“This time, though, the battle between the President and the press is different. There is a third party involved-the Internet-and no one can control a story for long.”
This is in the second column on the first page about a third of the way down. And before this quote Ken Auletta talked about how Obama was negatively affected by the press during his speeches in health care, economic rescue plans, Afghanistan, and education.
So not only can Obama being negatively affected by the press now, but he also has the Internet with or against him depending on the news. When George W. Bush was in office he didn’t have twitter, facebook or YouTube so he couldn’t promote news that way, but Obama does. And because the internet is so large, it spreads a whole lot quicker and it is a whole lot hard to control what is being said.
Looking back I almost, and I mean almost, think it would have been better to stay in Bush’s time when there was on YouTube, facebook, or Twitter, because it has had some really negative things about it, but it has also help the President in promoting himself, so I think it is up to the individual.
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ReplyDeleteI think the passage means, Obama may try to filter news when he has his meetings with the press (before the press actually writes about it on papernews for example) but he can't filter news with online journalists that writes and posts news about him and other current events. These journalists can just be regular people with opinion and speaking from their experience. Facebook, Youtube or Twitter allows us to get that instant news that our president can't give us right away. Good or bad news, we still get that instant news through the internet which I think is good because nothing gets "sugar-coated" so to speak.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion on this passage is that Obama is unable to control the message and the feedback, like past presidents were before Youtube and the other instant news sources. In the past presidents would give a speech and people wouldn't hear the news until the next day. I think that time allowed him and his advisors to control the tone set in the media. Essentially, damage control could be done as needed. Now, the speech is being disected before it is even complete. I think the way slower methods of communication could be thought of as a better way of going about doing things. Today news is spread, not only involving the president, but in people's lives as well. Media such as Facebook is one of the key factors of secrets and gossip getting spread. People post things for everyone to see that could result in exposing someone to their personal life. That can have serious effects and downfalls if you are the president of the United States.
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