The Press vs. the Election
There are many elections that occur in the United States. In most people's opinions, the most important election is the presidential election. Although most ordinary people do not overanalyze how they get the information about the candidates during elections, in Thomas E. Patterson's book "Out of Order" he has proposed the thought that the media provides their election information to the people in an unfair and biased way. I will now explain to you the ways that I disagree and agree with him on different points. Patterson has gone into many different points, but I have chosen the ones that are most important to me, which are how the media directs voters towards one candidate, the amount candidates are quoted, if the media favors the Democrats over the Republicans, the amount the polls are covered, how the media manipulates articles with fighting words, the results of candidates not cooperating with the press, and the true importance of a third party. The de facto premise of today's system is that the media will direct the voters toward a clear understanding of choosing one candidate rather than another.1 There are two parts to this statement. I agree with the part stating that the media directs
Another important aspect of election coverage was all of the different polls. The number of poll stories has increased, to the point where they now take up more space than candidates' speeches.8 Polls were covered very frequently during the election, however I do not think that they took up that large of an amount of space. Also, the number of polls seemed to depend on how far along the election was. In the month of September I found very few articles covering polls. However, in the month of October I found at least one poll each week.9 In this election the poll seemed very important because the two candidates were exceptionally close through out the entire election. In two polls, which were approximately one week apart, the candidates were separated by less than nine percentile points in each poll.10 17. Networks Reject Carrying Rivals'. 5 Sept. 2000. *http:// www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/05/debattes.debate .html.* Accessed 9/6/00. CNN. 14. This Time, a Sit-Down Debate. 11 Oct. 2000. *http:// www.cnn.com/2000/ALL... S/stories/10/11/campaign.wrap /index.html.* Accessed 10/11/00. CNN. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Patterson, Thomas E. Out of Order. Vintage Books, New York: 1994. Page 35 The tone of the news articles significantly changed over the next couple of weeks. From September sixteenth until September twenty-seventh the articles covering the election were completely turned around. Instead of directing the positive coverage to Al Gore, it was directed to George W. Bush. Referring to the way both candidates acted as if they were "true Southerners" an article stated, "'Look at the number of years Bush has spent in Texas and compare that to the number of years Gore has lived in Washington... Gore has been nationalized: Bush seems very Southern and very Texas.'"4 Basically, I agree that the media does direct voters toward one candidate, but throughout the weeks the candidate the voters are being directed to changes. CNN Poll. 29 Oct. 2000. *http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALL..S/stories/10/29/
Some common words found in the essay are:
Bush Gore, Middle School6, Republicans Democrats, Al Gore, Texas'4 Basically, Democrats Republicans, Gore Campaign, Date Accessed, CNN Poll, Republican Democrats, date accessed, oct 2000, third party, sept 2000, cnn poll, accessed 10/30/00, trackingpoll/indexhtml* date accessed, gore bush, trackingpoll/indexhtml* date, 22 oct 2000, al gore, 22 oct, accessed 10/23/00 cnn, poll 22 oct, cnn poll 22,
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Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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