5. Your final reflections on the course

Personally the most interesting thing I’ve learned in this course is how politicians work in large numbers. It was interesting how deep a campaign is and how they work through each candidate. Although each candidate is intelligence in their own right, it is truely a team effort to make a successful president. Media gets more credit than I expected because they play important roles in politics and keep candidates on a straight line when addressing the people. I respect media and politics more than I did before this course.

4. How will the media play a vital role in the 2012 elections and subsequent elections?

The media is already playing a vital role in the 2012 elections. For example look at Herman Cain; he has chosen to drop out of the elections due to the allegations that have been spread nationwide about his sexual harassment. Media is already attacking candidates and keeping the viewers entertained. Each candidate needs to keep their information straight and stay on their toes. I think next generations may learn how the media works time over time and use this source as a strategy to impact competitors. Media can either make a positive impact or negative impact, and next generations may see a benefit to how the media works with politics.

3. Cable news - please give a final analysis of your thoughts on the influence of cable news - what ever happened to fair and unbiased reporting?

I do not think fair and unbiased reporting ever existed honestly. As long as there is freedom of speech, there will be an opinion shared. I feel that Cable news is another tool used to deliver information to an audience with an agenda. The difference on how we accept information from industries such as cable news is to know that there is always an agenda and that we can look for the current events without allowing the agenda influence our opinion. If people learn how to utilize more than source of media, then will have better quality with the decisions and opinions we develop about every day media. Therefore courses such as PAF 494 does arm up with the necessary knowledge to use media to our advantage.

2. Twitter: Choose 6 relevant "Tweets" you've seen on Twitter related to this class.

1) This twitter is being used as a Social Media tool to support the Obama campaign for 2012 eclections.

BarackObama Barack Obama
Help build #Obama2012 by applying to be a campaign organizing fellow: http://OFA.BO/fj3Qr8 2 hours ago
2) Dan Nowicki is a Arizona national reporter political reporter who is obviously supporting a specific presidential candidate.

dannowicki Dan Nowicki
GOP presidential hopeful @MittRomney in Ariz. Tues. for fundraiser and to pick up endorsement of former VP Dan Quayle: http://bit.ly/tDsqIp
11 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

3) John Stewart was recently called out by Fox News for being as liberal as they were conservative. I believe this twitter supports Fox news views about Stwart.

TPM Talking Points Memo
Jon Stewart bids farewell to Herman Cain tpm.ly/tl5ARB ^@davidtaint
3 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

4) Conan O’Brian shares his views about the Hermain Cain ad as we discussed in our course. http://headblitz.com/funny-conan-obrien-spoofs-hermain-cain-ads/

TheHeadBlitz Blitz Master One
Funny: Conan O’Brien Spoof’s Hermain Cain Ad’s goo.gl/fb/X7g4b
1 Dec Favorite Retweet Reply

5) John Dickerson touches based on the Republican candidate race in terms of comparing both Newt Gingrich and Romney.

johndickerson John Dickerson
Gingrich not sunk by his immigration comments in debate. He beats Romney on issue in Post poll of IA. wapo.st/stP6Vr
3 hours ago

6) Is it me? Or is Newt Gingrich getting a lot of media support.


CNNVideo CNN Video
GOP presidential hopeful @newtgingrich climbs in the polls. Video: http://on.cnn.com/sDLfpJ
7 hours ago

Final: Three political blogs

AZ central Blog

This site is really simple and easy to comprehend. I like how every topic has a picture of the reporter and how each blog is short and to the point. This site provides you with hyper link to leave comments, report violations, and related topics. Overall I like the political blog website because it covers information from both the state and national level. There are topics about medical marijuana, the state’s Medicaid program, and state sales tax. These are types of information that I am interested in. However I notice that most of the topics are covered by republican reporters such as; Mary Jo Pitzl, Mary K. Beinhart, and Ginger Rough, which tells this site is partially bias from a conservative perspective.

Article: I notice these blogs are state base information. However this site does provide details about the recent state elections going on between Kirk Adams, Russell Peirce, Matt Salman, and Jerry Lewis. Supposedly it was a close race in the Arizona State Elections. I am not much on state government but it is good to know that we can get similar statistics from a blog site such as AZ central.

Huffington Post

This website is a very user friendly website. From my observation and research, this website is appealing to many followers who leave reactions and comments in large numbers. The site is easy to navigate with its wide range of hyperlinks to move from topic to topic and ability to communicate to others with the twitter, e-mail and share links. I personally like this site because it gives the followers the visuals, audio and video to report stories. This website can lean slightly to a liberal stand, but it does cover other perspectives and current events. I can’t really say if this is considered a biased website however.

Article: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/05/143154598/history-with-cain-may-pay-off-for-gingrich?wpisrc=nl_fix

After reading “Game Change” base on the 2012 elections; it was interesting to learn how each candidate the media affected. Well the blogs about Herman Cain definitely remind me of the blogs in the Huffington Post. The relationship between Obama and Clinton seem similar to the relationship to Cain and Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich spoke positively about Herman Cain’s departure from the 2012 elections and how his 9-9-9 plan was creditable whether we liked it or not. It sounds like these candidates support each other and that this relationship may suede voters who support Cain to follow Gingrich, such as Clinton voters transitioned to Obama.

RIGHTWING NEWS

This website would be my type of source for information. The website is full of hyperlinks to other blog sites, political adds, and the design is really structure to appeal to viewers who are very busy and like to get the point. The website has a lot of conservative emphasis in its information sharing, so I can quickly determine there is a bias. Not to mention the website is labeled “Rightwing”. Although I am more of a liberal type of person, I like this website.

Article: http://conservativedailynews.com/2011/12/ten-reasons-to-love-rick-perry/

This article reminds me of module eleven “election coverage continued”. This article speaks on ten reason to love Rick Perry. Obviously the media in this blog site support candidate Rick Perry because they are giving the readers reason to support him, along with ads, links, statistics that are all about the positive perspective of the presidential candidate. This site also provides ads and you tube tabs to obtain additional information for the subject matter.