A recent article in the New York Times' coverage of the upcoming Presidential election discussed the role the race could potentially have in the voting process.
The piece is written more as a contemplative piece more so than an actual report. As opposed to the article I chronicled in my previous post, this does not take the opinion of a few to be the general consensus of many, rather just reporting and discussing the opinions of a select few.
Of the sources interviewed in this article, all except one had three things in common. First, they all believed that race will play a big factor in the election. Secondly, they were all Democrats. Lastly, they were all African-Americans.
The only source that does not share these characteristics is Saul Anuzis, who is the chairman of the Republican Party in Michigan. Anuzis' only input to the article was that "he honestly doesn't know how big an issue race will be."
Although the article doesn't generalize the comments of the few sources, the lack of variety in the sources doesn't yield complete credibility to the article. Why not ask a caucasian democrat? How about an African-American Republican? Even a caucasian Republican would have been a good source of comment.
Especially noteworthy is that the article stresses the Obama's campaign's hopes that African Americans will come out in large numbers to support Obama. The article really can't make this assertion if the only sources are African-American Democrats.
On a personal side note, I wish the New York Times would give more attention to the other elections coming up this fall, especially the ones for the Senate. The Democrats potentially gaining a fillabuster-proof majority in the Senate is just as newsworthy - if not more - than the upcoming Presidential election. It definitely doesn't warrant this imbalance in coverage.
The article can be found at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/us/politics/15race.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin
No comments:
Post a Comment