Assess the importance of TV debates in US presidential elections [15] Many critics of TV debates would argue that they are not greatly important. Contemporary commentators now argue that presidential debates, since their conception have had any serious impact on the outcome of any election. For many of the general population, the debates will have very little effect because they think that hours of dialogue does not make for good TV, a key example of this is John Kerry who was widely regarded as having won all three of his debates in 2004 against George W Bush but did not receive a bump in opinion polls. Another remarkable factor of the presidential TV debates is how news outlets and the media have a tendency to highlight a specific moment, often a gaffe, and make this the top story, such as George HW Bush repeatedly looking at his watch making him appear bored or as if his time was more important elsewhere. All the debates offer is an opportunity to see a President laid bare without the constant media spin and give the American public an opportunity to decide what to focus on.
In Baumgartner and Morris’s research on the attitudinal effects of soft news programs on American public indicates that there is an increase in viewers’ cynical exhibition towards the media and an overall degradation on the evaluation of candidates. Based on the findings of Baumgartner(2002, 2003b), soft news, in comparison to traditional hard news, focuses on entertainment by composing sarcastic and satirical comments about mainstream news and politicians. In addition to his research, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, an increasingly popular soft news program in the eyes of young Americans, centralizes their attention on jokes of candidate’s caricatures and uses pre-existing stereotypes on them, which negatively inflates viewers’ evaluation on candidates on the 2004 presidential campaign (Pew Research Center, 2004a). While The Daily Show may be entertaining at the expense of the flaws in candidate’s attributes, political process, and the media, their research portrays an increase in internal efficacy, a person’s confidence in their ability to understand politics and a decrease in external efficacy, a person’s beliefs about the government’s ability in covering the needs of people Based on experimental results and the statistic information acquired from the surveys, Baumgartner and Morris conclude that soft the decline in external efficacy is associated with the process of ridiculing both the media and the electoral (Jones, 2005) while the increase in internal efficacy is associated with simplification of the political process for passively attentive public – young Americans. Thus, the Baumgartner and Morris’s hypothesis of their research – a overall decrease in evaluation of candidates (especially lesser known candidates like John Kerry in comparison to George Bush) and an increase cynicism towards the news media and the electoral process – proves that exposure
Not only that, but Matthews goes about explaining what one must do in order to become successful if one chooses to enter politics. The books main purpose serves to help newcomers to politics or even veterans to better prepare themselves for all of the dirty, clever, and above all, brilliant tricks that politicians use to gain an upper hand in one of the dirtiest “games” around. What interests a reader about this book is how Matthews is able to make a dull topic such as politics interesting and somewhat captivating. He uses well known figures that have been engraved in the minds of people such as Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, and others to help capture the attention of the
They often neglect key local and state developments to focus on national news that will attract more people (Murray). Some critics argue that they harm the youth because the youth naively relies on them as a substitute for the news (Murray). Yet this argument lacks merit because a recent CNN study has revealed that The Daily Show viewers “were better versed in 2008 election issues than citizens who frequently turned to traditional mediums, such as newspapers and TV news stations, for the latest in current events
Persuasion at Its Best During chaotic times, a man’s words have the ability to strongly inspire those who feel apprehensive about a crisis. After the shocking assassination of the great leader, Julius Caesar, in William Shakepeare’s Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius (Antony) cleverly motivates the plebeians to join his side in order to fight the evil conspirators, Brutus and Cassius. Using persuasion, the use of language to influence people to behave in a certain way, he easily rallies the naïve people. Like any good, influential speaker, Marc Antony uses persuasive devices such as specific evidence, verbal irony, and loaded words to inflame the Roman citizens to mutiny against the cowardly yet savage senators who assassinated Caesar. Speakers today continue to use persuasive devices such as these in order to inspire groups of people to act.
The online transcript of Mitt Romney’s 2012 acceptance speech, with a section open for comments, represents conflicting perspectives through internal contradictions inherent to the political speech form and the medium of production - an internet site with a comments section. The speech also reveals how the manipulation of language can represent a single perspective, countering any conflict. In this case, the singular perspective is that Romney is the candidate. The public and private persona a leader possesses is often in conflict, with the public curious to know both in order to accurately assess the character’s ability to lead. The dramatic form through which Shakespeare represents Caesar allows both the public and private representations of Caesar to be evaluated by the audience.
When the election was going on they talked mainly about the democratic candidate and talk very little about the republican candidate. When they did talk about the republican candidate it was not as nice as the things they were saying about the democratic candidate. Some shows use political satire. Political satire is entertaining people with satires about politics. A show that uses political satire is The Daily Show.
The background of The Daily Show mirrors that of a standard news setting. However, Jon Stewart does his show in front of a live audience, similar to talk shows such as Leno’s Tonight Show. This suggests that while it does cover political issues, it is still entertainment. All of these attributes have given the Daily Show a label of “fake news.” However, it is misleading to label The Daily Show as a “fake news” when the so-called “real news” is not as real as News, like any other show, want to get ratings and the only way to get that is to cater to the audience's views to seem credible, or create a reputable ethos. In order to do this, news stations such as Fox News like to point to a case that seem to confirm the position that they take.
It has one main character, Stephen Colbert, who gives a biased, exaggerated version of the news. This show is a great example of how television imitates life for three reasons. First, in today’s society, most people don’t care about what’s going on in the world around them, and those who do, often times see events that should be considered problems as humorous, unimportant events. Second, the show is very one-sided and shows no understanding of the other side, much the same as most people in our society. Finally, the Colbert Report imitates life in that the “TV audience” cheering on his pointless comments parallels how our society is often times entertained by complete nonsense.
St. Norbert College Weekly Newspaper. <http://home.snc.edu/eliot.elfner/336/agaffir.htm>. “Affirmative Action”. Wikipedia. Jan. 2007.