Research Paper
...ons. Conclusively though, it is apparent that after the three debates, Kerry has swung the votes to favor him and Bush is slowly starting to lose the amount of votes he once had. Every four years, fall emerges as the most important season. With presidential debates and elections receiving all the attention, it is hard to decide which channel has the best coverage of the elections. Or which newspaper or magazine is specific and accurate on where each candidate stands on certain issues. It is obvious that television would be the best form of media for watching and learning about the debates, for the sole reason that you can physically watch them, opposed to reading about someone’s opinion on who won which debate. While reading articles on the debate in the “New York Times” can be as affirmative as reading on in “Newsweek”, listening to radio programs gives you a much better perspective on all the issues the candidates are presented. Radio stations give a whole report on the debates, while “Newsweek” chooses to focus on the war in Iraq and Medicare expenses as the only issues they discuss. ABC was one of four national channels that showed the debates, along with CNN, MSNBC, and FNC. I viewed the third debate online with ABC News Now at Comcast.net and watched the previous two online at the “New York Times” homepage. I also watched CNN after each debate and found that the constant news channels have much more investigative reporting, opposed to the national channels, such as NBC, who only had minimum reporting on who won which debate and what the main topics discussed were. The constant news channel, such as CNN, again had the most detailed and longest reporting. ABC and NBC was the shortest, but very detailed for the time they reported on the debates. Since the national channels have news that only come on a couple times a day and report on a variety of topics, they are forced to having very short, detailed reports. Compared to CNN, who is always reporting news, they have a much longer time frame and can have very detailed, lengthy reports. CNN would always show more clips from the debates and would talk about each topic discussed in the debate. ABC merely shows one clip and talks about who won the debate and why. CNN reports information that has changed between debates. For example, CNN discussed Kerry’s view on the war in Iraq changing from “it was completely useless” to “I would have handled the war differently.” After reading articles covering the third debate from the “New York Times” and the “Chicago Sun-Times”, it is quite apparent that the “New York Times” is much more detailed, longer, and investigative. The “Chicago Sun-Times” started out each article with their opinion on who won the debate, while the “New York Times” began their article with the main discussion points of the debate and where each candidate stood on them. Throughout the whole “New York Times” article, it’s fact after information afte...