Ron Paul
Ron Paul spoke briefly on CNN live news about the NDAA for a few moments before the network cut back to a studio anchor. Reuters

Did CNN cut off a Ron Paul speech because he was discussing the controversial National Defense Authorization Act?

Paul supporters and other campaign-watchers have been debating whether or not he was censored Monday by the national news network when it stopped airing remarks by the GOP presidential candidate as he went into a discussion of the NDAA, which President Barack Obama signed into law on New Year's Eve.

A live-news segment on CNN Monday morning aired five minutes of a Paul stump speech in Des Moines, Iowa, during which the Texas congressman discussed a range of topics. But the network cut back to the studio shortly after he began to discuss the NDAA, though he was able to get a couple sentences off about the topic before the switch.

We certainly don't need to be moving on to the next stage, which is happening right now. Last week or two weeks ago it was passed, and then just recently signed by the president, authorizing the military to arrest American citizens, and allowing American citizens--for citizens to be held indefinitely. That is the wrong direction. We need to reverse that direction. But we have to--we have to answer the question properly, what is the proper role? Stay out of...

That was where his remarks ended during the Monday segment. There are two schools of thought regarding why CNN cut his off at that point.

Many people believe that CNN was simply adhering to network time constraints and that it was just chance that Paul was discussing the NDAA when the camera cut back to a studio news anchor.

That's a 5-minute piece, said Reddit user DV1312 on a forum discussing the issue. They have timetables to follow at CNN. Unless there's something remarkable happening in whatever life [sic] feed they're airing, the [sic] won't change their schedule.

But some observers allege that CNN was censoring Paul's remarks because he chose to draw awareness to the indefinite detention provisions in the NDAA.

Do you really expect any mega corp that owns the media to allow a elected politician who is running for a higher office, to mouth off against laws they pushed for? Redditer DongleNocker asked.

A previous boondoggle ignited Paul supporters' fury after he spoke on CNN about Jim Crow laws and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paul said that he supported the abolition of Jim Crow laws, but supporters argued that he was later misquoted by MSNBC, which said he did not support their abolition.