The Looking Glass

Media Coverage in the Presidential Election

On October 15th, 2008 the third and final debate between Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican Candidate John McCain took place at Hofstra University in New York. My entire freshman seminar class gathered to watch the debate at the University of Minnesota. We watched the debate on a large projection screen in Wimbley Hall. The point of all of this was to observe people as the debate was taking place and try to sense a certain feeling in the room. Our class was joined by only a handful of other people, so our experience didn’t turn out as we thought it would. I wrote a brief paragraph on what I thought were the main points of the debate were before I was told by news stations such as CNN or FoxNews what was important in the debate. Media coverage influences voters by putting the most important issues, according to them, on the forefront of shows like “The O’Reilly Factor” or “Larry King Live.” The different news stations focus on only issues that they choose to cover or what they believe is newsworthy.
When I sat down and decided what the most important issues were I concluded that the economy was the most important. The state of our economy is the worst that it has been since the Great Depression. That night, the DOW Jones Industrial fell almost 800 points, which is the second biggest fall in a single day, and neither candidate mentioned the stock market demise. Almost everyone will agree with me by saying that the economy needs to be improved in the next term. The candidates debated on only the main topics in the hour and a half that was provided. Most of the topics ended up coming back to either the economy or Joe the Plumber. Both McCain and Obama failed to answer questions completely. For example Obama and McCain were both asked where they would cut funding if they were elected into office, and both responded by saying what The United States needed to spend more on to solve other problems. At the beginning of the debate, I felt that McCain went on the offensive and pressed Obama about raising taxes and affiliations to Bill Ayers and ACORN. I thought the debate was somewhat childish, but in my opinion it helped McCain win his first of three debates. McCain was sharp, crisp, and had a great game plan to alienate Obama. The only flaw in McCain’s tactics was the reference to Joe the Plumber which became sickening by the end of the debate. After my reaction to the debate I wanted to see what the media had to say about the debate.
On “The O’Reilly Factor,” Bill O’Reilly discussed the economy for almost a full three minutes to open his show on the day after the debate. O’Reilly is sometimes criticized for being biased toward the Republican side when his show is suppose to be unbiased. O’Reilly says that “every hard working American lost the debate last night. Neither of the candidates addressed the collapse of our financial system.” O’Reilly frequently took shots at Barack Obama’s economic plan by saying it will put America more into debt by instituting government sponsored healthcare, 150 billion dollars for the energy crisis, 70 billion dollars for tax rebates, and another 18 billion for education. O’Reilly then explains, “If I were John McCain I would have bolted out of my chair and said ‘are you kidding me? Who is going to pay for all of that?’” Later in the show, O’Reilly explains that if Obama raises corporate taxes then they will raise prices, move to Bermuda, or fire workers. He even went as far as to say that Barack Obama’s economic plan is “insane.” “If John McCain were even half as mad as I am right now, he’d be President,” said O’Reilly at the end of his program.
On the homepage of the CNN website there is an advertisement for Barack Obama on the right side. It is a picture of him smiling and then white words rolling across the screen that say, “Help elect Barack Obama for president. Visit the official Barack Obama website now.” I know that anybody can buy an advertisement but it still seems that CNN has a bias toward Barack Obama, so by having an Obama advertisement rather than McCain it adds to the skepticism of CNN’s bias. A story on CNN news says that the candidates clashed over taxes, healthcare, abortion and issue number one: the economy. “However, McCain’s message did not resonate with a majority of the debate watchers surveyed by CNN, who said Obama would better handle the financial crisis, 56 percent to 35 percent.” Another article on the CNN website says McCain won in two categories. Eighty percent of debate watchers polled said, “McCain spent more time attacking his opponent,” while only seven percent said Obama spent more time on the attack. Fifty-four percent said, “McCain seemed more like a typical politician during the debate.” The reason the economy is the number one issue is that America is in such a large amount of debt and we are experiencing a recession at the same time. Every American wants change to happen quickly, but both candidates know that this recession will take more time than everyone expects.
The second most important issue to me in the debate was education. Education received little if any media coverage. The United States spends more per capita than any other country on education. By every international measurement, The United States trails most countries. College affordability for all students is another important issue. Obviously people that don’t have children and have already been to college do not care about this issue very much, which could contribute to the lack of media coverage. Each candidate has different plans to get education get off the ground. McCain would like to use vouchers, and not put any more money into the system. Obama, on the other hand, wants more money and more reform. They both agree that the teachers need to have better teaching themselves and higher pay for the system to succeed.
Media coverage influences voters by putting the most important issues, according to them, on the forefront of their programming. FoxNews seems to be more biased toward Senator John McCain while CNN is thought to be biased toward Senator Barack Obama. By paying close attention to both news channels anyone can see why they both are considered to be biased. By just incorporating their favored candidate in everyday news, it can influence the average American voter.

posted by Anonymous @ 11:01 AM