Sunday, November 6, 2011

Herman Cain’s Presidential Campaign According to News Media



Fox News
In following Herman Cain’s presidential campaign via Fox News issues of representation, what is and is not covered based on the ideologies of this news source become very apparent. As a major news organization, Fox News attempts to position itself as a consensus press, suggesting that what is presented on Fox News is the actual truth, rather then a partial truth based on the organization subject position and economic interests. In the three stories used as examples, Fox News uses the same ascetics as other news organizations to help establish and simultaneously create a hegemonic view of the subject matter and the process of new coverage, thus making the subject position less obvious.
Fox News has the reputation of being a conservative based news organization, however never during reports is this fact acknowledged. Despite this lack of acknowledgment, in the coverage of Herman Cain Fox News’s political ideologies become very clear. By not directly addressing what the organization’s views are, Fox News is able to embed them into coverage and present them as truth, rather than opinion. An example of this is how Herman Cain, a Republican, is presented as postmodern lone hero in the grand narrative of his campaign, thus attempting to create some form of audience identification with the candidate. An example of this is the print story discussing the criticism of Cain and his campaign. The way the article is structured places Cain in a grand narrative of running for president where he is constantly facing obstacles. The article goes on to praise Cain for his resilience. It grants no validity to the claims against Cain.
Issues of representation and what is and is not covered in these stories also express Fox News’s subject position. When viewing these stories though the sourcing aspect of the Five Filters of news one can see how Fox News is able to represent the views they desire. In the video clip Fox News uses a common news trope of having an expert explain a given situation. This is something commonly seen in news stories as a means to grant credibility. However in this clip the “outside” source is a republican political writer that works frequently with Fox News. A neutral or democratic position is not presented. These same issues of scouring are present in the story about the Cain’s surge in polls and the growth of his campaign. In this story the only source of data regarding Cain’s growing popularity is from other Fox News sources. By having a source that shares the same ideologies as Fox News, they are further able to present their subject position as truth.
In these three news examples Fox News is able to not only de-legitimize differing views, but it is able to not even acknowledge them. By using tactics such as Grand Narratives, and Sourcing Fox News is able to only represent the views that are congruent with their ideology. Rather than present other views and explaining how they are incorrect Fox News is simply able to not represent them at all, thus making it appear that their political ideology is not a subject position but a truth because based on their coverage there simply is no other position to take.

The Daily Show

The first thing that needs to be noted about analyzing the Daily Show as a media outlet is, it is a COMEDY show. Many people get most of their news from the daily show, and this is fine, but it must be kept in mind that everything Jon Stewart says is for comedy purposes. The daily show is however, a good source for current events because all the events that are talked about are true. Most of the comedy comes from the analysis part of the show. As opposed to the Onion News Network, which is completely made up events and analysis, The Daily Show is actual current events. It is known that Jon Stewart leans to the left on the political spectrum. To compare to the coverage given by fox news, The Daily Show is very far left in their coverage of the entire political campaign of Herman Cain. However, compared to CNN or the New York Times, The Daily Show is more to the center on the political spectrum. This goes to show that the entire political spectrum is completely relative. On the issue of the Herman Cain campaign there is no surprise that the daily show makes the campaign look ridiculous.

In both links, Jon Stewart takes a quote of Herman Cain and uses it for comedy. The comedy is derived by making Cain look like an idiot. The quotes were probably taken out of context. However, this is not a good excuse because it doesn’t negate the fact that in the middle of running for president, Herman Cain says things that are almost begging to be made fun of. To add to the dumb quotes, The Daily Show picks apart Cain on his sexual harassment charges that have come to light. The Daily Show turns a serious story that will affect the entire republican primary, into a comical situation. That is exactly what The Daily Show does, turn everything into comedy. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum the viewer is on, Jon Stewart’s Show can be viewed as humorous if not taken too seriously. The overall point of The Daily Show is meant to be a light-hearted news outlet. The Daily Show is meant to make fun on how the news is represented, instead of making fun of the news itself. This shapes how the younger demographic views their news because it is all made to be comedy.




Black Snob Blog

Source:http://blacksnob.com/snob_blog/2011/11/3/can-you-count-all-the-herman-cain-crises-the-snobs-got-the-l.html

My news source for Herman Cain's campaign is an independent blog called 'Black Snob'. The author, according to the biography on the site, is a freelance journalist who has appeared on major news networks occasionally. Shes is a black female known for her knowledge of pop culture, politics and her “snarky” commentary. Her blog is recognized by readers of political blogs, and her work has also been included in many magazines and other outlets. The article about Herman Cain that I found on her blog focuses exclusively on the scandals, blunders and generally negative things that have happened so far in Cain's Campaign. Once I started reading the post, it became clear to me that she was twisting some of the stories in a way that would help her case. In this same fashion, she only cited articles from other news sources that supported or reinforced her point of view. Never once does she post an article from a different side of view and attempt to prove it wrong or being propaganda. This is because in a way, the author of this blog is herself aiding in the perpetuation of propaganda, whether she is making a conscious effort to do so or not. One could say that because most major news sources are usually bias to one side or the other (democrat or republican), She has no choice but to obtain her information from the major new source she agrees most with. By using sources with a more liberal agenda, against cain(for being republican—the enemy), her own thought are being formed by the statements the propaganda makes.
The first bullet in her list of the “19 Herman Cain Crises” is a point that tries to say Herman Cain stole his 9-9-9 plan from the video game Sim City 4. When you start a new game in Sim City, the tax rates are all set to 9% across the board. The link to the original article she got this news from seems to not take even itself seriously, only playfully point out the coincidence of the plan. The author then take that information and makes it almost seem like a fact, to discredit Cain. If people think Cain is pulling ideas on our livelihood from a video game, they will disregard what he has to say. The author then goes on to make a joke about how his plan and he himself are crazy, an attempt to even further discredit Cain's ideas. She continues to do this throughout the rest of the article. It is clear the audience for her blog are going to be supporters of the democratic party, so she portrays the opposing side in a bad light to satisfy them. Since she only had bias sources to get her news from, her points of view from the beginning of conception is bound to be bias. Whether or not anything written here is the way it actually happened, we will never know.


The New York Times

The New York Times is a media outlet that provides articles that contain a fairly heavy liberal view. Knowing the fact that the New York Times offers a strong liberal bias, it is no surprise that republicans are picked on and criticized harshly. The New York Times falls victim to what is known in psychology as “conformation bias.” Conformation bias is when people, or in this case a media outlet, look for and use sources that only support their opinions and thoughts. This is exactly what this news paper does, it finds and uses democratic sources that support their liberal view, so republicans don’t really stand much of a chance.

In all of the reports and articles that are about republican presidential candidate Herman Cain that are reported via the New York Times, Cain is criticized and portrayed as an unfit candidate to become the United States’ next president. Many of the articles that I read from the New York Times animadvert on the fact that Cain is extremely unorganized and is leading a quite chaotic campaign so far. In an article written by Susan Saulny, she uses interviews from former aides of Cain and campaign members to support the liberal view of politics. The aides and staff members stated that Cain was more focused on his book tour than on his actual campaign. Aides have also reported that on occasion Cain has mishandled potential donors who could contribute substantially to his campaign and has also ignored real voters. The staff members also claim that they were told not to speak with any reporters. All of these reports are from people who used to work for Cain, again, playing into the bias views from the liberals. There are plenty of other articles that do the exact same thing, portray Cain as a misfit candidate who is unorganized and lacks focus on his chaotic campaign. His campaign is said to rest heavily on his business expertise because he has no legislative or political track record, which to me, and I’m sure to many others, raised a huge white flag as to whether this man is prepared to become the next president of the United States. That thought provoking idea was completely intentional by the writer because they want you to believe that this republican candidate is inadequate.

Other articles written by authors from the New York Times focus on Herman Cain’s accusations against him for sexual assault. Even more so than the fact that he has accusations against him, the authors focus on the fact that Cain contradicts himself a lot with statements he makes in regards to the accusations. He spends most of his time clarifying and defending himself about statements that he has made about the sexual assault and about other major issues such as abortion and foreign policy.

Overall the New York Times takes a very liberal stance in it’s articles, which in presidential candidate Herman Cain’s case, do not work to his advantage. They use conformation bias by reporting stories that make Cain look bad but support the liberal view of politics.


http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/cain-campaign-prepares-for-scrutiny-of-harassment-allegations/?scp=2&sq=herman%20cain&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/us/politics/as-cain-touts-management-skills-ex-aides-tell-of-chaos.html?scp=4&sq=herman%20cain&st=cse


Analysis of Different Media Sources
Each media source that our group covered offered a different viewpoint on what to believe as true when reading about presidential candidate Herman Cain. We discovered that outlets that are believed to always be true, such as Fox news or the New York Times, often can be misleading in their reports of the news. Every media outlet plays up the opinion that they favor the most and we as readers believe to be true what we agree with.
Fox news offers a very conservative view. It uses “reliable sources” from experts that work with Fox regularly, therefore creating their own truth from a biased expert opinion. This contradicts with the New York Times extremely because the New York Times offers a very liberal view. In our research on Herman Cain, Fox news offered a lot of positive reports whereas on the contrary the New York Times portrayed Cain from very negative aspects. The Black Snob Blog also contradicted Fox news and agreed with the New York Times by having a liberal viewpoint. The Daily Show was the most neutral source that we analyzed because it takes neither a liberal nor conservative view on politics. It reports true things that have happened and in turn makes fun of them. The Daily Show is strictly comical, but still reliable which makes it extremely different from the other news outlets that we covered.
The similarities between all of the media outlets is that they all use sources that only confirm and support their particular view, and none of them shed light on the opposing viewpoint. Conformation bias is huge in political arguments because it is known to be so cut throat. The only goal for writers is to get people to agree with their opinions and by doing so they bend the truth or don’t report the entire truth because if they do so, it may cause people’s opinions to change.

2 comments:

  1. I thought this was very interesting to read. Your group found so many sources with very different points of view. It seems like a majority of the media sources have a liberal bias, which likely puts Cain at a disadvantage. It would be interesting to see what would have happened if Cain was a democratic candidate in the same situation of sexual harassment charges. Maybe he would have been portrayed differently? I thought the Black Snob article saying that Cain got his tax ideas from Sims was funny. I had not heard that before. I think your group was right, that even though this is indented to be a funny little coincidence, if it is taken as fact it could really change how a person sees Cain. However, most people would likely assume that it is a coincidence.

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  2. I found it really Interesting how the daily show found its way to being the representation of neutrality. I feel like all news is biased especially when it comes to politics and the feeling is especially reinforced when I watch the daily show because I'm staring at Jon Stewart and seeing him have so much fun with the news constantly reminds me that it is an opinion. Everything just seems so comical now when it comes to Herman Cain because of how he's been represented through the media. I feel bad for having such a biased view of Herman Cain but I can't help it when Stephen Colbert challenges him to a longest smile contest because of his horrible campaign ad. And of course we won't know if he is actually a genuine guy until after all the buzz about his questionable side is out. Ahhh the power of media. This is when we as individuals have the ability to research different views and create an opinion from that.

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