CLASS ON 10/6 UPDATED!!

Class on 10/6 will take place in the conference room in the Admissions office on the first floor of first all.
I will be using my computer to hook up to those who want to video with us using ichat.

THE SCREEN NAME THAT WE WILL BE USING IS MediaandElection (aim)

PLEASE SEND AN INSTANT MESSAGE TO THAT SCREEN NAME USING ICHAT BY 4:40 EST SO THAT WE CAN TAKE CARE OF ANY PROBLEMS AND ARE READY TO GO BY 5.

What's Iraq got to with it?

This ad is not only false (see factcheck.org) but for me it is distasteful in its use of an Iraqi veteran and images from Iraq.
Although I can see how a ban on handguns would be taking away some of the freedoms that our soldiers are fighting for, but this is assuming (first and foremost that this is indeed Mr. Obama's plan, which its not) that the freedoms which it protects namely "LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS" which can't be pursued if you are killed by the owner of a gun.
Although I don't want to get political about the right to own guns and all the issues that come with it, this ad highlights, yet again, the manipulation used in political advertising and the straight up lying that sometimes comes with it.

I really do hope that the use of our brave men and women who are fighting overseas in Iraq in political ads stops soon (although I know it won't) especially in ads that have little to nothing to do with the actual war that we're fighting.

Strong (empty) rhetoric

In an article from late 2007, factcheck.org informs viewers of television ads of some of the tactics and strategies employed by political candidates:

a great deal of political rhetoric relies on language calculated to be both pleasing and empty. Cautious voters are wise to remember that candidates rely on them to fill in the blanks, sometimes interpreting their ill-defined language as specific promises they never made. If the candidates don’t define their terms, citizens shouldn't try to do it for them. Their ideas about “strength” or “patriotism” may not match the candidate’s. Remember to read the fine print, and avoid making judgments based only on fine-sounding words that could mean anything.

In addition to these concerns, the article warns the viewer to be wary of the repetition of certain strong terms.
The following ad titled "Dome" by the McCain campaign on 9/18/08:


In it I think we see two of factcheck.org's points highlighted:
1) The use of highlighted strong language (ex crisis, massive, billions, painful, skyrocketing etc.)
2) No real quotes or support are given for these claims. Although in many of their other ads the McCain campaign skillfully edits images and manipulates quotations (see most recently "Jim Johnson" and "Advice") to support their claims, none of this is done in this ad. I think the reasons for this are debatable, but the point is that the ad is trying to "teach" the viewer about Obama's policies without proving that that they are his actual beliefs in the hope that enough viewers will be persuaded by the simple language and accept it as true. Furthermore, we learn nothing from this ad about Mr. McCain's ideas of how to fix the economic crisis, is this because the ad is very short or because it would hurt the ad's message to start detailing actual fact about McCain's beliefs?

What does Biden think?

This ad is one of my favorites from this election.
It uses brilliant camera work and editing that allows it to clearly convey its message.
I do admit that there is not much we learn about Mr. McCain, or Mr. Obama, from this ad, but that is irrelevant because its purpose is to attack Senator Obama through the words of his own running mate.
Furthermore, I think the best feature that this ad has is that it is able to attack the Obama/Biden campaign without using harsh language or real negative content. All too often there are ads that, when they are being watched, make the viewer feel almost uncomfortable because of their content and strong negative language and content. This ad is able to convey a very serious message (that not only does Senator Biden not believe on Mr. Obama, but that he also strongly believes in Mr. McCain's abilities) without making the viewer feel uncomfortable at all.

Early Voting Favors McCain?

Early voting began today in states such as Virginia, Kentucky and Georgia and, according to the USA Today, "The campaigns of Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are already focused on getting voters to the polls."

I think that, based on some of our class discussions, early voting seems to favor the McCain-Palin ticket. We have discussed the impact, or lack, of impact that a vice presidential candidate has on the overall outcome of the election once November comes, however we have never discussed the impact that these candidates have on early voters. Based on the high level of excitement that continues to surround the McCain campaign because of Governor Palin (which we assume will die down when it's time to pull the lever in November), it seems that people are more likely to vote on emotion at this time of year then they are in November (we will discuss the effect that emotion has in today's lecture, which seems to be little to non).

NOTE: I do not know any of this for sure and I have no evidence (yet) to support my claims, these are my own predictions based on our discussions.

ELECTION DAY EVENT STILL NOTHING FINALIZED

The only idea we have so far was a comment on my last post from Matt:
"Let's go with this:
Sky Caf or Morgue Lounge
Three - Five Televisions.
Abigails Catering"

What does everyone else think? Any other ideas?

Lying in an ad?

SCRIPT (As translated by The New York Times):
A male announcer says: “Obama and his allies in Congress say they are on the side of immigrants, but they’re not. Reports in the press say that their efforts were like ‘poison pills’ that caused immigration reform to fail. The results: ‘No’ to the guest workers program; ‘no’ to a path to citizenship, ‘no’ to secure borders. The reform didn’t pass. Is that being on our side? Obama and his Congressional allies — ready to block immigration reform, but not ready to govern.”

Today's New York Times reports that this ad may be inaccurate and misleading (shocking, I know). In the article, the Times states that Mr. Obama was among a group of Democrats who supported provisions to the original immigration bill, which ultimately lead to its unsuccessful passing. However, the Times also reports (which of course is not the image you get from this ad) that one of the key reasons the bill didn't pass was because of a group of Republicans who changed their votes in the 11th hour. In addition, after the bill failed to pass Mr. Obama was praised by Senator Mel Martinez a Republican from Florida who was a major backer of the bill.

Based on the professor's recent post it doesn't seem that this political strategy will ever end, and this is definitely unfortunate. In addition, it seems that this ad is trying to target a population that is less informed and more easily influenced, and vulnerable to specific issues.

This only further highlights the tragedy of the state of our media and political campaigning that one day will hopefully change some day soon.

Biased about bias

While I was watching "Outfoxed" I kept thinking about how truly biased this documentary was against Rupert Murdoch and his decisions as Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, Fox's parent company.
Although the evidence throughout the documentary is very strong and does seem to prove that Mr. Murdoch commanded all members of the Fox News staff to ensure that their reports have a strong "conservative" bias, we must not forget why this documentary was made. On the documentary's website you find a link to "Foxattacks," a website completely and totally dedicated to attacking Fox News.

The one question I continue to ask myself after watching the documentary is whether there is anything wrong with Fox News being biased especially now that its "conservative" bias is well known throughout the public. I do understand that there is evidence which proves that people who watch Fox News actually know less about politics (I do not have the exact statistic, but would love to see it), but is there every real true reporting without any bias? Are we willing to say that all, or any, other news station's do not have biases towards certain opinions?

I do believe in the ideal role of the media as one that simply reports the facts (Leighly's "reporters of objective fact"), but I think that this is just that, an ideal. Whenever we as human beings speak or write, or even express ourselves in any way, about anything we tend to, maybe even subconsciously, do so with a bias towards one side of the argument. I am not saying that Fox News does not have a stronger biased then most, if not all, news stations, I am simply saying that they are not the only network guilty of this, and simply because there is a documentary, that itself is biased, about this fact does not mean we should be any more critical of Fox then we are of other networks. Why have no other documentaries been made? (the answer might be because there isn't such strong evidence against any other network, but I think this may be an attack on Mr. Murdoch and not on television networks with bias strong biases)

"Education" and the effects of distoring the facts

The following ad is the one of the newest ads put out by the McCain campaign titled "Education"


According to an article in today's New York Times this ad severely distorts the facts of Obama's previous voting history and his views on sex education. While I am not making a judgment call on Mr. Obama's views, I do believe that this is a good example of exactly what we were talking about in class and what the professor explains in one of his posts. We do not know, and may never know, the effects that the spreading of these distorted facts (assuming they are as the NYT reports) will have on the election, but it is still important to note.

Additionally, this can fit right in with the debate over the use of any kind of distortion in campaign ads (as was noted by the professor), is this kind of distortion and manipulation the same as what the Obama campaign has been doing to highlight Mr. McCain's age? In my opinion the tactic used by the McCain campaign is much worse (although the Obama campaign's tactic is still bad), because this is not using editing techniques of actual footage in order to portray the picture in a different way, this (again assuming the NYT is accurate) is plain ordinary lying.

Reeher Outline

Syracuse University (Maxwell School) “Maxwell Poll on Civic Engagement and Inequality”
• Occasional (Less then “daily or several times a week”) use of the internet to gather news (as opposed to either extreme [frequent or non-user]) is associated with higher levels of political activity (which includes activities such as contacting political officials, contributing money, attending events, voting etc.)

Levels of Participation (most to least):
Occasional > Frequent > Non-users

• Although we know that age (older=more active) and gender (male>female), this is not consistent with the conclusion of the study because the age with the most political activity is 53, which is also the average age of the non-user.
WHEN AGE, GENDER, INCOME AND EDUCATION ARE CONTROLLED THE ASSOCIATION HOLDS UP

• Possible explanations for this relationship:
o 1) People who are only occasional users are more active politically to begin with, they are more traditional in their orientation towards the internet (using it as ONE source of information and not the only one), at the same time the non-user is likely as less active to begin with.
o 2) While the occasional user is the most active, the internet has facilitated higher political activity (i.e. the occasional user is using the internet as one source to increase his/her activity, while it is still only ONE source and therefore the frequent user will automatically be less active then the occasional user)

2004 report from the Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet called “Political Influentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Election”
• 10% of the population influence their fellow citizens in a variety of areas, and 69% of the people who showed high levels of internet-based political activity.

NOTE THAT THE FIRST STUDY FOCUSED ON THE INTERNET BEING THE INDIVIDUAL’S SOURCE OF NEWS, WHILE THE IPDI STUDY FOCUSED ON THE INDIVIDUAL’S GENERAL INTERNET USE

These findings could be very flawed because:
• 1) The number of people polled (only 600) is very small.
• 2) The 2 studies were taken at different times
• 3) The connection between these 2 things is hard to find and they may (or possible probably) be completely independent of one another.

ELECTION DAY EVENT

Does anyone have any ideas other then getting a lot of TV's and some popcorn and watching the coverage on different channels? Where do we want to have the event?

Poltical activity, the internet and attention to politics

As I read threw "The New Interest Index: Two Decades of American News Preferences" I couldn't help but think of the conclusions made in Grant Reeher's article "Log on, Tune Off? The Complex relationship between Internet Use and Political Activism".

In Reeher, according the Syracuse University study, occasional use of the internet was associated with more political activism while frequent use was associated with the second most activism. At the same time, the News Interest Index showed that "political" news is followed 3rd least after only "tabloid" and "foreign" news.

Although it may be a stretch to say so, I believe that the findings stated in the News Interest Index can help us understand why it is that internet use does not necessarily indicate political activism. I think that this is due to the fact that even while they are on the internet, or involved in any form of news searching, Americans simply don't have a general interest in politics (except maybe around voting season for major elections). It is safe to assume that if Americans are not interested in politics enough to look into the developments and events relating to it, they are less likely to get involved with politics even the slightest bit (interestingly, according to Reeher, the older a member of the population is, the more likely they are to be more politically active. I think that if age was factored into what the American people are interested in, and therefore watch the news about, we might find that the older population is more interested in political news and therefore are more politically active then the younger population).

Furthermore, I believe that it would be in any candidate's best interest to target the "less interested" population with strong and passionate rhetoric in order to influence this population and gain support from a group that would otherwise be uninvolved in the political system.

Another note on Blackberrys

According to “'Election 2006 Online' Pew Internet and American Life Project (January 17, 2007)" the number of Americans who use the internet as their main source of poitical news had almost doubled (and by now I assume it has increased even more). As you all might assume I do believe that this large increase is due to the increase in Blackberry (and other internet-cellphone devices) usage which has made the internet even more available then it was at any point before.

Are our prayers finally being answered for better coverage?

MSNBC's decision to remove Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews from anchoring the coverage of the upcoming debates may finally indicate that our prayers for more widespread impartial coverage of political events such as the conventions and debates maybe finally be answered. In class many of us have often echoed the same complaints that former editorial director of MSNBC Davidson Goldin recently echoed when he stated, "The most disappointing shift is to see the partisan attitude move from prime time into what’s supposed to be straight news programming."

Although I do love Olbermann (mostly because of his roots on Sportscenter where he paved the way for future sport's anchors), I applaud MSNBC, and their parent network of NBC, for making this decision to remove him from his anchor position in spite of the fact that he has become the most successful network in the 12 year history of the network. It is nice to see that there might actually be network executives in the world who still do care about their position as either "Reporters of objective fact" or "Neutral Adversaries" and not simply as "Profit seekers" (although this move is in light of the fact that MSNBC did improve its total convention viewership by almost double from the 2004 conventions, it did not improve it's "competitive position" so this may in fact be a profit seeking move.)

For more information see today's New York Times (as well as most other papers).

The effect of the Blackberry on the media

According to one of the charts in "The State of the News Media, 2008" the cell phone is the moblie device which has the "biggest impact on user's lives." In terms of media coverage it seems to me that more specific then the cell phone, the blackberry has had an even greater impact on the distribution of the media to the public and a greater impact on "user's lives." According to a July 2006 study, "a significant number of young people (13%) say they get news via a cell phone, a personal digital assistant such as a PalmPilot or Blackberry, or an iPod or similar portable music player." I believe that this number has significantly increased in the last 2 years as more "young people" use Blackberrys (or IPhones) as their cellphones and therefor have the ability to read the news at the click of a button from almost everywhere (I for one have started to read both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal everyday since I got my Blackberry and never would have done so otherwise with this great regularity).

The fact that more people, and more specifically young people, are able to use mobile devices such as Blackberrys to access the news has both good and bad effects on the public. On the one hand, more people are reading the news with more regualrity which hopefually makes more of these people aware of the events in the surrounding world that they never would have known about before. On the other hand, this new tendency continues to hurt the newspaper business and has already threatened to shut down some of them (The New York Sun among others).

I don't know what the long term results of this change will be, but I am happy to find that atleast some positive things are coming out of what seems like a great annoyance to society with people constantly on the moblie phones and Blackberrys and disrupting so many of those around them.

A new look at freedom of expression

I wanted to share with you all an article by one of my favorite authors, the great Rick Reilly (for those who don't know Reilly, formerly of Sports Illustrated, now works for ESPN and writes a column usually having little to do with sports that is at the same time related to sports in some way). In this article he discusses a new rule in Virginia, a University founded by the great Thomas Jefferson, which prohibits students from expressing themselves at sports games using signs. Although I know Reilly is no scholar I think this article, especially in light of the recent arrests of reporters at each of the conventions, hits on a very sensitive and important topic.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3566872&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab3pos1

Enjoy!

Candidates spending big on ads

According to Freep.com

More than $13 million was spent on Michigan TV ads from Memorial Day to Labor Day by candidates John McCain and Barack Obama and their supporters -- a 40% increase over 2004.

I constantly wonder why the candidates continue to spend so much (if you ask me these numbers are just ridiculous) on television advertisement and not on internet advertising and the like. I, like many others, thought that his election would see more of the internet boom and less on the television, but the shift hasn't taken place. Why is this happening? I think it is because so much internet advertising is "free" and done automatically using tools like Google and Youtube that the candidates don't want to "waste" their money (although they seem to have enough to do whatever they want to anyway) on something that will be done without spending a single dime.