This morning the Today Show ran a story about a new documentary that will most likely be coming to theaters soon. The main premise of the documentary is that the media helped Barack Obama get elected by either not reporting certain stories or by reporting stories in a false manner. I would like to point out that from what I have seen of the documentary, entitled " Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected", is completely bogus.
Let me go back and give you a little history on this documentary. A few day after the election I learned that there was a documentary or a clip from a documentary that showed people at a polling station being interview and these people knew very little about the current state of American politics. I decided to look up the clip just to see what it was about. I thought it would most likely be foolish, but I did not think the clip would be as bogus as it was. I think at about the first minute of the clip, if not faster than that I began to say the clip was completely stupid and the person doing the documentary had gone about it the wrong way.
The person doing the documentary first begin by asking supposedly random people (as one of the people who brought up the clip stated, there was no way to determine how many people he had to ask before he came across a few people who could not answer his questions) whether they know who is in charge of Congress, if they like the direction in which the country in going, who is the Speaker of the House, and possibly a few other questions about the Democrats in Congress. To those questions my response , at the time, was he could have asked random Republicans question about their own party and they might not have been able to answer those questions. Anyone who has studied politics knows that many Americans, whether Democrat, Independent, or Republican are not aware of the make-up of Congress.
The person doing the documentary then moves on to ask those supposedly random people questions about things the candidates had reportedly said or done. One of the questions was something like "What did Sarah Palin say in regards to her Foreign Policy experience?" As expected many people said Palin claimed she could see Russia from her house. The person doing the documentary pointed out that in the Katie Couric interview Palin had said something more along the line of Russia is close to the border of Alaska or you can see parts of Russia from places in Alaska. The line "I can see Russia from my house" was actually spoken by Tina Fey while acting as Sarah Palin. However, how is it the fault of the media if a group of people decide to hold what a known comedy show says as true. In addition, from the clip on the internet there is no proof that any real news show or news correspondent or reporter ever claimed Sarah Palin claimed she could see Russia from her house. The person doing the documentary failed to provide any clips from the Saturday Night Live episode in which there was a skit in which the Democratic Party was portrayed as being completely owned by George Soros (who it could be argued was made out to be an elitist who hated America), that Democrats had only supported the bailout so they could give billions more to their owner, yes, George Soros, and that Nancy Pelosi was a racist. So which would you prefer, being portrayed as a bit of a fool or as a group of racist people owned by an America hater, who just screwed over their own country to make their owner richer. Seriously, Saturday Night Live on that occasion was much harsher to the Democrats than they were to the Republicans.
The reporter goes on to asked which Vice Presidential candidate plagiarized a speech? Most of those asked could not name the candidate or thought it was Palin. This is one part where I began to really say the film was bogus. Anyone who watched even a small amount of news would have easily been able to say that Joe Biden was the candidate in that, in my opinion, anytime Joe Biden was mentioned before he was picked to be the VP it was always brought that he had plagiarized a speech. Anyone who did not know Joe Biden had plagiarized a speech was just not paying attention to the news. The person doing the documentary then went on to ask more questions about the candidates with his main point being that the media reported all the bad things about John McCain and Sarah Palin, but did not report any bad news about Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Near the end of the clip the people are asked what news shows they watch. After watching a few minutes of the clip it is obvious what these people will answer, the liberal new shows. However, here is where I have another problem with the clip. Maybe it is just me, but it seems that a few people had to stop and think about where they got their news. I know that if anyone had asked me where I received my news information I would have been able to rapidly respond with a list of the shows I watched. According to my memory there was a least one person who stopped for a few second to think before listing a few names. In addition, it seemed that some of the others may have been slow to answer the question.
In conclusion, I was a little surprised that the Today Show would even discuss this documentary on their show. I am very much for freedom of speech. However, when something is completely bogus maybe the media should not promote the work. Looking at the first clip from the documentary it seemed easy for me to see the film was bogus. I thought it would have been much better for the person doing the film to have asked people who volunteered at both the Obama and McCain campaigns to answer those questions. Another option would have been to ask people why they were voting for whichever candidate for which they were voting. From the clip I saw, no one is ever asked if they know the policies of either candidate. It is very possible that even if the people could not answer questions about Congress they knew enough about the candidates to make a decision about for whom they wanted to vote.
I have provided a link to the clip at the election polling place and the clip with Sarah Palin. At least the part about Caroline Kennedy has been disproven before it had a chance to get started. Kennedy did not get that much soft treatment from the media.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z21eaWcAQ3I
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