LGBTQ Rights & the Media

Ever since the emmergence of technology, the media has played a major role in how society views certain issues. The media has the power to promote, but they can also condemn. Ever since gay rights was thrown into the media pool of hot topics, many believe that the media has negatively covered this topic.

The Fox News Watch center found 44 percent of stories covering gay rights were "pretty neutral." But in stories that largely reflected one side or the other, statements supportive of gay marriage dominated those opposing it by a 5-to-1 margin. Amy Mitchell, director of th Project for Excellence in Journalism, is hesitant to suggest bias and says,"viewers and listeners and readers will necessarily see bias." After the Supreme Court's ruling to strike down Prop 8, Audie Cornish from the Host says, "Yesterday's decisions by the Supreme Court on gay marriage brought widespread celebration and a lot of coverage of those celebrations. But cultural conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage believe recent coverage of the issue has not fairly reflected their views."

This leads me to think, can there be such a thing as neutral coverage? To me the answer isn't that simple. Yes, an article can be unbiased by equally representing all aspects of a topic and choosing a unbiased headline, but does all that matter if the reader doesn't agree with what's being presented? I think that until the media stops covering controversial topics, there will always be bias in media coverage. 

Here are some examples of biased gay rights articles..

So does this mean that all articles are biased because of the way they are read? I belive that no matter if an article is neutral, it will still be viewed as bias by either side because they will feel their argument isn't represented well enough. So this leads me to ask

"Take the Money and Run for Office"

When you think of political fundraisers, what comes to mind? Galas, balls, suits, evening gowns, expensive champagne? Well think again. Contrary to popular belief, political fundraising isn't as glamorous as the public think. Yes, fundraising takes form in fancy galas or expensive brunches, but I was surprised to learn that most of the money political candidates raise are over phone calls. Political candidates spend 2-3 hours a day making call after call in an attempt to get donations for their campaign. With a $10-15,000 goal each day, no wonder why there is a desperation to raise the money-and fast.
I was also surprised to learn that lobbyists are the ones that organize events and fundraisers to raise money for a certain politician. A large amount of the time, lobbyist pick and choose which candidates they want to support, often ignoring the calls from those they aren't interested in helping.
Another thing I learned (but also common sense) is that once a particular politician has called multiple times, they are ignored. Yes, lobbyists do have the power to pick and choose, but the constant phone calls also play a role in their choosing of candidates.

After listening to this podcast, I was reminded of when Obama first ran for office. My family was always receiving mail from the Obama campaign, subliminally asking my parents to vote for him. These letters would never directly say "Vote for me!" but they would include a list of his accomplishments and goals in order to entice voters. These are basically like the daily phone calls candidates make because they are appealing to the voter community. Instead of asking the public for money, they are asking for votes.

I'm curious to know who donates the most to political campaigns.
While I always thought that generous donations came from financial/corporate firms, I found out that many large donations are made from well-known brand companies such as AT&T, Microsoft and even Dreamworks! The link below is about Wall St. investigation into public companies' political contributions in the current election cycle.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/corporate-political-donations_n_1644375.html

Gerrymandering--A Redistricting Game

By playing this "redistricting game," I learned just how hard it is to redistrict based on parties and populations. It was a difficult struggle for me to achieve a party majority in 2 of the 3 districts, as well as keep the population the same. Every time I would redistrict in order to keep the population the same, I would end up messing up the party majorities. This taught me just how hard it was to gerrymander, and if I couldn't figure it out on a computer game, I can't even imagine how people actually figure this out for the entire country!
Also, I was surprised to learn that the party that controls the State Legislature essentially controls the gerrymandering process. The Republicans, for example, are legally allowed to gerrymander a new district--basically rigging an election.
I was also surprised to learn that gerrymandering isn't guaranteed to be successful. A lot of the time I would redistrict and get approval from both the government and the state, but then I would find out that it was rejected by the court.

This game reminded me a lot of my favorite TV show, Scandal. In this show, the presidency of Fitzgerald Clark relied on the votes of a small county named Defiance, in Ohio. Before learning about gerrymandering, I was confused on how a single county could essentially make or break a presidency. But after realizing how redistricting works, I was able to understand that if that one county didn't vote for him, the state wouldn't have a majority Republican, which would have cost him Ohio's electoral vote.

I'm interested to know how the term gerrymandering got its name. After doing some research, I found that the term gerrymandering goes all the way back to 1812. In 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry redrew the state senate election districts in Massachusetts in order to benefit the Democratic-Republican party. It just so happened that the one of his redrawn districts in the Boston area resembled a salamander--hence the name gerrymandering!