For the past three days I have monitored the recent activity in the presidential election, since after all that was my Journalism 201: Mass Media and Society topic of the week. In previous years collecting articles would have been difficult for three consecutive days but thanks to the internet I was able to log on to the internet each day and read endless amounts of articles on the web.
After reading multiple articles I found that CNN represented both the democratic and the republican side relatively equally by having equal amounts of McCain supporting and Obama supporting articles. In the many political articles I read I found they all fit the role of “press as soothsayer”. Soothsayer isn’t exactly a word we hear everyday but in simple terms it is a method of the press attempting to tell the future, a method created by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman. In the eight articles I read, each one chose to mention the current polls and whether or not the final results of the election would reflect the prediction or contradict it. It was obvious to see that the supports of Obama strongly agreed with the projected polls, since after all Obama is currently ahead, whereas supports of McCain contradicted the polls and mentioned ways how people will change their votes.
When it comes time for elections we as the population of the United States it is unfathomable for us to wait and see what the results are. Instead we do as much research as we can to predict what the outcome will be. Due to this our media sees this as an opportunity to play the role of soothsayer. By being able to predict the future we can properly prepare for our new elected president. During these times journalists see it fit to predict the outcome with each and every article they write. One says that since Obama is currently leading the polls that he will obviously win, whereas others say McCain will present the country with an upset. In all actuality we have no idea how each and every person is going to vote. Even though endless amounts of people have been surveyed to create the statistics each and every person is capable of changing their vote at a moments notice.
Even though these statistics are not set in concrete people still rely on them to make their voting decisions, and since they provide so much support for the voting Americans it is truly a media role that we can not live without, therefore making it the most important of the roles created by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman in their book “The Press Effect”.
