Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The Daily Show: Important Primaries

The week of March 10th, 2008 wasn't a huge week for coverage of the 2008 presidential election, although there was coverage of the Wyoming primary and the Mississippi primary briefly.



The Daily Show took a humorous approach to the Wyoming primary by having Sam Bee analyze the 'race' break down of the voters. Instead of using the typical breakdown (Black, White, Latino, etc) they used titles such as 'Rugged Outdoorsmen', 'Grizzled Old Coots', and 'Ornery Drifters' among others. Esentially The Daily Show was satirizing the media's frame that sometimes implies that certain candidates win using certain demographics only. More specifically I think they were using the fact that Wyoming is a mainly white, blue collar area, which is supposed to be Hillary's stronger demographic.

This episode was one of the first that I've seen with a woman being a integral part of the show, although Sam Bee was the only woman on the show.




On March 12th, 2008 Jon Stewart looked at the media's framing of the Mississippi primary. He showed clips from at least 5 different mainstream news shows that all had the anchor saying that the results of the Mississippi primary (Obama won by a lot) was no surprise. Stewart asks the question, "So that means it doesn't count?" Stewart then shows the delegate count:
Obama: 1598
Clinton: 1487
Differece: 111
and questions the media's frame that the election seems to be out of reach for Hillary. Again there on no women in this show. It is interesting to note that although March 13th, 2008 doesn't directly talk about the 2008 presidential election, there is a woman intereviewed and a special segement by a woman.

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