A Good Question

One of your classmates wanted to know which textbook chapters to focus on for midterm preparation.

Use this guide-

Section One: Constitutional Underpinnings of United States Government

• Use Chapters 1, 2, 3

Section Two:  Political Beliefs and Behaviors

• Use Chapter 5

Section Three:  Political Parties, Elections and Mass Media

• Use Chapters 7, 8, 6

Of course, you also have numerous other resources to use while you prepare for the midterm:

• Our textbook-online study space
• The Chapter Review Reading packets (please use the titles not the chapter numbers; these are from a different source.)
• Your learning logs and reader response journals
• This blog!
• Credible and intellectual online news resources
• To use these sources to study, you have to actively make connections between the topics in the textbook with the real-life political examples in the news media
• Your classroom community

MidTerms!! Hooray!!

Ms Blatteau floated around the idea of us using the blog here as a study group type thing. So if any of y'all are around here looking for some help. I'm always available here on the blog for some help where we can all help out each other, or if some of y'all wanna ask me something directly, there's always twitter (@RaymondSizemore if you don't already follow me) or facebook, or there's email (ris0217@sbcglobal.net) Just like Ms Blatteau, I want us all to do as well as possible on this MidTerm, and I just want y'all to know you have tons of support here for you if y'all need it. So let's get studying and making sure the whole class passes this MidTerm!

The President for The Next 4 Years Will Be....

I learned many new things about the nail bitting 2000 election between Al Gore and George W Bush. The Florida Supreme Court was the group chosen to decide the case of who will receive their electoral votes for the election. The media jumped on this asking to broadcast and televise the argument. However, the court denied the media access to the session because studies have proven that the cameras would affect the content and emphasis on questions of the lawyers.
I believe that this decision by the Florida Supreme Court made it look as if they were trying to hide something. When the media gave this news out to the public, it affected views of the public on this issue. Most likely, the media wasn't happy about the Court's decision to deny media access, so their broadcast of the info was most likely bias making the Florida Supreme Court the bad guys.
In this election, Gore was first to be announced winner of Florida. However, his triumph was for a  minuscule time period. Later that day Florida went back to being undecided.
I know the media was all over the news of Gore winning Florida for that short-lived moment. Media probably made this a huge deal and were shouting it from the roof tops. When they had to announce the false alarm,  it was probably heart-breaking to some and others might have not checked the news after hearing that Gore won because of there time. This little mishap probably wouldnt have been as big of a deal if the media werent to announce it so urgently.
Also, I thought it was interesting to find out that in the 2000 election, Florida had only 25 electoral votes, instead of today's 29 electoral votes. Florida had 27 electoral votes in the 2008 election. It gained 2 in the 2010 census giving them 29 in the 2012 election.
Questions:
How long did it actually take to have a clear winner in this election?
Where candidates still campaigning during this period?
How come there had to be a recount if there was a winner in the original vote?

Impact of Social Media on Voters: Extra Credit Opportunity

How much do you think Facebook and Twitter impacted the elections of 2012? How much do you think they will affect elections to come?

Here is a radio report and transcript about this topic.

LINK:  http://www.npr.org/2012/10/26/163712869/in-twitter-we-trust-can-social-media-sway-voters

For extra credit, listen to the story or read a selection from the transcript. What are some of the most significant takeaways? What are these professors' main points regarding social media, campaigns and elections?

Do you think this topic of social media impact is relevant to politics today? Or do you think it is a distraction from other issues? Do you think social media should play a role informing people about politics? Or helping undecided voters make up their minds? Explain your thinking.

If you have any additional thoughts or questions after reading or listening to this story, feel free to add them to your post.

Gun Control Plan

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nbc-news/50483879/#50483879

Hi guys here is a link to Obama and Biden's Speech about their gun control plan in case you missed it and wanted to see it. Hope everyone enjoyed their day off.

The Media Apologizes.

 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_watch/jan-june01/cnn_2-1.html

 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/election2000/electoral_map.php3

 

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president

 

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/election.html

 

Because we are discussing about Media in our A.P. class, I thought this would be a good article to talk about. For the people who do not know about the 2000 Presidential elections between George W. Bush(Republican) and Albert Gore (Democrat) it would be a great idea to check out the link that Ms. Blatteau has posted but to summarize the "tragedy", it was a close win between the two candidates and everyone had their eyes glued to their television to see Florida's decision that would set the fate for the president of the year 2000. It was just the matter of 25 votes to determine who was going to with the presidential race. But as soon as the media got the "results" it was declared all over the world that Albert Gore was going to win after getting all the votes form Florida but things took an uncertain turn and in the matter of minutes people were confused on who was the president because George W. Bush, at 9:45 PM, told the media that they had united all the votes in a cursory and were going too fast from the people actually counting the votes. CNN along with ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and MSNBC were punished for making fast decision only from looking at exit polls and experts. Since this mistake CNN has promised that they will not take early decisions after looking at exit polls information and not declare anyone a winner until polls are completely closed.

 

Everyone says that newspapers are too old now a days but they are accurate in their news. Everything on the Internet goes up quick whether it is Facebook, Twitter or Google it is not true until it is in the papers. Not that newspaper don;t make any mistakes but as you can see that during the 2000 elections how hard the media made it for the president to be declared. So here are a few questions to ponder about. Did the way that the 2000 presidential race affect how media reports news about politics now? Are they really being careful or is our mind playing games with us? Does this tell us something about how much the Central government play a part in the elections?

 

In the second link that I posted above you guys will be able to see the electoral map of the 2000 elections. The third link shows the final electoral map of the 2012 elections. In the forth website you will be able to find some really cool information on the two parties and the elections because it was made for students. I found this website right from the site that Ms. Blatteau had posted for this homework.

BREAKING NEWS: Al Gore Elected President... Oh Wait... Never Mind

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec00/badcall_11-8.html#

One would think that before the news reports something, they make sure they have their facts straight. However in the Presidential Election of 2000 between then Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee and then Governor George W Bush of Texas, that was not exactly the case. As early as 8:00 pm, the news networks of CNN and CBS, both advised by Warren Mitofsky, called the State of Florida for Vice President Gore (which would've given the Vice President the White House) based on exit polling in the state's counties. By 11 they retracted that as Governor Bush went into the lead in raw vote tallies. Towards 2 in the morning Bush was still in the lead in the vote tallies.

Warren Mitofsky asserted that he and his methods of projecting are pretty much perfect even though it just got everything completely incorrect and was providing wildly false information for hours which lead the nation into limbo for about a month, leaving us President-elect-less. But the system is still completely credible, no one should loose confidence, nothing needs to change and everything is still pretty much perfect. (Except for this time and 5 other times but other than that completely perfect)

However people on the other side like Marvin Kalb are much more skeptical. How can we trust this system when it was so incredibly wrong? Was this did to competition between news agencies everyone wanting I get this major projection out first? Or just because of sheer incompetence? There doesn't seem to be any other option, and both of them are extremely good reasons to loose credibility in the system. So what happened? Were changes made? Did we get better? Nothing like this seems to have happened since, so things must've improved, but what happens when a 2000-esque election comes along again? Will we again be President-elect-less for over a month? I hope not and that the news agencies are more careful about their projections. Or else I'll just have to go and count every vote myself.