by Madison Marks

Created on: May 01, 2008

What ever happened to a campaign based on integrity? This question reverberated during the election cycles of the nineteenth and twentieth century, and is once again being posed today.

The Presidential Campaign leading up to the primary was nothing short of newsworthy. The feature stories of major news corporations such as CNN, FOX, and MSNBC detailed one attack after another between top Democratic contenders Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Republicans shared the same limelight when Senator John McCain attacked his chief opponent Mitt Romney on the terms that Romney had supported a "timetable" for the Iraq War. Thankfully, the media was quick to identify that McCain's words were inconclusive and misguided.

Unfortunately, when it comes to American politics, it seems as if integrity has been shoved aside and instead, candidates adopt a "do or die" policy. In other words, they will do anything, even provoke controversies, to insure that they lead the polls. The media seems to have followed in this mindset, which has ultimately affected the tone of the media's election coverage.

For those registered voters who find it hard to make time for researching the candidates to make a justifiable decision on who to support for the next President of the United States, or even for those who could care less until the day before Election Day, the media is their means of making the decision on which candidate they will support. Instead of the media taking their responsibility as an influence to hundreds of thousands of voters seriously, they have and continue to deliver biased and manipulative coverage of the elections in favor of certain candidates, which in turn sways the election's results in the way of the candidates covered more frequently or given more positive remarks rather than negative.

According to Keith Higginbotham, a 21-year-old Communications major at South Campus, "[the] election seems it's about media coverage. It's not about the best candidate." Instead of providing an objective view on the candidates to help voters in their decision process, the media chooses to use those stories with "shock value one's that will get everyone's attention."

Truly, the Presidential Campaign leading to Super Tuesday was a landmark in American political history. For the first time, Democrats found a woman as well as an African American as the party's major aspirants for the White House. Understandably, the media would want to report such milestones in political history.

At

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>