I chose to write on the topic of ‘who was the victor’ of the first 2008 presidential debate. There are always two sides to a story but this topic is especially interesting in that the story itself is one single documented event viewed by millions. Rarely in the news do we have such lack of ambiguity in a news story but yet the outcome is interpreted as totally different accountants by many different sides. The media coverage of this phenomena was not as varied. I took an Associated Press story “Who won debate? TV pundits don’t agree on a winner” (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080927/ap_en_tv/tv_debate_night) and compared it a story that was posted in The Presidential Debate Blog “Parsing the Instant Polls on the First Presidential Debate: A Guest Post by Professor George Bishop” (http://presidentialdebateblog.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-09-29T10%3A55%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=7).
Interestingly enough the blog provided an outlet for an expert on debates and polling as opposed to the Associated Press Article which was written by one of AP’s journalists (who is not a political correspondent)
Most likely due to this the blog is much more informative and analytical than the news article
The article focuses more on the media and its role of the speculation of “who won the debate” and the blog discusses more the mechanisms and pitfalls of the actual polling process that were behind the polls that were reported on.
Neither superimposed an answer to the question they were analyzing but the blog seemed to supply evidence that suggested that the answer was that Obama won the election and the article although more balanced still supplied 3 quotes in favor of Obama as opposed to the 2 quotes in favor of McCain.
The blog is also the only one that acknowledges that it is hard to tell where the debate’s influence starts and stops especially with all of the other current events that are receiving heavy media attention and their influence on public opinion.
Interestingly enough the blog provided an outlet for an expert on debates and polling as opposed to the Associated Press Article which was written by one of AP’s journalists (who is not a political correspondent)
Most likely due to this the blog is much more informative and analytical than the news article
The article focuses more on the media and its role of the speculation of “who won the debate” and the blog discusses more the mechanisms and pitfalls of the actual polling process that were behind the polls that were reported on.
Neither superimposed an answer to the question they were analyzing but the blog seemed to supply evidence that suggested that the answer was that Obama won the election and the article although more balanced still supplied 3 quotes in favor of Obama as opposed to the 2 quotes in favor of McCain.
The blog is also the only one that acknowledges that it is hard to tell where the debate’s influence starts and stops especially with all of the other current events that are receiving heavy media attention and their influence on public opinion.
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