U.S. Presidential Elections-Power of Television

So what can I say about the US Presedential Elections? It was a seemingly neverending saga. It all began with with the votes in the caucauses and the primaries the year before. The press seemed to make the elections a tournament based procedure. First there was the semi-finals: Barack Obama versus Hilary Clinton. On the other side there was John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Of course that's when the squabbling started, especaily within the press. Rumours of unrest and internal spats within both Republican and Democratic campaigns were the ideal way of fattening the inside of papers on this two year journey to the White House.

I found the television to be the best form of communicating the election to the public. Of the channels available, I found that Sky News was by far the best channel to watch. It had very good displays in studio detailing where the election would be won and lost. It showed very clearly how the electoral college vote system works, it forecasted how both sides were competing in the swing states and live reporters at the scene added to the huge spectacle. Radio also competed very well during the election campaign and to a lesser extent so did the papers. Yet neither o these 2 mediums could hold a candle to television. Nevertheless channels like Sky News could , nearly in real time, bring you live feeds of where all the drama was unfolding. It was great to watch it all going on in front of your eyes, even if that meant staying awake through the night.

It seems clear to me that the power of the television media was put on full show and the professionalism of a channel like Sky One shone through with fantastic indications of competent and interesting news reports.

Biggest Drug Bust in the State's History! Online Vs Printed Media!

This week I decided to look at the multi-million Euro cocaine haul caught off the south coast of Ireland. Instead of looking just how the papers dealt with it i decided to look at the Internet media as well.

In "Operation Seabight", which involved Gardaí, Customs and the Naval Service, the LE Niamh detained the 18m (60ft) yacht, Dances with Wolves , 257km (160 miles) west of Mizen Head.
A boarding party from the LE Niamh carried out a search of the yacht in an operation late at night and found a large number of packets of cocaine.
Initial estimates suggest that the haul exceeds the 1.5 million tonnes of drugs, worth €440 million, recovered last year from Dunlough Bay near Mizen Head in west Cork.

I believe the papers did a very good job showing the extent of the drugs haul. There were diagrams and tables of facts relating to the haul to be found. These included a map showing where the drugs were sourced and where they were intended to go. It is fair to say that the printed media is limited. Whatever is on the paper is there. There are no other sources of information. This is the complete antithesis to the internet. The internet, especially sites like sky news and the irish times online, offer a myriad of alternate links to further your knowledge in what you are reading. This is the inherent problem with the paper industry and a key factor in the argument that the medium is dying. There always will be more information available online than in the papers. Bring this together with the rise of online "citizen journalists" and it really looks like it's the beginning of the end for the printed media.

Log onto theirishtimes.com and it is clear to see. Breaking news more often than not supplied by AP or Reuters fizzles through onto your computer screens faster than it can be printed. There really is no chance of catching the online industry. Papers have now been forced to promote promote and promote some more to stimulate flagging circulation, becoming more like an advertising Mecca rather than a from of much needed communication.