Iyengar and Hahn and Recent Events

Iyengar and Hahn’s article on media bias and partisan attraction is very interesting especially in light of some current events. George W Bush is currently going on a book tour to promote Decision Points which is about his time in the White House and his decisions. The New York Times recently ran an article about his first interview which will be with Matt Lauer on NBC. It is a little bit of an unexpected start for the book tour. One media expert tried explaining why Bush would pick Lauer instead of an evening news anchor or a Fox News anchor. He said, “on the one hand, you’re looking for comfort. On the other hand, you don’t want the interview to be perceived as a series of softballs.” Matt Lauer is thus seen as a good middle ground. The producer of Today elaborated saying that “We’re living in a time when some of television news is partisan, and Matt and the ‘Today’ show are decidedly not so.” Thus in order to get his message out and advertise, Bush is trying to appeal to as many people as possible without going on a channel with too much of a left or right leaning news crew. It is quite a logical decision if it’s true that there is an “increased exposure to one sided news coverage [creating] an echo chamber effect” (p34).

Another recent story in the news was that on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann was suspended for two shows when MSNBC found that he had made political donations to Democratic candidates in the last elections. Olbermann is unabashedly a supporter of the Democrats on his show and he is often seen as a counterweight to Fox News. Interestingly, Rachel Maddow, another anchor on MSNBC, used the suspension to call out Fox News’ bias by saying “We [MSNBC] are not a political operation. Fox is. We are a news operation. And the rules around here are part of how you know that.” I think that MSNBC and Fox are fairly similar but I find it interesting that Maddow would try to somehow prove that MSNBC is less biased. I’m not sure if that is really going to appeal to Independents (which I assume she is targeting) since MSNBC already has a reputation. Still these two articles confirm how current figures are trying to use the partisan makeup of news to help them. I imagine we will continue to see this type of attempted media manipulation for quite some time.