Daniel J. Mininni's Journal

The On the Media "Handle with Care" assignment was interesting. It had very little dialogue from the hosts Brooke Gladstone or Bob Garfield; instead it played snippets of election night news coverage from all the different media stations. In effect, the point of the OTM segment was to see if the major media really was going to stay true to its word and wait to project states toward one candidate or another.
I found this funny, especially when it comes down to something as important as the presidential election that the media would choose to be so conservative. We live in such a “need to know now” society, with the internet and cell phones, access to all different kinds of information are at our finger tips. This makes a news story for the simple fact that it was not being reported on as fast as it could have been. However, I for one would not be against giving pollsters the full night of the Tuesday to find out who won. I know that this will never happen, but I feel that it would take much of the confusion out of the way, say media outlets had to wait until 7am eastern time on Wednesday to report who won, the ratings would be out of this world and the counting would be done in an efficient manner.
Election coverage is very important to the people and the networks, for one it dominates about a 9 hour television slot on all the major stations. The coverage is also important because when it comes to getting its news, the American people are lazy, the much rather have Chris Matthews tell them what is going on than have to read it in a newspaper on their own. Lastly, election night is like the Super Bowl, for news networks, they have had correspondents working with each campaign for over a year, all the hard work and reporting comes down to one day.
There have been some lessons learned since the 2000 election fiasco, but I think the networks said there were going to be more changes than there actually were. Each station repeated at nausea how they were going to be more cautious this time, that its no longer a race between the networks, but to make sure its done right. To give an example Wolf Blitzer stated, “This time around, we have made a decision that we’ll wait for every single precinct to shut down in the state before we go ahead and project any winners.” Chris Matthews echoed this statement, “We don’t even have a result in New Hampshire yet, much less do we have results in the Midwest yet. It’s, it’s not incompetence on anybody’s part; its caution. Even though the networks claim to be on the side of caution, that did not stop most of them from projecting the states literally seconds after the polls closed. They did wait until the polls were completely closed, so I guess the networks did do a better job since there were no projections taken back this time. Can’t you just feel the excitement building, only about 1400 more days before we get to do it all over again.

If you are tired of watching your favorite politicians choke, or keep repeating the same stupid lines, or you even feel that you could do a better job, then Clive Thompson has got an answer for you. The gaming company, Sims has come out with a number of video games that let the player run their own presidential campaigns. One game called "Presidents Forever", lets the gamer take charge of 22 nation wide issues, everything from taxes to social security to the war. After you deal with each of these issues the game will show how each state feels about your campaign.
In this piece with Brooke Gladstone, Thompson states how hard it would really be to have to manange these many issues to 50 different states, all having some different idea of how things should be handled. In "Prsidents Forever" you can do almost anything that you want to. For instance: you could create your own candidate, make Schwartznegger and Hillary Clinton run together or even play with elections from the past, i.e: Kennedy vs. Nixon or Bush vs. Clinton. You can also get into mock debates with T.V. personalities like Bill O'Reilly. There is also oppurtunity for candidates smear one another or put their own spin on issues.
However, with all of this "real-life" mudslinging going on in todays politics, Thompson does not feel that this game has any sort of political agenda. It is just another video game made to entertain the public.
This is important to the public because there is so much talk about how people do not want to get involved with politics, considering that half of the people elligable to vote actually do it. The have no interest or just feel betrayed by the system. These new games could be a way to let people appreciate how hard it is to run for a position like the President of the United States. Also, todays youth are often criticized for not being envolved, video games would be a new way of trying to tap into this resource, so by the time they turn eighteen and are ready to vote, they would have a better understanding of how the system works and the policy envolved.

Around a year ago, Joe Wilson an ambassador for the United States, had some tough words for the presidents policy in Iraq. Now under normal circumstances this would be no big deal, after all many people in our government have had some tough words to say to the president about Iraq, However not many people who spoke out against the president had a spouse who was an undercover operative for the CIA. The “Judging Judy” article I read was based on a story from last year when, CIA operative Valerie Plame, had her name leaked through the press by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. This was a major story for the simple fact that CIA operatives are suppose to be undercover. The article went onto talk about how federal investigators are trying to find out who leaked this important information to a number of journalists and to see if the person who did in-fact leak it should be charged with a crime. A grand jury has subpoenaed a number of journalist and many have testified. However one journalist who has refused to testify under any sort of circumstances is Judith Miller of the New York Times. Judge Thomas Hogan cited that the legal guideline that shield laws do not protect news organizations from such subpoenas when all other investigative avenues have been exhausted. Hogan said that Judith Miller could face up to 18 months if she fails to testify.
The reason why this is important is because Valerie Plame was an important operative in the CIA, who no longer can do her job, and is likely not able to travel outside of the country anymore for fear that there could be a bounty on her head. It is vitally important that the government finds out who leaked the information; especially in this day of increased national security our operatives must know and have every bit of confidence in their government, so that they can do the best job possible. There is also another problem that the grand jury has to get to the bottom of, why is Judith Miller so unwilling to testify, what does she know, and who is she protecting. Many people feel that this might be some sort of punishment given to Joe Wilson by the Bush administration because he had been so critical of their policy in Iraq. If this were the case it would be a travesty, under no circumstance does anyone in the government have the right to endanger the lives of the people trying to protect us just because of some views that person may hold. The American people have to believe what they see and read about is accurate, when an issue like this comes up and the journalist is so unwilling to share her information, as a public we have to start wondering what is going on, besides it isn’t like the New York Times has not had its fair share of problems in the past.

I am sure that many of you are familiar with the movie "American Presidnt", staring Michael Douglas who plays a single parent,as well as the commander and chief of the United States. In the film, Douglas' character is up for re-election while at the same time trying to maintain a girlfriend (Annett Benning).
Douglas has to put up with relentless character attacks in the movie by his Republican enemy (Richard Dreyfus). The character attacks go after much of his personal life, and what struck me as interesting was the fact that Dreyfus, who is a very outspoken democrat in real-life, was a very dislikeable figure in this film playing a republican. Page 144 in "The Information Society Reade" states, "The most effective political weapons are negative messages. The most effective negative message is character assassination of opponents'personalities". This is exactly what Dreyfus did to Douglas in the film, and it almost paralells what the real Repulicans where doing to President Bill Clinton, bombarding him with character attacks around the time that this film was released. One could say that this was a coinsidence, however I am not one of them.