shake. In a two hour debate, I had 89 seconds. I thought, maybe there’s something wrong with the media. Maybe they’re not covering us fairly. I’m just using it as a pun, but there’s a bit of truth to this. We don’t get a fair shake. The people who believe in liberty and limited government, don’t expect it from the ordinary media.”
Paul also said he wants to report on news that the mainstream knows but hides; positive programming highlighting successes for liberty; and experts to provide live, liberty-oriented perspectives on the breaking news of the day.
In terms of topics he wants to cover, Paul said, “I want to keep up very much with foreign policy and the wars going on, economics, the marketplace, the Federal Reserve. And then again, the great concern that people are experiencing now with the destruction of our privacy and the destruction of our civil liberties.”
Additionally, Paul sees the Internet as the best way to reach people — especially the younger generation which supported his campaigns so vigorously.
“The young people use the Internet and hand-held devices. They don’t sit and watch TV and turn the programs on at 7:00 and watch or anything like that. So I thought the technology was there, the country is ripe for the continuation of this revolution… where we can do it on a routine basis, on the Internet, and have a very, very well-designed program to bring as many people as we can together to promote these views that are being totally ignored either by our government or our professors.”
Some details about the channel, however, are still unclear at the moment.
For instance, the promotional video says the channel will be featured on televisions as well as computers, tablets and smartphones, while Ron Paul himself seems to indicate the channel will be Internet-only. In addition, there have been no indications so far of who is involved with the channel, besides Paul himself.
The former Republican and Libertarian wants his new channel to go across party lines and build pro-liberty coalitions, saying he wants to “revive some of the coalitions to be anti-war. That was supposed to be a liberal idea. You know, progressives are supposed to be against war, but where are they now with Obama?”
The channel is the most recent project for a busy post-retirement Paul who recently launched The Ron Paul Institute, a new think-tank “for peace and prosperity.”
The Ron Paul Channel is set to launch officially in the first part of August.