Exerpts from Amy's Journal..... 7/7/08

Evan Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Smith is editor and VP of Texas Monthly Magazine. http://www.texasmonthly.com/. He discussed the role of the media in politics today. Most of it confirmed what my professor, Dr. St. Clair, had taught us last semester in Media and Politics.

Mr. Smith said that the media should act as though it has a fiduciary responsibility to report the facts to the public. The vast majority of the American public gets one-sided news. In order to keep his own biases in check, Mr. Smith reads a vast array of publications even those in direct opposition to his own point of view. If one only reads what one already agrees with, they aren’t expanding their view. It is very easy for the media to shape public opinion, if there is only one outlet. The media has abused this power and overstepped its boundaries by using spin.

Both Hillary and Obama were misrepresented by the media. Obama was painted as extremely inexperienced. While he lacks experience in the conventional sense of politics, his community-based experience should have explained why he so easily related to people. Hillary was painted as part of the establishment and ‘anti-change’. However if she were running against anyone else, her views would have been presented as a change from the Republican status quo. The reason why Clinton supporters seemed to be having a hard time supporting Obama is that they never thought they could lose. It is the same situation as what happened in the last super bowl. No one expected Eli Manning to make a miracle pass. In the same way, everyone thought Hilary had the nomination tied up and in the bag. One possibe reason why the Clintons were blind-sided; they thought they had the dream campaigning ticket, with him helping her campaign.

Smith didn’t talk about why Obama had a ‘Eli Manning miracle’, but here is my speculation… He had the miracle because of the youth turnout. No one ever expects youth to turn out in measurable numbers. Consultants and political candidates don’t know how to cater to us. This is unprecedented and all the political pundits don’t know what to do. All the conventional measures and tools cannot be used to determine where we will show up or how we will vote. As Evan Smith said, “this is more than just the average transformational election. The pendulum will not swing back. Politics will never be the same again.”

The media is in love with Obama. They have one characterization of him. Per Smith…“School-girl/ put notes in his locker/ send him flowers/ start a scrapbook in love with Obama”. They feel badly for how they treated Kerry on flip-flopping, plus they were criticized harshly by the public last election, plus they like Obama, so this election they’re giving him a ‘pass’ for any flip-flopping.

These candidates are not moving in the eyes of the press the way most candidates should move. Obama would like to be able to develop his positions as public opinion demands it and as situations change, but the media is getting angry because he is starting to differ from their fairy tale image that they have created for him. The same goes for Hillary as ‘the horrible establishment’, the media wants her to live up to that so much that it shouldn’t include her campaigning for Obama. They want her out of the picture and she keeps trying to fight her way back in.

I agree with Evan Smith’s take on the unity of the parties; the media is worried about the unity of the Democrats, but when you look at each candidates’ platform, the Democrats agree on 98% of the issues. However, when you look at the race as a whole, it’s not the Democrats who should be worried, it’s McCain. Even when the Republican nomination had officially been handed to Texas, he only won by 52%. 48% of Texas does not like where he stands on the issues. A deep red state doesn’t like McCain; he has a problem. He needs to be creating unity, like Obama has.

Even if Obama doesn’t win, the turnout he’ll create will help in down ballot races. Noreiga’s race will help Obama’s race because Hispanic turnout will spike in Texas, not the other way around. McCain will not help with turnout of Republicans because too many Republicans are dissatisfied with the nominee.

I asked Evan Smith if he thinks the media is too one-sided in it’s opinion. I commented that when I read one news source for several months, I felt like the same opinion was being hammered into me whether I liked it or not. If I were reading by choice, I would have stopped reading (yet this was for my term paper on the AAS Democratic election where they clearly wanted Obama over Clinton). He agreed and said this is why most of the public is disenchanted with the main-stream media and has stopped reading it. He told me to ask the blogger panel the same question, tommorrow.