Completely Unnecessary

Let’s watch media priming in action, shall we?

Priming (and this is the short version) argues that the media help shape the way people think about issues - either through highlighting a particular issue or through the way an issue is presented. Essentially, people don’t use all the knowledge they know at any given time; our brains tend to travel down paths created through repetition or recent exposure.

Man, how boring is media theory?!?!

Here’s the lede from the NYT/Reuters story about the Green Party convention and nomination:

The U.S. Green Party, which captured far less than 1 percent of the vote in the last presidential election, chose former Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney as its 2008 presidential candidate on Saturday.

The most important information comes first in hard news. So, the most important thing about the Green Party according to Reuters is that its candidates and the party are wildly unviable. They do not and cannot win elections.

Two paragraphs later, this information is reiterated and expanded upon, just in case you missed it:

In 2004, the Green Party drew 119,859 votes, or 0.1 percent of the total, finishing in sixth place behind the two major parties and three other third-party tickets.

But, wait… didn’t they do pretty well once? (Next paragraph)

The party’s best performance came in 2000 when Ralph Nader headed the ticket, and won 2.8 million votes, or 2.7 percent of the total. Some political analysts say Nader, a political and consumer activist, may have drawn votes from Democrat Al Gore and helped tip the election to Republican George W. Bush. Nader is running for president again this year as an independent.

That information comes before a description of McKinney, meaning it is more important than her qualifications or fitness for the presidency.

There’s a real sense of trying desperately to fill the story out. What is this sentence about?

The U.S. Green Party says it is a partner with the European Federation of Green Parties and the Federation of Green Parties of the Americas.

It ’says’ it is? And what does this signify? We’ll never know. (Sounds vaguely un-American though, doesn’t it?)

And, lastly, we get a quote from what is clearly the Green Party press release.

It’s pretty obvious that Reuters sent no one to the convention. There’s no one quoted in the story; they don’t even use a direct quote for the spokesman in the 3rd par, as would be standard.

So this story is just a combination of a press release and knowledge the Reuters writer thought was important enough for reiteration to readers. These facts are essentially:

• The Green Party loses elections by vast margins.
• When the party does well, they siphon votes from real candidates (and we get George W. Bush)

I don’t necessarily disagree with the bit about Nader (and Jeremy will explain why I am both wrong and a bad person in the comments), but these are the facts that we are constantly told about a party that - by its very position as a third party - challenges the status quo.

Imagine if the story about Obama’s nomination in Denver started this way:

The Democratic Party, which lost the presidency in both 2000 and 2004, chose Senator Barack Obama as its 2008 presidential candidate on Saturday.

Does that sound like a party you want to vote for?

As a small, realatively unfamiliar party, the Green Party relies on the media to introduce it and its candidate to the public. The US paper of record just ran with an agency story based on a press release that says, ‘Don’t waste your vote.’

Democracy served. Or primed.

Link:
Green Party Names McKinney as Presidental Pick

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