Op-Ed: Does the Media Elect Our President?

As Republican and Democratic presidential nominations have played out, we’ve seen some candidates do better than others. Why? Are we as voters divided, or does the national and local press play a role in influencing whom we elect for president?

I think the answer is yes. I’m not yet sure if this a good or bad thing, but I know that it must be true. Here’s one example. In one of the campaign season’s more confusing moments, Mike Huckabee held a press conference to unveil a negative ad campaign directed toward Mitt Romney, then in an act nobody has yet been able to decipher decided to announce his intention to not run the ads. However, after making the announcement, he proceeded to play the ad for the press in a room in which over 60 cameras caught the images. So, we must ask. Was this an attempt by Huckabee to take the high road or an attempt to gain free negative advertising time while maintaining his “Christian” facade? The media certainly had their opinion on this. In the national media, the press exposed this for what I believe it was: an attempt to throw mud at another candidate for free while acting like a good guy. However, the press in Iowa saw it differently. Summer Barrett, whose sister lives in Iowa, reported that the local news there praised Huckabee for his morals and Christ-like attitude. They thought it was wonderful that he decided not to run the negative campaign. They apparently didn’t even realize that he actually did run the negative ads. Consequently, he won Iowa. Another example is the fact that the Utah press reported on Mitt Romney’s campaign favorably because of his ties to Utah with the 2002 Winter Olympics and his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City. As we saw on Super Tuesday, this positive reporting by the media resulted in 90 percent of Utahns voting for him, although only some 70 percent of the population shares Romney’s LDS faith. These are two examples from my experience of the media influencing who becomes our next president. Now, I open it up to you, my fellow citizens and citizen journalists. Does the media elect our president?