We have all discussed it many times in our blogs up till now: the media, more specifically, the coverage of the presidential election by the media. Have they been biased? Have they dramatized news? Have they personalised news? All of these were questions we tried to answer. Yesterday however, it was up to the professionals to shed their light on this topic. With the lecture called ‘Coverage of the debate’ three specialists in the field of journalism and especially in the coverage of presidential debates sat down and talked about their views on the upcoming debate and the role of the media. Curtis Wilkie, Matthew V. Storin, and Tom Oliphant, the three panellists, have all witnessed and covered the presidential debates in the last few decades.

One of the issues being discussed was if they thought this debate was more significant than other debates. Their reaction was that in some ways this debate indeed is. According to Storin this is mostly due to the fact that Barack Obama still remains so fascinating to not only the American people, but to the entire world. He draws a lot of attention, being the first black presidential candidate and being so young and ‘new’ to the game. According to Storin the lack of media attention towards McCain, one of the biggest cries of the Republicans, is simply due to the fact that people already knew McCain. He has been around for years and whatever opinion people might have about him, they formed a long time ago. Storin also adds that McCain is in no way under the same scrutiny as Obama. As he says: people might disregard it when McCain makes a ‘slip up’ when talking about Sunni and Shiite, but when Obama makes a mistake this is immediately on every front page of every newspaper. McCain is just simply not new and with that not nearly as newsworthy as newcomer Obama. The McCain camp has however figured out a way to play this out in their advantage: Obama acts like a rock star.

This is the point that brings me to an article I read in New York magazine. With the title ‘The Sixty Day War’ it talked about the presidential candidates and their chief strategists Dave Axelrod (on the democrat’s side) and Steve Schmidt (on the republican’s side). How have they played a part in the media coverage of the candidates? Who is to ‘blame’ for the image? The strategy of attack was willingly taken up by the McCain camp, not leaving any opportunity to put Obama in a bad day light behind. When Schmidt came in to the picture and took charge of cam McCain, he immediately restricted McCain’s open contact with reporters. He said he wanted a simple frame to run the campaign by: McCain – Country first, Obama – Obama first. And that is where Obama the ‘rock star’ was born. Everything he did was said to be done out of a need for attention. According to them, Obama was acting like some kind of mega super star travelling around the world this summer, supposedly only to promote himself. By comparing him Paris Hilton and running ads and commercials that ridiculed Obama, they seriously tried to damage his credibility as a politician.

Team Obama however chose to go in another direction. Their chief strategist Axelrod is known for his focus on character and emotionality, showing the softer side of Obama instead of only his policy and issues. Axelrod made Obama human, but in the same time, this was being challenged by camp McCain how tried there best to show that Obama is not as everybody else, that ‘he thinks he is a star’. The reluctance of team Obama to fight back against all the allegations made by team McCain worried a lot of democrats, thinking that Obama should stand up for himself more. However, Axelrod doesn’t want to take it that way. His frame is and remains: McCain offers more of the same and Obama offers the change we that we need.

Whatever the strategies, we still have to wait and see which one was the most affective. Fact is that the polls are running close and nothing is decided yet. As Axelrod said in the article, “Anyone who says they can tell you how it’s all going to play out, how the pieces all fit together in a presidential campaign, is kidding you. You can’t really understand the story until it’s written.”

I am curious to see what the strategy of the candidates is going to be during the debate. According to the panellists, the debate is going to show us so much more than only the two candidates and their stances on important issues. Of course it will, but even more: it will most probably show how ready they actually both are to be the next president. We have the chance to see with our own eyes how these two candidates are going to face up to each other, without any help from others. Because, even though the answer to every possible question has been heavily rehearsed and their most powerful one-liners have been scripted, they still do not exactly know the questions and the way their component is going to react.

As the panellists suggested, while watching the debate we should not only listen carefully to what the candidates say, but also pay close attention to how they appear. We should listen to the lines, but also look at the picture and seek for those unscripted moments that can define a debate. Those moments can become like metaphors for this political election and this metaphor is what we should look for in the debate on September 26th. What is this debate going to mean to McCain? What is it going to mean to Obama? What is it going to mean to us?