The New Yorker Cover Controversy: How Will the Media Impact Obama's Presidential Campaign?

The current cover of the New Yorker, with its satirical caricatures of presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife as gun-toting, flag-burning Muslims seems to appeal to the lower, less informed segment of our society. Although supposedly meant to be high-brow, it seems as if the New Yorker cover may have failed its mission (except that it is generating sells, which, when all is said and done, is it's primary function). But can it ultimately influence the way a potential voter might cast their ballot in November? Perhaps...

Coverage of the presidential candidates is 24/7. There is nothing that Senators Barack Obama and John McCain can do or say that is not scrutinized and analyzed to the most infinitesimal degree. There is nothing that anyone close to the candidates, present or past, that is not subject to microscopic evaluation and dissection. Everything they've ever done, wanted to do, regretted not doing, and dreamed about has become media fodder.

Because media is a 24/7 enterprise. It never sleeps.

Then there is the spin. Just when something is brought into focus, members of opposing factions place their interpretation on it. They say they do it to clarify, but it tends to distort and distract instead.

And all of the media coverage, no matter what form it takes, influences the voting public. Sometimes minutely. Sometimes in a major way.

For Senator Barack Obama, since he is younger and has less of a political history, the media becomes increasingly important as a public relations tool to promote name recognition and issue awareness -- and how they connect. It also becomes critical to the Obama campaign to control or at least deflect spurious and detrimental ads and reports that could cause party defections or no-shows on election day. The Obama campaign has been and will continue to be both a public relations propaganda machine and a damage control specialization apparatus, even past election day. Because the election really is not over until January 20, 2009.

A Zogby Poll in 2007 reported that the internet is where most people get their news (39.9%). Although becoming quite ubiquitous, the household computer is still relatively a young person's machine, a demographic that has been overwhelmingly voting for Senator Obama. However, the internet is also where Obama has received his worst, most derogatory attacks: spammed e-mail of him being Muslim, that he was sworn into Congress on a Koran, that he was schooled in a madrasah in Indonesia. It is also where anyone can watch the Rev. Jeremiah Wright videos and interviews that Senator Obama spent some time defending before repudiating Wright and resigning as a member of Trinity United Church of Christ, where he and his family had worshipped for 20 years. CNN's Anderson Cooper reported that a little over ten percent of Americans actually believe the things they read and saw about Obama on the internet and that those people are evenly split along party lines. Yet it is older people that traditionally vote. So could there be an offset? Perhaps, but consider that that same Zogby poll also stated that people trusted the internet the most as well (33.2%).

One of Barack Obama's best assets is his public face, that calm persona he presents to the public. He is very charismatic and presents well on television. Since television is where people tend to get quite a lot of their news (31.5%), television will be where a considerable amount of information about Obama will reach the potential voter. Campaign ads are already running continually in Georgia and other states that look is if they may swing in Obama's direction in November. And if one looks back to that older demographic that Senator Obama has had a little trouble with, television might just be the way to gain supporters. But with people like Sean Hannity on Fox News generating controversy by association over speeches given years ago and insinuating that Senator Obama was one of the Congressman that have been reported as having gotten "VIP treatment" by mortgage companies (debunked by MediaMatters.org), television has its pitfalls as well. In fact, MediaMatters.org has posted nearly a dozen articles since July 10 on stories that have aired on television that are misleading about Senator Obama alone (and several on John McCain as well). With 24-hour cable news networks and regular news shows (and updates) on local channels, gaffes and misquotes and embarrassing moments are headline news until something more important takes their place.

And although print media only garnered a lowly 13% in the Zogby poll (12.2% newspapers, .8% magazines), newspapers still have some pull. This is not even considering the fact that invariably some of the news people gather from the internet comes from newspaper sources like Associated Press, Reuters, and United Press International, so the print media probably still has more sway than the poll actually gives them credit for. That notwithstanding, most of the scandalous or hard-hitting investigative news stories are usually broken by the print media, then carried by the inernet, television, radio, etc. And then there are the controversies over things like the current cover of the New Yorker, which shows a caricatured Michelle and Barack Obama in Muslim garb, fist-bumping before a fireplace where the American flag is burning, while Osama bin Laden hangs on a picture on the wall behind them. Supposedly satire, the New Yorker cover has caused an uproar on the internet. Sadly, even though the New Yorker may actually have attempted satire (poorly), they have fed into the vapid attacks on Senator Obama's personal life that have been proven fictitious.

But can any of this really affect the final vote? Of course it can. Does anyone remember Senator John Kerry? After the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran their derogatory and misleading ads throughout the country, Kerry's poll numbers, which had previously been higher than the incumbent president Bush's, plummeted to never recover. How about Howard Dean? Considered a frontrunner for the 2004 Democratic Party nomination, a sound bite of him giving a strange-sounding yell was played over and over and his poll numbers collapsed. What the media presented to the public cost these men considerably, and it did not matter how true or misleading the presentation was.

What the media presents is affective.

What the media presents matters.

Sources:

Jack D. Lail, "Quick, where do most people get their news?" JackLail.com

"Anderson Cooper 360," CNN News

CNN News

MediaMatters.org