Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Media and the 2008 Election

The 2008 election has continuous coverage by the media, coming from all sides. Barack Obama is constantly the center of attention in the race. He is covered by the media regarding all aspects of his life: his religion, origins, family, and much more. The coverage of the candidates comes across as a scandal. Oh, did you know this and that about so and so. The media can affect voters in a way that gives the media a lot of power, I mean, they are the ones that give us a lot of the information known about the candidates.
John McCain did not seem to attract the kind of attention Obama does, until he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. Palin has caused a media frenzy. In the beginning the media knew almost nothing about her, and scrambled to dig up any information they could find. She went from being a complete unknown, to the spotlight in a matter of days. 
Tina Fey plays a fabulous Sarah Palin on SNL, so good it can be hard to tell the two apart. But the skits don't portray a version a Palin the country would respect. How much do SNL skits and Youtube videos affect voters opinions? Recently I watched a video on Youtube, starring Sarah Palin, at church being "de-witchitized."A witch doctor was ridding her body of all the witch spirits. How would voters react to this if national media were to pick up on it? 
Recently, it came out that Sarah Palin's wardrobe, hair, and make-up cost a significant amount of money taken from John McCain's campaign. The media caught hold of this, and in my opinion, blew it significantly out of proportion. But something like that will affect the way voters see the republican campaign.
All in all the media has a major affect on the outcome of the election. 

1 comment:

Victoria C. said...

The media definately affects what people believe about certain candidates, even if the information they are presenting isn't true or is somewhat biased. The media, especially today in the age of electronics, can skew an election by influencing voters to vote a certain way because a candidate is portrayed badly or is ridiculed for certain things in his or her past. Especially, with the amount of young voters who rely on youtube and different outlets of media than a lot of older voters information is being spread to people in so many ways that it is hard to decipher what to believe and what not to believe.