media in politics
...ally, however, McCain is forced to withdraw from the election . He still however continues to help out his fellow Republican, and his party’s only chance at defeating President Clinton, Bob Dole. Dole asked McCain to give a speech on honor and duty. Doles people revised it heavily and when McCain pulled his speech, they told him he could say whatever he wanted. Bob Dole went on to ask Senator McCain to nominate him for the Presidency. The only thing is, he asked the night before the speech was to be given. McCain accepted and gave a phenomenal speech to help his friend. McCain even went on the road and campaigned for Dole. He tried to stay one step ahead of where President Clinton was going and “poison the local media about the President”. When Election Day came it was obvious to everyone, except the people in Dole’s home of Russel, Kansas, that Clinton would be serving a second term. McCain accompanied Dole to Russel to be with his friend. “I would think the time he might need a friend is tonight” (517), he told Lewis. Michael Lewis portrays Senator John McCain as a class act all the way. He makes it very difficult to dislike the guy as a person and a politician. This is a very critical part of his job. He, through his writing, almost makes the public support the Arizona Senator. While Michael Lewis’s reporting leads the American public to share the same Positive feelings about one man, former New York Times editor Harrison Salisbury said in “From a Time of Change”, that he wanted to “find things out . . . and let people have the best possible evidence to on which to make their own decisions about policy” (585). In his work he looks back at major events in American political history and critiques them. He took a look at the assassination of President Jack Kennedy, and at the riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention. When Kennedy was shot, Salisbury was not surprised. Tension had been building up in Dallas. “Dallas had seemed like another country, ranting about everything” (486). Salisbury had Tom Wickers as the on-the-scene reporter, and his report is the finest that has ever appeared in the Times. To this day not one more piece of information has been added to the Times report that Wickers did not initially have in his first report. Salisbury then condemned the Warren Commission because they were not able to turn up one piece of evidence that his reporter could not find. The reports from the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago were Filled horror stories. The protestors at the convention did not like President Lyndon B. Johnson and Mayor Daley knew it. In fact Daley saw to it that there would be violence. He had 8,000 police officers and 5,000 Illinois Guardsmen on the scene ready to take on the protestors. When the beating began, again Tom Wickers was on the scene, this time watching from the top of the Conrad Hotel. He screamed, “These are our children!” as people were beaten in the streets. Even a Times reporter was beaten and dragged of missing by the police. Another reporter, Kifner saw the police push the protestors through the window of the hotel, only to follow them in and continue beating on them. As reports came back to New York, Salisbury had a hard time believing the extent of the brutality. The language of the reports was too harsh for readers. “Blunder” became “miscalculation”. “Brutality” became “over reaction”, and nowhere in the Times the next day was the truth of what happened actually reported. From then on people wanted to here of scandles and mishapps in the news. Salisbury wrote of the press, “We are it seems . . . corrupt and content.” “There is no story—literally none—which the great electronic media and billion-dollar press aggrogates cannot extract .” Salis...