Rachel's+Election+Activity

October 11th, 2012


 * Category || Joe Biden || Paul Ryan ||
 * 1. Goals || +1 || +2 ||
 * 2. Appeal to base || -1 || +2 ||
 * 3. Appeal to swing voters || 0 || -2 ||
 * 4. Control agenda || +2 || +1 ||
 * 5. Personal exchanges || +1 || -1 ||
 * 6. Content of answers || +1 || +1 ||
 * 7. Leadership || -2 || +2 ||
 * 8. Zingers and blunders || +1 || -1 ||
 * 9. Open || +1 || +2 ||
 * 10. Close || 0 || +2 ||
 * TOTAL SCORE || **4** || **8** ||

October 16th, 2012
 * Category || Obama || Romney ||
 * 1. Goals || +2 || -1 ||
 * 2. Appeal to base || +2 || +2 ||
 * 3. Appeal to swing voters || +1 || -2 ||
 * 4. Control agenda || +2 || -2 ||
 * 5. Personal exchanges || 0 || 0 ||
 * 6. Content of answers || +1 || -1 ||
 * 7. Leadership || 0 || +1 ||
 * 8. Zingers and blunders || 0 || -2 ||
 * 9. Open || 0 || +2 ||
 * 10. Close || +1 || +1 ||
 * TOTAL SCORE || 9 || -2 ||

After watching the debates, I went to CNN, FOX News, and NPR's websites to read their reports and critiques of the candidates. After doing so, the main conclusion I came to was that people were most likely going to watch the news source whose bias more closely aligned with their political beliefs. For this reason, I do not think that the media plays an active role in influencing voters to change their beliefs, but rather continues enforcing and strengthening opinions that viewers already hold.

Of the three sites, I thought that CNN was the most factual and accurate, and therefore more bias-free. There was a heavy emphasis on candidate's quotes and the transcripts themselves. I noted that the quotes and videos that I viewed were not taken out of context to distort meaning.

Surprisingly enough, FOX News was not as biased as I had expected. However, the news source definitely seemed to lean to the right. FOX also placed quite a bit of emphasis on the format of the debate (town hall) than the other two news sources. Something that I noted were pictures on FOX News' site. More often than not, unflattering photos of Obama were used, while more favorable photos of Romney were used.

NPR was by far the most interesting to read. One in particular focused on the candidate's use of pivoting to avoid answering questions, often fooling viewers or making them forget the initial question. That being said, NPR definitely does lean on the liberal side. For example, there was a great deal of emphasis (and even jokes and memes) placed on Romney's blunders (Big Bird and binders of women). NPR also did some fact checking, but there also seemed to be bias there too. For example, NPR does admit that both candidates had some inaccurate facts, but call Romney's a "whopper" and say Obama "stretched the truth."