Journalism and American Democracy

While the election coverage of an Obama / Romney square-off stirred up madness on Twitter and numerous media websites and television channels, Arizona’s premier media outlets remained calm. The state’s top two news outlets – AZCentral.com, home to the Arizona Republic Newspaper and channel 12 news, and The Arizona Daily Star – seemed more preoccupied with voter issues, such as the long lines in the east coast and issues experienced within Arizona, than with the election results within the state.
Arizona is a red state through and through. With the increasing Latino population it has been argued that the it could become a battle ground state in the future. But right now, it remains unequivocally red. The proof lies in the media’s coverage of the election. As the polls closed in Arizona, the Daily Star immediately reported that “All 11 Electoral Votes Go to Romney”. I assume there was about 0% reporting at that time. Now, it is true that Romney actually garnered a larger percentage of Arizona’s vote than McCain did in ’08. And since there were no contested congressional races, the world of federal politics was largely subdued in Arizona. Both sites were very focused on voter troubles however, serving as a government mouthpiece to help inform voters at home on how to report any problems or issues experienced at the polls. This was interesting to see. Whether this is basic protocol or a new development in wake of the problems out east, I don’t know.
There was, however, an important local race that garnered some attention from both papers; Infamous Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus challenger Paul Penzone. Arpaio ended up winning an unprecedented 6th term as Maricopa County Sheriff but it was his closest race yet. Sheriff Arpaio and his office have been the subject of hundreds of lawsuits from civilians and the U.S. Justice Department, the big one citing widespread discrimination of Latino residents in Maricopa County. His harsh stance against illegal immigration has made him quite the controversial figure in Arizona, as well as national, politics. Most Arizona news outlets jumped on this breaking news, largely ignoring the national election. Many televised Penzone’s concession speech as well as Arapio’s acceptance speech. This was the big news of the day for Arizona, who will face another 4 years under Joe Arpaio. How long that lasts with the new lawsuits remains to be seen.

Amazingly, when I logged on to NJ.com — the website for one of New Jersey’s largest papers, the Star Ledger — the headlines were not about the election results. In fact, without scrolling down a bit and finding the link to election coverage, one would hardly know that an election took place yesterday. The news of the moment is all about the disaster and debris left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and the impending nor’easter that is wreaking even more havoc.

Once the reader scrolls down a bit, there is more news about Sandy as it pertains to the election, including the fact that there were record-low voters in the state of New Jersey yesterday due to the lingering effects of the storm.

Then, there is an interesting tidbit on the link that takes the readers to pages of the election coverage. It reads, “Is it too soon to start the Christie-for-President Chatter?” This is interesting for a number of reasons. Governor Chris Christie is a Republican, and yet New Jersey is a state that has historically voted Democrat, including this year. Chris Christie has also made some controversially blatant and honest remarks in the past, which have garnered mixed feelings about the man in charge. (Personally, I think his what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude is great. He spoke about education in America at the Law School last year on a Football Friday and my dad and I went to see him. I thought he was great. He’d have my vote for President). So, it’s interesting that in a historically Democratic state, New Jerseyans would already be calling for their Governor to run in 2016.

On the election coverage page itself, there is commentary on how social media (read: Twitter) showed that New Jersey residents had mixed feelings about the election results, as well as the fact that Tweets calling for Christie began as early as last night.

Just to add some personal commentary based on what I know about my home town as well as the rest of the state, I will say that I am not surprised that there are mixed feelings about the results from New Jersey residents. I come from a generally affluent town that is very socially conservative. I know of many surrounding towns and areas all across New Jersey — not just in my central area, but in the north, the south, and on the shore. However, there are also some very blue-collar and inner-city areas that likely would have pulled for Obama (for example, for every Princeton and Short Hills, there is a Camden and Newark). All sides of the spectrum are covered by New Jersey, and those larger cities such as Newark, Camden, Trenton, and New Brunswick probably made a lot of strides for Obama.

In general, there clearly was significant coverage in a state that voted for our President, but a lot of it was overshadowed by recent events, and how newly elected local officials would help assist with the aftermath.

The state of Illinois was considered by many to be decided before election night even began. Nevertheless, I can image it was exciting for President Obama, the 44^th leader of the United States of America, to see his home-state turn blue last night. Big O took 57.8% of votes in Illinois, where 900,000 people chose to vote early including the President himself.  Obama chose to spend November 6^th in his hometown of Chicago, sharing a family dinner at home and then heading to the Merchandise Mart where he gave his acceptance speech. His speech gave credit to the voters who have given the President the chance to move forward and continue to do the job that was entrusted to him in 2008. He promises that he has listened to Americans about what needs to happen in order for this country to regain his footing and proudly thanked Vice President Joe Biden, his wife, and his daughters.

The mood in Chicago was much less celebratory than Obama’s first victory in 2008—only 20,000 people were in attendance for his rally as opposed to 200,000 four years ago. The feeling was described less as excitement and more as relief. This is interesting for Democrats especially, many of whom acknowledge that the President’s policies have not helped our nation to progress as much as they’d like, especially to help decrease the deficit, but prefer him to Romney. The “lesser of two evils” viewpoint was widespread throughout America in this historic election. It seems that voters are excited for the Democrats to keep hold of the White House but aware that Obama needs to work a lot harder on job creation and diminishing the deficit before they will cheer as loudly for him again.

The real excitement in Illinois came from the four congressional seats won by Democrats in the House. Tammy Duckworth, an army veteran who lost both legs from injuries sustained by a blast in Iraq, won one seat for the Democrats. Another winner, somewhat shockingly was Democrat Jesse L. Jackson, who is currently under investigation for attempting to sell President Obama’s senate seat after he was elected to the presidency. He recently was hospitalized for mental illness as well. Still, he somehow managed to garner the majority and keep another democratic seat in Illinois.

Overall, Illinois was an exciting place to watch the election and proud to host their hometown hero elected to his second term as President. Illinois residents stand behind Obama, though they contribute to the pressure put on Obama to perform better this time around and make serious progress.

Looking at a meta-analysis of newspaper endorsements of the top hundred newspapers by circulation, a few things strike me. First, the two largest newspapers, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, do not generally endorse candidates. There are a couple of others as well, perhaps most notably Deseret News, which one imagines would lean pro-Romney if for nothing other than its name. Secondly, both these newspapers have lost fairly significant ground to newspapers that do in the last four years, USA Today in particular. Thirdly, the influence of such newspapers has diminished. Their total subscriptions went from 27,138,751 subscriptions to 23,598,488, a loss of over three and a half million. Thirdly, it is notable that Romney already outnumbers McCain in the number of endorsements he’s received, and is only two hundred thousand behind McCain in terms of subscriptions of those newspapers. Since there are still a little under a third of newspapers who have not endorse either candidate, things look more optimistic for him than McCain, and indeed he is significantly closer to Obama in terms of both newspapers and subscribers than McCain was (though lagging behind Obama in aggregate).

Regardless, I looked at the two largest newspapers’ endorsements, for two reasons. First, if we presume subscription number has any effect on newspapers influence, and we must if we are to accept the premise that newspapers can influence the matter at all, these two papers combined represent over one percent of the electorate and a little under ten percent of top hundred newspaper subscriptions. Secondly newspapers desire success and thus might seek to emulate their styles if not their content. Thirdly they are more directly comparable simply for the fact both newspapers endorsed Barrack Obama both in this and the previous election, thus both being ‘loyalists’ of his. Indeed, the Times has not endorsed a Republican since Eisenhower.

I wonder, and in truth do not know, how endorsement decisions are made. But it seems to break all rules of professionalism present elsewhere. The articles are unabashedly normative, loyalist, and hostile in a way uncommon to professional press and more suited to party rags. Notably the LA Times calls it an ‘endorsement’ while the New York Times calls it an ‘editorial’, but it is not really the latter because this is a statement of the views of the newspaper, not just the writer. It is true that it is an opinion rather than news, but it cannot be followed by the usual disavowal that it is the writer’s and not the newspaper’s opinion which is a staple of that genre. Despite the increased culpability, there is little admission of imperfection in either, and nearly half of the LA Times piece is dedicated not to talking up Obama but attacking Romney. While this is expected of politicos, it certainly opens them to criticism and accusations of dirty partisanship I would think a paper would avoid.

I also find it remarkable how blind both endorsements seem. They seem entirely unaware, for example, that someone might look at certain things they condemn Romney for and see them as good things. If they were aware, I think, they would have put some arguments in support of such a position, and thus its absence speaks to it. To use a more controversial example, both the LA Times and New York Times speak of the overturning of Roe v Wade as a strike against Romney without explaining or qualifying it, ignoring that the last Gallup poll has’pro-choice’ Americans are at a record low and outnumbered by ‘pro-life’ Americans. This is not to open that debate, I feel I must stress, but merely to point out that they treat this as a persuasive argument rather than a point to be defended. If we take this as a true barometer of the opinions of the newspaper, that implies the newspaper is so liberal that it cannot understand conservatism as a phenomenon, which is unfortunate.

Also, to the Los Angeles Times, ‘modulating’ is not an acceptable synonym for mutable, varying, wishy washy, flip flopping, or any such word, if not in denotation then in connotation.

All in all, I’m skeptical of the effects this will actually have on the election, but they are interesting as a phenomena in of themselves. And perhaps more interestingly to me, it seems perhaps the most firm evidence for the liberal leanings of the press, which up till now I had seen little but speculation and the bitter raving of conservatives about.

Sources:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154838/Pro-Choice-Americans-Record-Low.aspx
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/2012_newspaper_endorsements.php

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/endorsements/la-ed-end-president-20121021,0,5490210.story

While I have been an avid Obama supporter, I was disappointed in his performance as my twitter feed so constantly reaffirmed. While remaining more factual than Romney, his body language revealed his discomfort with the debate. My friends and I joked by pointing out his slow blinks most times Romney spoke – something we often do with people we are not too fond of.

Romney came in determined to make an impression. He did as he planned. While I considered a great deal of his demeanors lacking professionalism, I think they remain commendable being that it helped him win the debate. He was firm in his stances and arguments, and addressed the issues (semi) directly – no candidate really answers the questions directly, that’s just how it is. And by winning this debate, Romney has shown that he is still giving Obama run for his money. Both candidates are on the treadmill of elections, Romney is just on a higher speed determined to get ahead; Obama hasn’t been active since the pictures he took playing basketball. Better get back in shape, Obama, if you want to remain in this race.

But as I think about it: is this Obama’s plan? Does he plan to look weak in the first debate, so Biden doesn’t look so bad – because, let’s face it, he is not as eloquent in public speaking – and, consequently, he blows everyone out of the water in the last debate?

I guess we’ll have to see.

Big Bird 2012!!!

While the debate is always interesting to watch, this time around I had a much different experience because I chose to simultaneously look at my Twitter feed while watching the debate. Because I use my twitter account to follow mostly political news organizations and journalists, the feed blew up during the debate—everyone had a comment to share and Twitter is the perfect outlet on which to do so. In 140 characters or less people shared opinions, reactions, corrections to the many facts spewed off by candidates, and cracked humorous jokes. Using Twitter transformed my experience of watching the debate. While I still had my own personal reactions to what the candidates were saying, I was also reacting to the things other people were constantly posting on Twitter, and it became a little bit of a political overload.

I was most surprised at the speed in which people’s reactions were posted. Live tweeting was taken to a whole new level—quotes by Obama seemed to be shared before he even finished talking! Forget minute-by-minute journalism, this was news second by second. The benefit was that no part of the debate went uncovered. The downside: the information was hard to keep up with and quickly became overwhelming. Because there were such a multitude of organizations and individuals throwing in their two cents the commentary piled up and quickly became out of control.

However, following organizations such as politifact allowed me to look at the debate in a different light. Instead of taking the candidates words and facts at face value, I really learned how they were framing the issues and at times giving impressions of their positions on issues that didn’t necessarily reflect the truth.

Overall, making use of Twitter during the debate enhanced my understanding of what the politicians were talking about and inspired me to come up with my own opinions about the things they were saying.

My take? Romney clearly dominated, coming in from the beginning with strong answers and relentless support for his position. He did not back down but rather overwhelmed the incumbent president with his background knowledge, statistics, and zingers. Obama’s performance was disappointing; he failed to present his point of view with the confidence that Americans want to see in their leader.  However, the one area where he dominated was that he talked straight to the American people while Romney sometimes lost the audience with strings of facts and history that confused more than they helped. Obama was able to give clear answers and plans that outline success for the future. I would have liked to see him bring up more of the positive progress he has made in the last four years and touch on the issues that could have challenged Romney a little bit more. Unfortunately, he stumbled over his words and seemed to lack a clear train of thought. Romney’s performance showed America that he is still a viable candidate for the 2012 race.

One thing is for sure: the debate shook things up and made for a much more interesting race in the months ahead. Watching it with the iPad in front of me made for a much clearer understanding of the issues and positions of the candidates. I look forward to watching the next debates and seeing how they factor into the results of November’s presidential election.