Election coverage

I’ve never been much into politics, so when I was first assigned to write blogs on the 2008 Presidential Campaign, I was kind of dreading it. I voted in the last election, but I admit that I was not really sure what each of the candidates stood for. I didn’t watch much of the coverage, because well… I was in high school and in all honesty I had other things to do. But now as someone who is studying journalism, I feel that it is my responsibility to watch the election coverage.

Throughout the past semester I have been watching a lot of election coverage. Not because I was assigned to do it, but because I’m actually starting to get interested in it. My first observation about the coverage, is that there is a lot of it! Stories about the candidates seem to have consumed most of the news.

When I wasn’t watching actual news coverage, I went online to ABC News most of the time to get stories. They have their own “Politics” link on the page, which directs you to all the political/ election articles. Every single story about the candidates is there to click one. I even remember one silly one about some of the republicans having a lunch or something one afternoon. Not that the story was relevant in anyway… but I guess if they needed to fill up their page and had someone to report on it, why not?

Although there are 17 candidates, as feel as though I only know things about “some” of them. I took quiz on ABC to find out my “potential” presidential candidate, and my answers best matched those of Dennis Kucinich… honestly, I don’t even know who that is.

I feel like most of the coverage followed on the frontrunners.. such as Obama, Clinton, Giuliani, and McCain. I’ve especially been seeing a lot of coverage on Obama and Oprah.. and Clinton and her husband. Maybe it’s because the two people endorsing them have a bit of a “Celebrity” status.

A lot of the coverage I’ve been seeing has to do with health care and most recently I’ve heard and seen a lot about religion. Last week the big deal in the news was Mitt Romney’s speech on him being Mormon and how that would NOT affect his presidency in any way. I’ve heard it being compared to JFK’S speech in 1960 many times.

Now after Romney’s speech many politicians are ganging up against one another on their religious positions. I’ve actually heard that the interaction between religion and politics is helping republican candidates in the race.

Not that this has to do with the coverage or anything.. but I think it’s really cool/funny/ weird that the presidential candidates have their own facebook’s and myspace’s to help get younger people interested.

So far, these are my only thoughts about the coverage on the 2008 Presidental election… I will continue to follow the news throughout the weekend, and report back with more themes and comments.

Mormon: Mitt

It was Mitt Romney’s biggest speech of his presidential campaign just as it was John F. Kennedy’s in 1960.. both topics were about their religions. One has to wonder, in a country where there is separation of church and state, why does the religion of a presidential candidate matter to the people so much?

Why does it matter if Romney believes in Jesus Christ? Is it going to help him to lead our country? No it’s not.

Last week on CNN Live.. someone asked the presidential candidates whether they believed what the bible says? Once again, does it really matter what they believe? How one reads the bible, or believes the bible is not moving us forward or helping us at all with this presidential campaign.

“But some scholars and evangelical Christians, who make up a crucial voting bloc in the Republican Party and consider Mormonism to be heretical, say that many voters would like to hear more from Mr. Romney about exactly what he believes, even though he has studiously avoided discussing this except in the broadest terms.”

This coming from ABC News says that people want to know what Romney’s beliefs are… but why? Romney said that he is not a spokesman for his church and that theological matters dealing with his religion have absolutely no bearing on what he would do as president.

Okay.. I understand that a president’s believes may have an impact on how they make certain decisions, but why are the making such a big deal out of it?

Soundslides

Really the only thing I can say about the Soundslides article from Poynter Online, is that I think it's really how how the inventor came up with it. I think it's a medium that will continue to grow and journalists continue to experiment with their work.

The article said that not many hard news stories have be done using an audio slideshow... and I wonder what these stories actually look like.. it's kind of hard to image a "hard" news story like that.

While i haven't seen a hard news story, i have watched really long audio slideshows that just drag along... I like visuals, but unless there is something that really goes with the audio, definetly don't use it. I've been confused numerous times by slides that have nothing to do with the audio. it made me wonder why they were using that picture at that exact time.. and then i completely forgot what the person was saying!

Poynter Subjects..

After reading about Merrill’s case of plagiarism, I can’t help but feel disgusted. I mean how can a “professional” journalist think that it was okay to take quotes from a student’s article? There is no excuse for that. If this man was in the profession for 40 years, how could he have not known what plagiarism was? I have to question the fact of whether or not this was the first time that Merrill took someone’s quotes without attributing them. I mean this girl just happened to be reading the paper, to see her own words… lucky for her. But for those that maybe haven’t been reading the Missourian they would have no idea if their work was stolen from them.

Now after reading Merrill’s response, I feel bad for the old guy.. and I do mean old, he is 83 after all. I only feel bad because his apology does sound sincere, but at the same time.. I still question why he didn’t just attribute the quotes?! I mean come on, John. It would have been nothing to just say that you go the quotes from somewhere else, no one would have looked down upon your writing. Now you have to pay the consequences.

Just to touch on the ‘Places Journalists Should Go for Politics’… I think it’s a great tool if one is writing about a political subject and needs information. Everything is right there for you! I’ll definitely be bookmarking that website!

The O's Have It... AGAIN.

I've commented on this story once before, but since it has come up again in the news I'll do it once again.

By now we know that Oprah is endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Campaign... and starting next week Oprah will follow Obama to four different appearances across three key states.

If you're thinking that this could be trouble for Hillary Clinton with women's votes.. you're probably right. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed the two separated by just a point among women in Iowa.

So with Oprah being voted "The Most Influential Celebrity"and following Obama's campaign trail for awhile... it's going to be interesting to see how many people she's going to influence.

eTHiCs!!

Even after taking a whole semester of Ethical Issues in Mass Communications, ethical dilemmas in journalism are NOT any easier to solve. Journalists are faced with ethical decisions everyday.. and since there’s no set of “rules” people will respond to the dilemmas in very different ways.

Whenever I am faced with an ethical decision in journalism I always turn to the Society of Professional Journalists ‘Code of Ethics.’ Journalists should:

1. Seek Truth and Report It: Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
2. Minimize Harm: Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
3. Act Independently: Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.
4. Be Accountable: Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

A journalists duty is to seek truth and provide a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Although no one “hopes” to be faced with an ethical decisions.. it is inevitable.. as long as you (the journalist) stay true to your own morals and use the Potter Box to identify the Facts, Values, Principles, and Loyalties… hopefully you come out with making the right decision.

LINKS

“You Must Be Streaming” tells us that the world of news is constantly changing. As journalists, we know that. We know that web news is different from both newspapers and television news. The article also tells us another obvious thing… “Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t.” Either way, television news does have some competition, because of course people want to pick the news they want to hear about and of course they want it anytime they please.

The blog talking about Ken Speake I found was both quite interesting and truthful. Speaking from experience I agree with what Speake said about not knowing how the story is going to unfold until you actually go over the footage/ visuals. I can also completely agree with how he thinks some broadcasters have an awful tone of voice. They do sometimes sound “inhuman” and their voices sound very forced sometimes. When I watch the news and experience a reporter like I am very tempted to change stations.

I found the article “What Journalism Can’t Do” very interesting. I was unaware that there was an actual study done on the numbers in a tragedy. Although I didn’t know one existed, as a journalist I tend to use the story of one individual person to bring something to my telling of it. I feel that focusing on one individual person and then relating it back to the bigger picture does have a deeper impact. It puts a face to the story and that greatly affects people.

The site about Online Storytelling forms sounds pretty interesting. I’ve never done any sort of online journalism and I think it would be very helpful if we could possibly learn something about it in class. Even the idea of mixing different tools to produce online storytelling is very exciting to me!