Tuesday, November 4, 2008
As leaders of political organizations at the University, Jesse Vaughn and Andrew Toth have formed concrete opinions about the media’s coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign.
Concerns about media bias have attracted a lot of attention this year.
Vaughn, president of KU College Republicans, said he noticed its bias after the first when MSNBC gave grades for the candidates.
“They gave Obama a ‘B’ for brilliant and McCain a ‘D’ for dunce,” Vaughn said. “That’s ridiculous.”
Vaughn said the media had their own agenda, claiming that virtually every media outlet was liberal.
He said he preferred to listen to talk radio, which he said was more open-minded and provided an escape from liberal media.
Vaughn said he didn’t want the media to cover each candidate equally; he wanted them to cover the news.
“There are so many times when the media ask specific questions to Republican candidates and not the Democrats,” Vaughn said. “I wish the media would be more fair.”
Toth, president of KU Young Democrats, said he thought that the media should seek out middle ground between liberal and conservative extremes.
“The media tend to exacerbate situations that aren’t significant,” Toth said. “That plays a big role in short-term perceptions of the candidates.”
Toth said the media put issues such as Darfur, Pakistan and the war in Iraq on hold to spend more time covering trivial gaffes.
He cited the example of Gov. Sarah Palin’s joke about being able to see Russia from her house.
“No one should be judged by a seven-word sentence,” Toth said.
Another problem that Toth sees in media coverage is that it operates 24/7.
He said it was a distraction for media consumers to have limitless amounts of information thrown at them.
“You have to sift through it,” Toth said. “There’s a lot of junk mixed in with the facts. But it’s also hard to find out the real facts ... you have to look at multiple perspectives to find out what’s really going on.”
David Perlmutter, professor of journalism, said he agreed with Toth’s analysis. The large amount of information available to consumers through Internet sites, such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, he said, has made the concept of media more complicated.
Perlmutter said the responsibility has become greater for us to put some energy and intelligence into sifting through information to find useful material. He said he told his students to examine themselves and realize what their biases were.
“We have a tendency when something confirms our beliefs to be lazier in confirming it,” Perlmutter said. “When you sense bias, you should work harder against it.”
— — Edited by Andy Greenhaw
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