My Vote after the MSNBC Debate

Grading Clinton, MSNBC, and Obama. – listed in alphabetical order.

You may wonder why I included MSNBC to be reviewed in this report. It’s quite simple, really. MSNBC is the media outlet responsible for the debate, therefore it is crucial to grade them on their integrity, fairness, and lack of bias. So first, let’s look at what the role of journalism should be. This question became pertinent to me when the media came out in response to Hillary’s Xerox remark. In all honesty, any of us who have ever had to write a report for school learned what plagiarism is, what is is not, and what the repercussions are. Obama did plagiarize those remarks by not citing them. No “academic” question there. So I looked it up. Each journalist has an ethical responsibility is to fully attribute sources. They can lose their job, get sued, etc. if they don’t. So clearly each journalist out there knows what plagiarism is. Instead of ignoring Hillary’s remark, instead of evaluating the integrity of it’s content, so many in the media at large instead tried to seek out substantively similar content in Hillary’s remarks and others, and then challenge her authenticity. They did manage to prove that Hillary agrees with those who have similar beliefs. They did manage to prove that she did not commit plagiarism. But that isn’t what they wrote. What they did, instead, was use these common ideas as an opportunity to create a bit more mudslinging. I wouldn’t have minded if they ignored her remark; I wouldn’t have minded if they reported on it accurately. But for our country’s plagiarism experts to pretend not to know what it is in order to submit inflammatory headlines and articles… Well, I decided they will now be included in part of my evaluative process. I am looking to elect the best candidate, not to be emotionally manipulated by my news sources for whatever their agenda may be… which perhaps has more to do with selling than reporting. Selling their product, their candidate, their ratings, their egos… I don’t know, but something, clearly.

I should note that I was unable to watch the countdown to the debate, and my recording of the debate only included the last 60 seconds before the debate began. I am tempted to evaluate the MSNBC on their closing remarks prior to the debate, but in all fairness, I decided to only evaluate all three parties during the actual debate. MSNBC did make that a challenge for me, I must admit. I also am not watching or checking any media coverage of the debate until I finish writing this. I know that I, too, could be biased by what is out there.

Although I’ve followed along pretty closely, I tried to prepare as best I could for this debate. -Reading each candidate’s criticisms of the other, reading the media coverage, and researching each point through a variety of independent information sources.

So… beginning the recording now. I’ll be back with first installment of my own personal report card on the debate. Current standings (listed alphabetically):

Clinton: 0
MSNBC: 0
Obama: 0