Media Disgrace essays

Media Disgrace essays More coverage than O.J. More coverage than Diana. More than Oklahoma City, and more coverage than even Monica Lewinsky. You guessed it, Election 2000, and the media loved every minute of it. Savoring the proverbial field-day, U.S. journalists greatly assisted in dividing the country, destroying the peoples respect for the American legal system, embarrassing the worlds superpower, and simply annoying the crap out of everyone. To put it simply, the media didnt do its job, especially when it came to the really focal points of the recent election: pre-election coverage, election-night coverage, and post-election coverage including the Florida recount. In order to obtain more ground to cover, the media started off by telling the people just how different the two major candidates were (always relishing partisanship), when in truth, they arent that polarized. Of course, they have vaguely different views on how to accomplish certain goals, but for the most part, those goals are the same. Its the usual, strengthen our economy, preserve social security, improve education, yada yada yada; the candidates just occasionally differ on how to do so leading to an enduring joke about the American people not really wanting either candidate. The candidates are also similar in that they both exaggerated and skirted around lying in pre-election campaigning. The media compounded these problems by not being able to decide whether to be responsible enough to analyze these campaign claims and when they half-heartedly made any attempts they were often off the mark. Unfortunately, we a tendency to remember the few hits and forget the innumerable misses. For example, the media showed a keen interest in Gore's recounting the story of a Sarasota, Florida student who was forced to stand in her science class due to overcrowding. While many reports chalked it up as another Gore embellishment, few journalists acknowle...