Editing Politics

By: Adrian Aitken


Personal contact with politicians is a rare scenario, even more so when the person you hope to talk to is running for president. Due to this issue the vast majority of Americans must rely upon national media coverage for information regarding our candidates. What if these sources are not entirely accurate and, more importantly, inaccurate for a cause?!

Recently on Sept. 4 Obama appeared on the Bill O'Riley Show for an interview on presidential issues. One topic to surface dealt with the war in Iraq and the troop surge in which Bill tried to get Obama to admit he was right about not going to war but wrong voting against the surge. Barack responded defending what he had said efficiently.

Gov. Palin commented after the interview that she had been right about Obama's stand early on. David Wright, a reporter for ABC's World News, presented a segment which had edited the O'Riley interview just right to project the image that Barack had claimed to be wrong.

The media needs to watch their cropping a little more carefully because how am I supposed to trust a unbiased news source with a hidden agenda?