President

The moment the media has long been waiting for has finally arrived. The night where they get to introduce the next president of the United States of America. Every news station was there to bear witness to an election where something historic was going to happen. Either the media outlets would be writing about the first African-American president, or they would be talking about the oldest president and the first female vice president our country has ever seen. No media station would even dare miss a second of this action, because this is an event that only happens once every four years.
This time around the election was won by an African-American male. The media was heads over heels trying to get coverage with different senators and political figures to come on to their shows and share their thoughts on the new president. I was watching the election on MSNBC with some friends of mine, and thought that they had a good show of explaining what needed to happen in order for each candidate to pull out a victory. They brought in several senators who were asked good questions by the interviewer to help the average Joe realize what this person would do as president. All in all I was not very surprised in the news coverage of the election, but the quality of the broadcast was spectacular.

Harsh words of a politician

For ages politicians have made aggressions toward the other candidate, so much so that this has become common practice for politicians. CNN provided this article "Obama takes swipe at McCain advisor's health care comments". I thought this article was just like any other article dealing with politics these days. One candidate was saying something about another candidate, and then the whole process repeats itself. It amazes me that the media keeps covering every single attack as if it were a new story. What the media really should be paying attention to is the thoughts and views of the candidates so that people can be more educated in their voting process. No one should really care if one candidate is bashing the other, because that just shows immaturity on the part of that particular candidate. John McCain has been in the headlines more than Barack Obama for bashing the other candidate in these elections. He is being portrayed as the more aggressive type in this race by the media, which could either help him or cost him the election. People will not want a president who loses his temper a lot, because he might just blow up in the wrong times and cost us a key ally or trading partner. However it is not as if the media has not caught Obama bad mouthing McCain either as portrayed in this CNN article. However in the end, we should not be hissy fighting over who can make the best attacks on the other candidate, we should be focusing on their points of view so that we can decide who we are going to vote for on November 4th.
Article: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/28/campaign.wrap/index.html

Sarah Palin

In the media these days it seems as though every day there is a new article about Sarah Palin. Seems to me that they are following her closer than they are following the presidential candidates. I guess this could be a good thing with the McCain campaign trying to get her popular by putting her on shows like Saturday Night Live. This shows that she has a little bit of a sense of humor and she is not afraid to poke fun at herself. CNN did a good job in not making fun of her for this but rather making it seem as though this was a good publicity stunt for her.
However, CNN also did broadcast a story that would seem to be detrimental to Sarah Palin. They reported that Palin had charged the state of Alaska for the travel expenses of her daughters to come with her while she was campaigning. The ton of the article seemed to be such that they believed Palin should not have done this. It says in the article that Palin has charged the state of Alaska for more than 21 thousand dollars in plane tickets for her children. This to me sounds ridiculous because she should not be taking advantage of this to pay for her kids to go everywhere with her.

CNN's Coverage of the Debate

As CNN stated in the title of the news article dealing with the first Presidential debate, “McCain, Obama fight for title of ‘most qualified’.” This describes perfectly what went on during the first debate. It was two candidates trying to show the public that the other candidate is not qualified for the job. The media coverage that CNN provided only went over highlights of what was said by both John McCain and Barack Obama. This would be useful to the people who did not watch the debate live on TV. However, for people like me who did watch the debate this pretty much served the purpose of a reminder of the key points. Just in case you want to freshen up on some main points that you may not have been clear with. It also gives people a chance to decide for themselves who actually won the debate.
In the other CNN article, it states that there was no clear “knockout punch”, but there were certain attacks. This is true for all debates. One side is bound to take shots at the other side. In this debate it was clear that McCain was criticizing Obama for being too inexperienced. Obama on the other hand took shots at McCain for issues such as being wrong about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This was a good way for CNN to break it down for readers. They first gave us the facts of what happened in the debate. This gave the reader a chance to make his or her own opinions about the debate. Then they gave us their point of view, so we can see what the media took out of this debate.

Crazy Obsession with Celebrities

What has the world come to when a person calling another person is blown up into a worldwide news story? On Yahoo News, there is an article about how George W. Bush made a call to the Dalai Lama supposedly to check up on his health and well-being. The media can sometimes be a little too much into the business of other people. They should leave people alone enough to let them call other people to have a conversation with them. All people deserve to have some privacy in their lives without being watched and written stories on. Personally I believe that this is the Bush campaign trying to make a good name for the President. This I find is just wrong. Not only is the media exploiting a person’s personal life that we should have no interest in anyway, but the President is using the Dalai Lama as a means of making him seem like a good citizen.
This article just goes to show that the media is way to infatuated with the celebrity world. God forbid you get well known and liked by a community, now you have no personal space because the newscasters will always be breathing down your neck. I do not mean to say that the whole thing of calling the Dalai Lama to see if he is ok is wrong, I am just simply stating that this should not be a world wide story and should be done for the right reasons.

Lack of knowledge in foreign policy

It seems as though that the Mccain camp is trying to do anything and everything possible to make Sarah Palin is capable when it comes to foreign policy. It has been reported that both John Mccain and Sarah Palin are going to be at the United Nations when President George Bush addresses the international leaders at the General Assembly. This is supposed to show the world that she is ready to take on the vice president role and that she can quickly connect with international affairs as they come up. It is quite amusing that it has not even been a month since Palin was chosen as Mccain’s running mate and she is already being criticized at national level. First the whole pregnancy of her daughter came around and now she is being made fun of on shows like Saturday Night Live for being incapable and naive. I certainly am interested to see how Mccain and Palin can fix the mess that has been created. She just does not seem like she is capable of being a good vice president with her only qualifications being the governor of Alaska. This is a position where it takes no knowledge of foreign policy. This adds to the fact that the Mccain camp is struggling to try and make people feel like they are close to one another. They have made sad tries such as Mccain attending a Nascar event, but this is way too late when Obama has already been playing basketball with ESPN announcers and talking sports. I just do not get why John Mccain would pick someone with as little experience as Sarah Palin does.