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.