Political News

So this may not be a very comprehensive analysis of journalistic coverage of politics because I essentially always used Yahoo! to jump start my search of articles. however, I do think that there is a lot to say of Yahoo!News and its role in political media. So I began my analysis this year with the discussion of party bias. To me, it seems that after the discussion run here :

http://mb.debates.news.yahoo.com/Democratic_Candidate_Mashup/threadview?m=tm&bn=nws-iraq&tid=5&mid=879&tof=-1&rt=2&frt=2&off=51

Albeit, I saw the debate as trite and immature, it did prove to have a point. In the following weeks, the YAhoo!News - election 08 main page, which had many links to democratic candidates and few links to GOP candidates, has moved towards what I see as a more comprehensively accessible politics page. See here: http://news.yahoo.com/election/2008 The page before had a list of all the Dem candidates on the right of their featured story, but now it has a political "dashboard," that allows you to scroll through candidates by party, mainly GOp and DEM. A step up for sure.

As for Political coverage overall, I feel like the information is out there. For example, it was through the Yahoo! election 08 page that I found the links to ontheissues.com, which I think does a good job of at least giving you access to what candidates are about. I honestly feel a lot of the criticism is unjustified. It seems like dems criticize Reps for manipulating media and the GOP says media has a liberal bias, but to me it just now looks like two opposites complaining about the other sides' existence. That said, I still hate what FOX news did and the article about Obama's pin.

Its just so easy to learn what you want to know. How much candidates are raising, where they are from and whatever else is important to you. By the way, I also think there is a very good reason such things as religion are so important. Politics is so confusing and no one really has any real control of it(meaning that votes for a bill don't explain much about what a politician really wanted) so the only real judgement you can make is where they pray, where they are from etc. Why? because we all know that in our own personal lives, despite being religious or non-religious, we still do our best to do what we feel is right, so if you know that XX politician at least goes to church or comes from your area, you at least know there is a good chance that he is giving his best shot..... AGH I don't know. maybe this is all B.S. and Americans are ignorant and just vote on meaningless issues.

My perception of news media coverage is that it is really trying to cover everything from the spanish democratic debate

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/democrats_spanish_debate;_ylt=AmmPDdb9KcaJOG7CdK0DVszkbeRF and Arab americans in politics http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/richardson;_ylt=AkS8BUOjhmsOYsAULirimPPkbeRF

But maybe I don't feel the bias is that bad because my views are in line with the way politics is being covered. Then again, there is the FOX NEWS thing and the obama pin and the video we watched. So there are definitely flaws. Its so odd though that organizations are so desperate for news, but they won't turn that time they waste by making news of crap like al Qeida burning California and Obama's pin wearing into something deeper and more truthful. They'd rather tell a good lie than find an important, but boring truth. I guess that makes sense. I like the way Yahoo! NEWs does it and I think things are working towards more cumulative and interactive news( I think this is important because it forces you to think about what you are looking for) and I also think that the changing business model is a really really good thing. Why? Because this current business model for news is the reason why they have to make such sensational bullshit. This is an good era of finding a new news business model that will serve people and make a profit. It being more democratized that ever, I think we have a good thing coming. And taking the message boards as an example, what people want, people get.