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A coalition lead by McCain will once and for all break down the walls of partisanship. "Tear down that wall!" the bipartisan council will yell and a solution to the economic crisis will be made. Or so CNN would describe.McCain announced Wednesday he is halting his campaign and marching down to Washington to solve the lending crisis. His campaign however, is no doubt on full alert. Obama joined his ranks without hesitation but McCain stated that unless a decision is made by Friday, the debate in Mississippi will be postponed. It is quite clear that the cancelation of the debate is not in CNN’s interests, especially when considering the amount of viewers that would be lost. CNN made sure to point out reasons for why the debate must continue.
"It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to
hear from the person will be the next president," the Democrat said in
Clearwater, Florida. "It is going to be part of the president's job to deal with
more than one thing at once. It's more important than ever to present ourselves
to the American people."
The University of Mississippi, the host of
Friday's presidential debate, said it is going ahead with preparations for the
event.
CNN even included a video link, “Watch Obama say debate shouldn’t be postponed”. By building up an artificial argument, CNN is pigeon holing McCain into accepting the debate. But more importantly I was most concerned about the lack of scrutiny placed on what is a purely political move. The one piece of criticism came not from CNN but rather the Sen. Chuck Schumer.
We haven't heard hide nor hair of Sen. McCain in these negotiations," said
Schumer, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. "He has not been involved
except for an occasional, unhelpful statement, sort of thrown from far away, and
the last thing we need in these delicate negotiations is an injection of
presidential politics."
I find it hard to understand that such an overt political tactic could be reported on with such little scrutiny. Nowhere in the article did it explain why of all people Mccain or Obama would be the person to solve this. Nowhere in the article did it detail the roles the nominees would have in the negotiations. There is a senate and a congress full of elected officials. So why it is that McCain and Obama are somehow elevated to the status of savior and will be the ones to solve this? Oh yeah I forgot, they are the ones running for office.
Ron Smith writes about diversity in Groping for Ethics in Journalism, however he misses how diversity relates not just to race but also diversity of opinion. CNN's article gave Sen. Schumer's opinion merely as an attempt to counterbalanced the excess amount of praise they quoted from other officials.
But Sen. Lindsey Graham, a McCain ally, said that having the candidates join in
negotiations over the bailout would be "enormously helpful."
"We need a
solution on this financial crisis more than we need a foreign policy debate,"
said Graham, R-South Carolina. "The next seven days could determine the
financial well-being of this country. We can postpone the debate for a week."
And Rep. Roy Blunt, the Republicans' House whip, said McCain's decision "is
a testament to the fact that [he] is a guy who would rather be part of the
solution than run away from the fight."
Though Smith's chapter on sources and quoting them correctly was abided by, this article completely drops the ball on diversity of opinion. There are surely more related people with differing opinions, but the readers are left with only a narrow viewpoint. We are lead to assume that either it is a good or bad thing that the two join the talks. No mention of alterior motives on the point on John McCain. No mention of what effect the two will have during the negotiations. No critical thinking on the part of CNN but rather more pandering to the nominees.
Works Cited:
McCain, Obama headed to Washington for Bailout Talks
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/24/campaign.wrap/index.html
Smith, Ron F. “Diversity.”
Groping for Ethics in Journalism.
Ames: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 101
Smith, Ron F. “Faking the News.”
Groping for Ethics in Journalism.
Ames: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 133
I couldn’t help but see a motive here. Could there be any reason for CNN to downplay Apple’s iPod in one story and hype up a Sony device in the other? So I went searching for who owns CNN. It turns out that CNN is owned by the massive media corporation AOL Time Warner. So if anyone wanted to slight Apple and praise Sony, it must be them. I searched again, but now for a relationship between AOL Time Warner and Sony. I figured if they had any corporate alliances, this could explain CNN’s stories. Sure enough, back in 2001 AOL Time Warner and Sony Collaborate to Accelerate Next-Generation Online Entertainment and Other Consumer Broadband Experiences. Right off Sony’s website and this could not fit the “coincidence” I found any more perfectly. Sony, like everyone else, is looking to cut down Apple’s dominance over the MP3/cell phone market following the success of the iPhone. So their partner, AOL Time Warner, carefully place an article that shoots down iPods and iPhones to divert sales. And while the readers still have the iPod obituary in their minds, nail them with a plug for the competitive Sony product.