Media Role in the Presidential Election Essay -- Politics Government

Analyzing elections The Medias rules of an election change the face of the election itself. They are, if you may, the gatekeepers of information, in a time where the information we get will form the issues of the election. If the news tells us tomorrow that the stock market dropped 410 points today but did not tell us that the U.S. embassy in Iraq was bombed then what do you think we will care about the most. Each channel of media has its own biased. Fox news is leaning toward the right and CNN is leaning toward the left. Its near impossible today to hear a news story or coverage without any spin. Old papa bear (Bill O'reily) says that his show is the no spin zone but is it really, even after he pretty much cussed out Barack and the king (Larry King) does the same to McCain. The media has so much power in society that they could pretty much could decide who will be the next president. Not only do they directly influence the opinion of voters but they also can decide on who to give the resources to or basically who they think is more likely to win. The media can be hostile to the candidate like they were to Howard Dean in 2004 or they can boost them like they did to Reagan. Obama has seemed to play this media like Babe Ruth plays Baseball, and McCain, well, he played them like Shaq plays soccer. Obama hit the hearts of many Americans as well as the media by tapping into their hearts and pulling out that desire to change. McCain preached this too but not till later in his campaign and he stayed in his parties guidelines when he did it. Obama went out of his parties guidelines in some ways and the media saw him as a nonpartisan contender (when he really was not). He gave many inspirational speeches in which the pu... ... of people did not see that McCain played the sex card but rather they were just happy to see a Woman in the white house. We do not really know who our candidates are and what they stand because the media is fixated on polls, controversy and spin instead of the issues. There were more stories about what Palin did today with her kids than what she wanted to do with foreign policy. One might say that media might have rigged this election for Obama because they always displayed his inspirational speeches while emphasizing on McCains bad side. However if you really look into it, the media actually never even talked about McCain and the Keating 5 scandal which could have ruined him. I don't really think the media rigged the election although they did influence many people. The media needs to stop focusing on controversy and entertainment and talk about the issues.