With just hours left in this crazy campaign, there is more speculation than ever as to who the man will be that runs this country for the next four years.\u00a0 Everyone seems to have his or her own input, and major news sources are not exempt.\u00a0 As to the effectiveness or relevance of newspaper endorsements, I cannot hazard a guess.\u00a0 But what I do know is that the media is expected to remain largely neutral (see \u201cprofessionalism\u201d), and this is one of the few times that newspapers outright declare which candidate it supports.\u00a0 Gone are the fa\u00e7ades of political agendas wrapped in rhetoric \u2013 this is a display of newspapers taking a stance in the final hour.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I compared two very different news sources from geographically diverse locations, and with very different audiences: The Baltimore Sun and The Daily Herald.\u00a0 Each newspaper endorsed one candidate and one candidate only.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Baltimore Sun<\/em>, as many other newspapers seemed to do, endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election with more than just a hint of concern.\u00a0 This concern sprung out of many unfulfilled promises and blunders of the Obama administration over the last four years.\u00a0 One of the biggest issues touched upon was the divide between our two parties in this political system we have adopted as our own.\u00a0 At the beginning of the article, although the Baltimore Sun<\/em> supports the president, Obama\u2019s shortcomings were laid out one by one, ending with the statement saying, \u201c\u2026most disappointingly, the promise of a new politics to move us beyond a long and bitter partisan divide remains painfully unfulfilled,\u201d in regards to the president\u2019s last term.\u00a0 The Baltimore Sun concluded, \u201cWe endorse President Obama for re-election, with this caution: We can’t afford four more years of gridlock. Perhaps Republicans will be more willing to work with a second-term President Obama, perhaps they won’t, but the buck stops with him.\u201d\u00a0 Essentially, the Sun<\/em> states that we must overcome the party divides and collaborate to actually bolster this weak economy that our country is grappling with now.\u00a0 Again, by stressing the importance of bipartisanship or bust, the Baltimore Sun<\/em> warily cast their endorsement vote for Obama.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Daily Herald<\/em>, on the other hand, seemed more sure in their decision to endorse Mitt Romney in this election.\u00a0 It is important to note that this Chicago suburb newspaper backed Senator Obama just four years ago at this time.\u00a0 This article walked through the decision-making process of switching across the aisle in their endorsement.\u00a0 However, rather than point fingers to simply make the opponent look bad, the Herald<\/em> gave a fair account, saying \u201cWhomever is elected will be trusted in large measure with the fate of a stumbling economy, a foreboding debt crisis, a gridlocked government and an unstable world.\u201d\u00a0 And while this article was fair, it clearly outlined the differences between the candidates: \u201c\u2026 it is clear that one trusts government too much; the other appears to trust it too little.\u201d\u00a0 In the end, however, the Daily Herald could not dispute the fact that the economic crisis is at the forefront of American concerns, saying, \u201cUltimately, we endorse Romney because he, unlike Obama, understands that jobs are a creation of business, not of government.\u201d<\/p>\n In this brief pause in American political history \u2013 the calm before the storm, or at least the ceasing of winds for the time being \u2013 gives rise to some interesting commentary from our sources of news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With just hours left in this crazy campaign, there is more speculation than ever as to who the man will be that runs this country for the next four years.\u00a0 Everyone seems to have his or her own input, and major news sources are not exempt.\u00a0 As to the effectiveness or relevance of newspaper endorsements, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44319],"tags":[47295,44271,44236,39639,39640,47297,47298],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-endorsements","tag-amst","tag-lauren-mcgrath","tag-ndjed","tag-obama","tag-romney","tag-the-baltimore-sun","tag-the-daily-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/journalism-and-american-democracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}