Andrew
Docktor
Blog
Post #1
Media
and Politics
Throughout the past few months we
have been bombarded with political agendas of upcoming presidential hopefuls.
Not surprisingly, Donald Trump leads this group of candidates as he hopes to
draw attention to his platform and sway voters with his strong and assertive
words. The American people see his agenda front and center because he is not
afraid to say what is on his mind at any time of the day. Just recently Donald
Trump traveled to California to speak about immigration and military healthcare
for veterans. Speaking in front of a retired battleship, (imposing may I add),
he stated that illegal immigrants are receiving better healthcare today than
most veterans coming back from wars. He offered in his speech that he said
“Donald Trump vowed Tuesday to offer frustrated veterans subsidized private
health care, charging that immigrants in the country illegally receive better
care than the nation’s wounded soldiers.[1]”.
The Donald continues to try to push his wild agenda solely through the media
and its headlines that draw attention to not only him but his presidential
race. While I understand his decision to make it a war of words and bad press
is not never a bad thing he is doing it at the expense of Hispanics as he
continues to state that he wants to deport all illegal immigrants. As he
continues to press his agenda, he needs to be careful because he can not afford
to ostracize the Hispanic community and their extremely influential vote. He is
doing his own agenda setting and framing his own events which is working in his
favor as he is still the Republican front runner. I believe this is because the
only way he can stay out in front of the other candidates is to stay in the
media and in the minds of Americans. If he is able to do that he has a shot at
winning because he will always be at the fore front of the news. Donald Trump
is the definition of a politician who completely relies on his agenda setting
to draw attention from the other candidates. He continues to state massive
ideas but never shows his plan to follow through with them, the article makes a
point how Trump does not ever go into detail about his plans, “ The Republican
front-runner gave no details on how he would pay for an expansion in the armed
forces-or veterans health care leaving his foreign policy agenda still mostly a
blank state…. In doing so, he again swiped at people who are in the country
illegally, a refrain that has powered his campaign since the start[2]”. Throughout
the event in California he framed it to come off like he was very powerful and
strong aboard this battleship. The battleship used to be a sign of power
throughout its service. The battleship is like Trumps campaign, strong powerful
and intimidating. Can he continue to be strong and powerful as the race gets
tighter and the competition increases by the day? We are going to have to wait
and see. However, if we take a look at the other candidates they constantly are
failing to grab headlines like Trump. Throughout his speech it was all scripted
how he wanted to come off to the media and his supporters. While it was
impressive how it continues to work, it will be a real test to see him keep
this up for another whole year. Critics have tried to pick apart his policies
and agendas but so far they are still failing to take a chunk out of his
ratings as he still sits firmly atop by a significant margin. His unorthodox
approach to politics and his use of the media to keep him in the minds of
Americans is something that the country has not seen ever in a campaign race.
He is focusing on the issues that cut right to what most Americans are
thinking. This is helping him reach citizens that are frustrated in the government
of the past eight years and are looking for someone to get tough on immigration
that has grown substantially.
Donald Trump's use of media coverage as a presidential candidate is a solid topic for the blog project, but I would like to see you push your analysis and examples a bit further. If you can find some evidence of how much coverage he gets compared to other candidates (some media outlets have done systematic studies of this) that would be good, and then I think you need to go further in explaining WHY you think this coverage is ultimately helping him. As you note, the more controversial statements he gets tend to generate a lot of media attention, but a lot of the coverage is pretty negative -- even the article you cite about the lack of policy details in his proposals doesn't necessarily reflect well on him. So why do you think this coverage has helped rather than hurt him? How would you evaluate the media's coverage of Trump's campaign -- are they doing a good job? Why or why not? You also might discuss some of the ways that he bypasses traditional news outlets by using social media, etc. There are also some places where you want to revise the writing because it is a bit confusing, such as here: "He offered in his speech that he said “Donald Trump vowed Tuesday to offer frustrated veterans subsidized private health care..." it sounds like the quote is coming from Trump but I don't think he was talking in the third person. You will also want to add more embedded links to other examples of Trump coverage and potentially some visual images or videos into the body of your post.
ReplyDeleteI thought your blog was well written and I also agree with your argument, specifically how Trump uses his agenda-setting capabilities to draw media attention, although never actually provides a detailed plan. His framing on the topic of illegal immigration in particular, propelled his campaign to the top of the polls, and only recently has he started to lose some steam. I think one thing you could do to help the reader stay engaged is to break the writing up into a few smaller paragraphs as opposed to one long paragraph, as this will help keep the readers interest.
ReplyDeleteThis was a good topic to choose and I agree with your stance on Trump, that he ultimately wields his own power with the media. However, I do think you need to be more analytical and answer the question a lot of people are wondering--Is this just sensationalism, or is all this media attention really propelling Trump's campaign?
ReplyDelete