Electioneering in the Media

Nowadays, you can’t swing a dead cat without bumping into something about Sarah Palin.

She is absolutely EVERYWHERE, and while the media frenzy is starting to die down a little, we’re about to enter the toughest part of the campaign.  I’ve seen a lot of reports focusing on her very generic answers about foreign policy, on her freezer full of wild game, and on whether she had the volume turned up or down while watching Tina Fey’s skit on SNL.  This is only the beginning…

Yet, I can’t say I know a single thing about her as a candidate.

Everything that the mass media is printing is purely circumstantial!  And it isn’t limited to just this candidate, or just this election.

Mass media frequently releases select information about issues, without printing the whole story.  I know Palin flip-flopped on the Bridge to Nowhere, but I don’t know *why*.  Was it special interest groups?  Party pressure?  Or was there actually logic behind her decision?

Same goes for Obama. He has been hammered for flip-flopping on issues whenever it suits him.  The real question is, if he flip-flopped in his voting record, what prompted the change?  That “why” is almost never reported on, and that’s where we’d really learn something about the character and intent of our candidates.

Every election season, the media becomes tinged slightly yellow, and instead of getting whole pictures of each candidate we get mere caricatures.  This year, it truly is a landmark election: let’s hope that, in the end, it’s not the media who wins.