Cassie Gladden's Jane Hall Response

With the exception of Jane Hall’s essay, The Fire Next Time, the articles and TV spots that were examined for Wednesday class focus on the influence journalist have had in the political world.  Specifically, the influence of how a candidate is reported in the media. The three candidates Jane Hall examined in the context of their elections are Al Gore, Barack Obama, and Hilary Clinton.

As a well-known professor of Media and journalist, Hall has authority on the topics of these three articles. In addition to her expertise, Hall is convincing due to her use of a variety of writing tactics to influence her readers. These include her use of examples, research, language and her illustration of both candidates.

Her essay, Gore Media Coverage –Playing Hardball, has a centralized theme that the media treated Al Gore unfairly. However, instead of writing an opinion piece, Hall focuses on facts, offering a few of her own personal ideas.  She starts off the essay citing different incidences of Gore coverage, including quotes by the Washington Post, New York Times and Newsweek—all popular and credible sources in the minds of her audience. Hall supports her claims by examples. Hall claims that the media had misquoted Gore, for example they had reported that Gore has stated that he, “invented” the Internet. What he did say was, “during my service in Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Hall also cites research as support to her argument. Saying that according to the Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence found that 76% of the 2,400 newspaper, TV and Internet stories paint Gore as scandalous and a liar and Bush as a “different kind of Republican.”

Hall’s choice of wording helps shape her argument. Her language can be leading, “you don’t have to be a yellow-dog Democrat to wonder just what’s been going on with the coverage of Al Gore…” (Gore 1) or it can be non-opinionated,

 Several people were interviewed after this announcement [Obama announcing Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff] and said, if this is Obama’s idea of post partisanship, what does this mean? Emanuel is saying, I’m capable of that. He was doing that then, he’s doing this now. I think he has gotten critical initial press from people questioning his choice, but he’s obviously close to Obama. And maybe Obama figures he needs him. (FOXNews.com 3)

 

Her ability to waver between persuasive language and unbiased language creates a more convincing argument than an overly opinionated person such as Roger Stone. Stone cannot be taken seriously because bias is so obvious. In addition to her language, Hall appears less prejudice by presenting both political parties in her essay. In the case of the Obama article, Hall points out how unfairly Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President, was treated. In the Gore article she shares with readers examples of how journalist have presented Bush to the public. For example, The Washington Post Reporter, Howard Kurtz, said, “Bush is consistently portrayed as relaxed and confidant and Gore as someone who often fails to connect with people.”

Where her argument fails is that the three media works do focus on democratic candidates, therefore one may assume that she has the intention of painting the Republican Party as a bully beating up the Democratic Party. This however is refuted in the ‘Fox News Watch,’ November 8, 2008, where Hall agrees with the argument that the media helped Obama, the Democratic nominee, get elected.  It is important to point out that her credibility is even increased by how she handles this topic. While Hall’s colleagues ridicule journalist and Obama, saying things such as “Ok, what I’m saying, if they love you enough, they [journalist] stick with you.” Hall agrees that the media did treat the McCain campaign differently than Obama and she sites two specific incidents in Newsweek as support. The way she agrees, “I think it is really bad, the discrepancy between the coverage of Michelle Obama [and] Cindy McCain or the Newsweek cover of Obama [compared to] the Newsweek cover of Sarah Palin. It was blatant.” Shows her knowledge of the media, pointing out specific incidence (November 3).  In addition, although all three pieces focus on Democratic candidates each media reaction to the candidate is different. The Gore piece shows how the media was unfavorable to the Democratic presidential nominee while the Obama piece shows how the Democratic candidate was presented more favorably than the Republican nominee. Lastly, in the Hilary clip the media treated her unpleasantly, creating sympathy and she gained votes.

 

 Overall, Jane Hall’s discussion on the journalist effect on political election was both interesting and effective.       

Questions.

1. You cite a variety of issues with embedding soldiers in the Iraq war: Lack of scope, the danger involved and the lack of corporation of the military to have these journalists embedded. I was wondering in your mind what would be the ideal or most effective way to report the war in Iraq?
2. You mentioned that it is hard to know how the next war will be reported, especially with the changing technologies and the increasing use of special operation forces, however, do you have any idea on the future of war reporting?
3. As a professor of Journalistic ethics, what concerns do you have with emerging technologies such as blogs and websites such as iReport?