Both Sides of the Story

Politics are messy.What's even messier? The media attempting to portray politics. The extremes of both conservatives and liberals are constantly glorified in the news to rile up both sides, create controversy, and ultimately gain a wider audience for just such cases. Both conservative and liberal publications are to blame for these discrepancies, but how exactly are these views demonstrated? To answer this question and further investigate the idea of prostituting politics I plan on researching articles on polarizing political issues within our country from news sites on both sides of the spectrum to better understand the phenomenon.

The first issue I look into is that of election night, and Obama's victory. The headline from liberal CNN, "Obama takes key battlegrounds to win re-election."And from their conservative competitor Fox News, "Obama defeats Romney to win second term, vows he has 'more work to do.'" Now as I interpret it, CNN takes the position of a modest supporter following victory, and Fox News takes the position that Obama has won the battle, but he has not won the war (for lack of a better phrase). As I read through the articles I find that CNN spends most of their words talking about Obama's sweeping victory and the fact that he was able to take swing states and demographics that Romney was unable to. The brief portion of the article pertaining to Romney briefly touches on his conciliation speech and then proceeds to harshly critique the shortcomings of the republican party. It then predicts that the democrats will hold they house. They did not. 

As for the article from Fox News, after a brief introduction paragraph the first quote from Obama saying, "We've got more work to do." Not allowing the democrats any time to revel in their victory the article labels the campaign "one of the nastiest political battles and gridlocked terms in modern American history." The article then goes on to speak of just how close the race was and despite Obama's large margin of victory in electoral votes how tight the popular vote was. The article also takes a jab at Obama asserting that extra time and money spent in swing states had won him the vote and that "Obama sought to cast Romney -- even before he was nominated -- as an elite, tax-dodging, corporate champion."

Ultimately what I gained from these two opposing articles was that both will act maliciously in times of strong debate, the victor often more subtle, and the loser often more bitter. But both sides still buy into the same age-old belief that right and wrong is black and white, especially in politics, and at the end of the day there never really is a winner. The goal of any political agent in the media is to represent its audience as well as it can, but the eventual result is audiences made by the media, rather than the other way around.