Before there was television, radio, or the internet; politicians had to rely on the votes of persons they meet and didn't really have to worry about the way they spoke or even looked, except in public appearances. Today many of campaigns have been unsuccessful because of the appearance of the candidate or how the media portrays them.
Take for example the 1960 presidential election. John F. Kennedy was victorious over Richard Nixon and many annalist credit Kennedy's victory in part to the Media. Now I know that every candidate who fails to win blames the media for their loss, but in some cases this is true.
If you have ever watched
CNN,
msnbc, or
Fox News you will instantly notice a difference in how "
news" is presented. Most of the major news networks around today do not present the news in a fair and balanced manner. Instead, most of their reporters present a commentary on the news when this should only been done in the commentary section of the networks programming.
If you do not believe me; go check out the 2008 presidential election broadcasts from
Fox,
CNN and the Internet. The Fox Network was clearly supporting Republicans and CNN's news bulletins were mostly in favor of the Democrats. Also Obama's victory was credited in-part to the amount of young people he was able to rally together using tools such as the internet.
It is very sad that in order to get the real story, you have to listen to reports from all the networks before making a decision. Gone are the days when they report and we decided, now they make the decision and try to tell us which laws are good, which candidates we should vote for, and what bills should and shouldn't be passed.
