The Media, the Iraq War, and the 2008 Election

Courtney Smith and Emily Jenkins

The Media’s Effect on Student Voters

The constant availability of information has enabled people to be heavily engaged in this election cycle and has caused the younger population of voters to become more politically involved. This is due in part because of online networking groups, such as Facebook, an infinite amount of political blog sites, and a more open discourse around the issues. The process itself also allows the future leader of this country to hear what people have to say and address these issues more elaborately.

As more conversation is generated, the more opinions there are. It therefore becomes difficult for viewers to distinguish what to believe, and it should be the media’s job to report on the truth and facts. A poll conducted on Facebook among people ages 19-25 illustrated that television and the Internet are the predominant sources of news, followed by newspapers and radio. Among the list of television stations, Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC were the top three stations, while others watched The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and C-Span. A small percentage of these voters accessed foreign newsgathering corporations, such as the BBC.

This election cycle has also spurred the growth of online viral videos and party slamming campaign tactics. The increasing amount of sensationalism takes away from issues that affect the future of our nation, such as the war in Iraq. However, eighty percent of the people polled felt as though the media coverage of the Iraq war did not affect their general outlook on the election. This statistic is interesting because the majority of the people that were questioned said Fox News was part of their daily newsgathering. Fox News, according to critics and some observers of the channel, say that this station promotes a conservative political position, although the channel disagrees with these allegations of bias. Rupert Murdoch, the creator of the channel, claims to have established Fox News to fill what he saw as a niche in the market for news that was "fair and balanced".

Regardless of the media outlet, the polling results of young voters found that the coverage did not change the way that they initially thought they would vote. It may be that people prefer to do their own research of what each candidate has said rather than rely on the media. In regards to coverage of the war, Peter Flynn, 24, said, “coverage of what is really going on in Iraq is few and far between, especially with election coverage. Reverend Wright has received more air time than issues surrounding the war.” Others claim to prefer reading soldiers’ blogs and unaffiliated journalists’ blogs to receive a more accurate portrayal of events.

Of the poll participants, seventy percent are voting for Democratic candidate Barack Obama, ten percent for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and ten percent were not voting. With only ten percent of the support for Republican candidate John McCain, it appears that although the participants watched Fox News, their opinion was not swayed by any conservative coverage that may have occurred. It is excellent that young voters are getting involved in the election, and it is also necessary for the mainstream media to continue to report stories that qualify as news in order to paint an accurate picture of what is happening. Ultimately, popular opinion means nothing if people do not go out and vote on Election Day.

Student Focus: Avoiding Media Bias

University of Massachusetts Amherst freshman Rachael Bazzett is optimistic about her first real opportunity to actively participate in the democratic process this November. The nineteen-year-old Uxbridge, Massachusetts native carries a bag imprinted with large bold letters that reads “PEACE NOT WAR.” Although her anti-war stance is shared by many college students, particularly on the widely liberal UMass Amherst campus, Rachael has made her decisions about the Iraq War and upcoming election in a different way than most of her peers. Skipping over CNN, Fox News, and The Daily Show, she gathers her information from what she considers “a much more neutral source.”

Growing up with a liberal mother and conservative father, politics has always been a sensitive and avoided topic in Rachael’s house: “It always ends up with my dad getting angry and not talking to anyone, so we just don’t really go there.” As a seventh grader during the 9/11 attacks, Rachael became interested in the political arena and foreign policy at a young age. “It was the first time in my life that I really felt unsafe being an American,” she said, and at age twelve began following the unfolding events in Washington and overseas. Since she never felt comfortable discussing such topics with her parents, she decided to seek out information on her own. She relied solely on the Internet, and found one news outlet that she felt was “free of American bias.” The British Broadcasting Company became Rachael’s primary source for political coverage.

While Rachael still uses BBC to follow the progress of the war and presidential race, she does not feel that media coverage of the war has strongly impacted her outlook on the election. “I’ve never been for the war itself, so since the beginning [of the race] I knew I would support either Clinton or Obama,” she said. She has decided on Barack Obama, favoring his plan of withdrawing troops over Hillary Clinton’s. Rachael describes the war as the deciding factor for her in the upcoming election, mainly because she is interested in international development. She has high hopes for peace and when asked about her career plans, replied simply: “I want to join the Peace Corps, build huts in Africa.”

Rachael tries to ignore mudslinging and viral videos and prefers to “. . .just focus on the issues. Foreign policy, healthcare, the environment, the things that are actually important. . .I don’t care about Rev. Wright, or what happened in Bosnia, or about things like physical appearance. I want someone in office who will make a difference.” She adds that although these things do show up on the BBC website, she finds it easier to avoid by not following American news outlets or consulting YouTube. In her opinion, society and media in America tend to focus too much attention on sensational stories rather than the things that will actually impact the United States, both in the near future and in the long run.

Students, War, and the Election

Here is the first part of our group's report on students and the war. Unfortunately, you have to download it separate from this page:

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST HERE

A soldier and a student

Cable News and Campaign Websites During the Primaries

When MSNBC called Wisconsin, only 4% of the votes had been reported. 4%. They must have relied on incredibly overwhelming exit polling results, because it turned out that this time, yes, they were correct and Barack Obama had won the state.

Within minutes the Obama camp had updated their website, initially running a headline that said “Obama wins in WI,” and a small article briefly noting that he had won the state and that win made it nine straight against Clinton. Almost as if to prove the point, MSNBC cut Clinton’s speech of the night short and went over to Houston, TX, where Obama was speaking to 19,000 people in his victory speech. His speech, somewhere in between a victory speech and a call for help, was broadcasted in full; Clinton’s speech was not.

It was remarkable how the two forms of media, an unbiased cable news network and a heavily biased campaign website, seemed to interact with one another. As the results poured in, Obama’s website was right on the money with the numbers, was just as quick to report how many delegates his win meant for his campaign, and soon afterwards the focus went right to Ohio and Texas.

Clinton’s website, in contrast to Obama’s, put up more visible donation links, a link to her speech in full and removed a delegate counter that was once on her home page. She also put up a quote saying how important it was for people to get involved online because it creates a level playing field.

MSNBC did have pundits across the board saying what this victory meant for Obama and what it meant for Clinton to lose another state, and the websites did not generally have the same type of analysis. Because the result came in so quickly and Wisconsin had become such a sure bet, it was hard to gauge much more than the reactions of the pundits and the websites. Unlike Super Tuesday, it wasn’t a constant barrage of information, so at some point the pundits had analyzed just about as much as they could and they, too, moved on to talk about Ohio and Texas. By my watch it was roughly about 20 minutes after Obama’s camp had updated his website to talk about the next two states that MSNBC started analyzing the next states. Of course, cable news was broadcasting Obama’s speech, the website was not.

The different types of media broadcasted according to their means of consumption: the website could not broadcast the speech and the news network could not (I hope) broadcast the words of the Obama camp, thanking supporters and moving right along to the next states.

Candidates: The Websites

The websites of the two top delegate-count leaders, John McCain and Barack Obama, are interesting in their differences, and for the most part they mirror the candidates' individual points of view and the way each of their campaigns have been run.

The first notable difference is the way you enter the websites: on johnmccain.com, you go straight to the homepage, but on barackobama.com you first get a page where you can sign up for email updates from the candidate's campaign. This is particularly interesting because the move to get email addresses from visitors mirrors the Obama's view that his campaign is based on getting people involved in a common effort.

This view is repeated throughout the website, and the home page displays the independent video created by musicians in support of Obama. Instead of making the Senator the focus of the news feed, most of the stories are based on news coming from the states and polls, and oftentimes tell of different ways to get involved in the effort to get Obama elected.

Conversely, the website of John McCain is centered around the candidate; his goals and promises are within the first few inches of text on the page, along with the leading news feed story, which announces President Bush's endorsement for McCain. Other things within the first box on the page is the link for a video about McCain's war service record and his sacrifices for his country. The next box shows McCain's delegate lead over the rest of the Republican candidates.

The McCain website is heavily focused on getting people to know what he stands for and what his views are. Obama's website is littered with quotes such as "We are the change that we have been waiting for." It makes sense that because the candidates are so different that the websites would be so different, but it is interesting to see the differences mirrored in the subtle ways the websites are constructed. On McCain's page, visitors will find a candidate-based page of political views and goals, plus his service record, and on Obama's page visitors find ways to get involved in the election and are encouraged to get out and be active. There is a page for Obama's views, but a link to it isn't featured on the page in a spotlight; rather it is included in the less-visible tabs on the top of the page. Once clicked on, it seems to be a well-developed page, but it is interesting that it isn't among the boxes in the home page, because it is much more visitor-oriented than candidate-oriented.

In the end, both candidates are proud of what they've accomplished so far, and it shows on their websites, but that is about where the similarities end. The websites are as different as the candidates themselves.

Wag the Dog

What happens when you put together an all-star cast, a sex scandal, and Albania? A comedy that manages to hit hard with a bigger picture: that the media is a heck of a good way to distract people from the news.

A spin-doctor (Conrad Brean, played by Robert De Niro) is called in to clean up a mess when a teenage girl tells the press that the president had sex with her. The news came at the worst possible time for the president; the election is only days away, and the story looked poised to ruin his hopes of a reelection. Brean is convinced that, if they can only distract the media for a few days, they will be able to secure a reelection for the president. The ultimate distraction is, of course, a war, and because there is no enemy in the world (ahh, 1997...), they have to create a war from the ground up.

With the help of an enigmatic movie producer (Stanley Motss, played by Dustin Hoffman), they proceed to do just that. With a few sly maneuvers, they are able to convince the media that there is an impending crisis in Albania, and just like that the public and press are latched onto the story of war.

Wag the Dog was a well-made movie with a good amount of Hollywood twists thrown into the mix, but in essence it was just a movie about how strategic leaks and planned-out coyness by a press secretary can get people hooked onto a story that seems real. It was interesting because from the perspective of the Hollywood producers, creating the fake war was just like making a good movie- marketing, promotions, teasers, and heroes all played a big role in the way the fake war was displayed to the American public. In the midst of the war, the public conveniently forgot about the sex scandal that threatened the president because they were shown a situation where people's lives were at risk.

Compare that with how this most recent real war was sold: acronyms such as WMD, seldom heard before the run-up to the war, became known and feared. SCUD's, Saddam, and people living under a fascist regime all became prime actors in the show that got people to believe that there was need for another war in the middle east. The president could well have ordered troops into the region without selling the war through the media, but it would have gotten less support than it did in the first place, and it could have cost him the reelection.

It all seemed so shockingly easy in a world where a bag of Tostitos can become a kitten, where two different sex criminals can each become heroes, and patriotism can be fed through a cell phone to the ears of the media and public. The film is an obvious critique of the relationship between the media and politics in the real world, in a time when it is quickly becoming apparent how important the two are to each other.