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Monday, August 20, 2012

How Obama Got Elected- The Biased Influence Of the Media

Back in 2008, a few days after my fellow citizens foolishly elected Barack Obama to the White House, I wrote about what I felt were the myriad of reasons he won the presidency. And there were plenty, including major media bias.

Filmmaker John Ziegler takes an in-depth look at exactly how the media influenced the vote in favor of Obama in his documentary film Media Malpractice: How Obama got elected and Palin was targeted.  Although Sarah Palin was not the best VP choice for McCain, she did not deserve being railroaded.



The Palin witch hunt by pretty much every major media outlet definitely influenced the outcome of the vote, and yet the average voter had no clue who, why or what he/she was voting for. Do you remember the  Howard Stern Show interview with Obama voters?  Obama supporters in Harlem were interviewed by 'Sal', one of Stern's staff members, and all of them were actually for McCain's policies, although they thought they were Obama's. What Sal did was ask them what they thought of McCain's policies although he attributed them to Obama, including if they were happy with Sarah Palin as Obama's choice of VP. They all said yes.

And to prove just how biased and influential the media was during the 2008 presidential election campaign, John Ziegler commissioned a Zogby poll to determine how the media can impact an election. A mix of twelve white and black Obama supporters were interviewed on November 4th, right after they had cast their vote.

These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not.

Most had no clue who Barney Frank, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi were. However when asked which candidate had a pregnant teenage daughter, and which candidate wore $150,000 worth of clothing their party paid for, they all correctly credited Palin. And although Palin had commented that you can see Russia from land in Alaska, Tina Fey's mockery of that statement "And I can see Russia from my house" was what stuck in the minds of the voters. When asked who said "I can see Russia from my house" using Palins phrase, they all piped in with Palin. When asked who claimed they had campaigned in "57 states"- an Obama gaffe- most said it was probably Sarah Palin or McCain. And this question that I actually had no clue about: Which candidate won their first election by getting all their opponents kicked off the ballot? Either they didn't know, or it was blamed on McCain or Palin. As for Biden's stupid comment that Obama would be tested in his first six months by an international crisis, a few had no clue, and the rest attributed it to McCain. And which candidate had to quit another campaign because he plagiarized a speech- which was Biden- no-one knew. And even though Obama said his own policies would bankrupt the coal industry and make energy prices skyrocket, the majority blamed McCain, one person had no clue, another thought it might be Biden. Only one man knew who Bill Ayers was.

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