Presidential Election 2008 - Who's Responsible?

It should not come as a surprise for anyone to see bias at work in the media throughout this coming 2008 presidential election between Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama. Since I am not a United State citizen, I am not eligible to vote and therefore less incline to pay any attention to the coming presidential election (even though I realized that I will definitely be affected by whoever becomes president, either directly or indirectly). However, even though I did not follow the election as well as I could, I was still able to detect many forms of media biased that fits flawlessly well with many of Pierre Bourdieu’s arguments presented in “On Television.”

One of Bourdieu’s strongest arguments concerning today’s media is that, one principle that determines the selection “is the search for the sensational and the spectacular.” This search Bourdiue talks about can be clearly seen in the election as media try to focus more on the politicians’ characteristic and personalities rather than the very policies that put them in the place that they are. One of the stories that receive a lot of the attention is about Obama’s pastor; Jeremiah Wright. Although it is inarguable that Jeremiah Wright have said some controversial things using inflammatory rhetoric such as “God dammed America” or by claiming that America has brought 9/11 attack with its own terrorism; this does not at all mean that Obama agrees with all his ideologies and principles. The visiting author Pollitts, even raised the question “what happen to religion being a personal issue?” and mention that if one was to really investigate into another person’s religion, one can usually find something to criticize.

While Obama received a lot of attention on this pastor, McCain, regardless of how his pastor is, received a rather little to no attention. But if one was to dig into his pastor, one will find out that his pastor; John Hagee is rather controversial as well is not more. Some of many controversial views John Hagee has includes how “Hurrican Katrina is God punishment against New Orleans for hosting a homosexual parade” or that “Jew brought the Holocausts upon themselves for turning away from God.” Why then did one receive so much attention while another received as little if not at all? Is this simply media bias or what Bourdieu was talking about as he claims how “paradoxically television can hide by showing?” Furthermore, given all this, does it make sense to even consider comparing Jeremiah Wright with John Hagee, to uses something else other than the candidates themselves and their policies in improving this country to be the basis of one’s decision? I personally do not think so.

Another one of Bourdiue’s argument that clearly links to and supports the previous argument is that media tend to prefer to confront “individual instead of confronting their arguments.” Many who follow Howard Stern may have come across a video clip (at the bottom of the text) where he went around asking people why they support Barack Obama; responding to the view that people vote Obama simply because he is African American. So what he did was asking why these people support Obama while giving them a choice between two of McCain policies. Surprisingly, many did not even notice that the choices given were McCain policies and just plainly picked one or the other. He even asks whether they agree with Obama in selecting Sarah Palin as his Vice President. Again, everyone just simply say they agree with Obama and support Palin as Vice President. This raises many questions. First is whether this is a scripted questionnaire and that Howard Stern makes all this up. But if all of this is legitimate, this situation can be very concerning. One of the many things I wondered is whether this problem is caused by the media or simply just humans’ ignorance and foolishness.

Whatever it is, this incident further proves that people seem to care much more about the candidates’ personalities and the way they hold themselves rather than their policies and the strategies for improving the country. Did this happen because of how the media is trying to be sensational and dramatic and therefore totally skipped out on the politic it should originally be focused on? Though I would say I believe this is partly the individual’s foolishness, I have to agree that media did an excellent job of swaying individual to one way or another by just simply shinning a positive light or negative light on a candidate. I say this because, though I do not follow this election that closely, I am sway to support Obama, clearly not because I agree with anyone of his policies (I don’t even know them) but simply because he is a good talker. I fully realize that this is very superficial but I know there are more people like me out there and I guess this is something we as a society need to improve.