Selected american media coverage of the 2008 u s presidential election a critical discourse analysis

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN TIN TỨC CỦA BÁO CHÍ MỸ VỀ CUỘC BẦU CỬ TỔNG THỐNG MỸ NĂM 2008... Scope of the research Within the limi

LÊ THỊ NGỌC ANH

SELECTED AMERICAN MEDIA COVERAGE

OF THE 2008 U.S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION:

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN TIN TỨC CỦA BÁO CHÍ

MỸ VỀ CUỘC BẦU CỬ TỔNG THỐNG MỸ NĂM 2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

LIST OF APPENDICES vi

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale 1

2 Scope of the research 2

3 Aims of the research and research questions 2

4 Methodology of the research 3

5 Background information about the 2008 U.S Presidential Election 3

6 Design of the research 5

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6

1.1 What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)? 6

1.2 The development of CDA 6

1.3 Directions in CDA 7

1.3.1 Van Dijk 7

1.3.2 Wodak 9

1.3.3 Fairclough 10

1.4 Principles of CDA 10

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 12

2.1 Data 12

2.1.1 Data source 12

2.1.1.1 The New York Times 12

2.1.1.2 New York Post 12

2.1.2 Data collection and sampling 13

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 16

3.1 Headlines analysis 16

3.1.1 The New York Times 17

3.1.1.1 Representation of Mr Obama 17

3.1.1.2 Representation of Mr McCain 20

3.1.2 New York post 22

3.1.2.1 Representation of Mr Obama 23

3.1.2.2 Representation of Mr McCain 25

3.2 Full-text stories analysis 26

3.2.1 Naming referent 26

3.2.1.1 The New York Times 26

3.2.1.2 New York Post 27

3.2.2 Lexicalization 29

3.2.2.1 The New York Times 29

3.2.2.2 New York Post 33

PART 3: CONCLUSION 1 Summary of major findings 36

2 Suggestions for further research 36

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

ABBREVIATIONS

CDA Critical Discourse Analysis

CL Critical Linguistics

SFG Systematic Functional Grammar SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics

U.S the United States

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Summary of process types 14

Table 2 Mr Obama’s roles in percentage in The New York Times 18

Table 3 Mr McCain’s roles in percentage in The New York Times 21

Table 4 Mr Obama’s roles in percentage in the New York Post 32

Table 5 Mr McCain’s roles in percentage in the New York Post 26

Table 6 Positivization of Mr Obama’s activities 30

Table 7 Negativization for Mr McCain’s campaign and activities 32

Table 8 Positivization for Mr McCain 34

Table 9 Negativization for Mr Obama 35

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 1 Headlines from The New York Times Appendix 2 Headlines from New York Post

Part 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Everyday we use language, in other words - produce discourse, to negotiate, to give information, to ask for information or to make choices; in short, to communicate To discourse analysts, “discourse” means actual instances of communication in the medium of language In the discourse we produce are conventional ways of talking that create and perpetuate systems of ideologies and sets of beliefs about how the world works Van Dijk (1988) points out that discourse, in a wider sense, is a complex unit of language form, meaning and actions that might best be captured under the notion of a communicative event or communicative act

Among many types of discourse produced under different contexts/communicative events, journalistic discourse has some very specific textual characteristics, specific methods of text production and consumption, and is defined by a particular set of relationships between itself and other agencies of symbolic and material power As Fowler (1991) pointed out, the language of the news is never neutral, and articles within newspaper must

be regarded as constructed “stories” told from particular point of view When it comes to journalistic discourse analysis, the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach is often employed CDA is a methodology that enables a vigorous assessment of what is meant when language is used to describe and explain

How the media describe and explain things or events and portray people can have a great influence on the public who often have decisions and choices to make That explains why the role of the media in electoral politics is key to the functioning of a democracy, because now most voters increasingly use the media as their primary source of information

All the information about discourse and media briefly mentioned above leads the author of

this thesis to the research topic and conduct a small study entitled “Selected American Media Coverage of the 2008 U.S Presidential Election: A Critical Discourse Analysis”

2 Scope of the research

Within the limit of a minor thesis, this research focus only on the texts of the news reports published from 31st August 2008 to 1st November 2008 in the two dailies The New York Times and New York Post, on the topic of the 2008 U.S Presidential Election In this research, 45 headlines and 24 full-text news reports are analyzed As this is a purely linguistic study, the author is not, by any means or in any way, expressing her own political point of view

3 Aims of the research and research questions

The general goal of this research is to investigate the ideological function of language in representing the world and constructing certain realities The main objective is to look into the ways language be employed by two media institutions to produce discourse to present the two 2008 U.S presidential candidates More specifically, this thesis aims at:

- Providing a textual analysis of the news on the 2008 U.S presidential election in the light

of Critical Discourse Analysis

- Giving an illustration of the CDA concepts as well as analysis procedures

- Conveying a message that CDA provides a useful, systematic way for language users and language learners to begin raising awareness of the ideologies embedded in discourse, as language not only reflects and records but also shapes, distorts and even create realities, both culturally and naturally

To achieve these aims, the following research questions are proposed:

(i) What are the representations of the two 2008 presidential candidates, the

Republican John McCain and the Democrat Barack Obama, constructed by The New York Times and the New York Post?

(ii) What are the underlying ideologies embedded in the way The New York Times

and New York Post represent the two candidates?

(iii) How are such ideologies encoded in the discourse of the two newspapers?

4 Methodology of the research

Following in this part is a brief summary of the basic steps taken in the research

The first step is to conduct a literature review The author searched for reference via the thesis advisor, Dr Nguyen Hoa, lectures of related subjects like Research Methods, Applied Linguistics, etc., books and journals in the libraries and materials from the Internet

The second step is searching for data News reports published from 31st August 2008 to 1stNovember 2008 in the two selected newspapers were collected Then the data for analysis were sampled through random sampling Through thoroughly examining of the sampled data, closely looking into prominent linguistic features in the data, proper analytical tools were then decided

The next step in investigating two sets of data – headlines and full-text news reports

- Analyzing selected headlines according to transitivity system

- Analyzing selected full-text news reports according to two discursive strategies of naming referents and lexicalization

Through the analysis of the two sets of data, the study attempts to find out the similarities

as well as differences in the way the two newspapers reported on the same topic, the same people Based on the findings, further ideologies embedded in the text are discussed

5 Background information about the 2008 U.S Presidential Election

The United States presidential election of 2008 was held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008 It was the 56th quadrennial United States presidential election Outgoing Republican President George W Bush's policies and actions and the American public's desire for change were key issues throughout the campaign, and during the general election campaign, both major party candidates ran on a platform of change and reform in Washington Domestic policy and the economy eventually emerged as the main themes in the last few months of the election campaign, particularly after the onset of the 2008 economic crisis

Democrat Barack Obama, then - junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona Nine states

changed allegiance from the 2004 election Each had voted for the Republican nominee in

2004 and contributed to Obama's sizable Electoral College victory The selected electors from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia voted for President and Vice President of the United States on December 15, 2008 Those votes were tallied before a joint session of Congress on January 8, 2009 Obama received 365 electoral votes, and McCain 173

There were several unique aspects of the 2008 election The election was the first in which

an African American was elected President, and the first time a Roman Catholic was elected Vice President It was also the first time two sitting senators ran against each other

It was the first election in 56 years in which neither an incumbent president (Bush was barred from seeking a third term by the Twenty-second Amendment) nor a vice president (Dick Cheney did not seek the presidency) ran It was also the first time the Republican Party nominated a woman for Vice President and only the second time a woman was nominated for Vice President on a major party ticket Also, voter turnout for the 2008 election was the highest in at least 40 years

The two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain are nearly 25 years apart in age This

is the largest age disparity between the two major party presidential candidates in history, surpassing Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, (23 years apart in age) who ran against each other in the 1996 presidential election On January 20, 2009, Obama was inaugurated to the presidency at the age of 47 years 138 days He is the fourth youngest man to be elected president, after John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Ulysses Grant, and the fifth youngest president when inaugurated, after Kennedy, Clinton, Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt Polls taken in the last few months of the presidential campaign as well as exit polls conducted on Election Day showed the economy as the top concern for voters

In the fall of 2008, many news sources were reporting that the economy was suffering its most serious downturn since the Great Depression During this period John McCain's election prospects fell with several politically costly comments about the economy

6 Design of the research

The study is divided into three main parts:

Part 1 – Introduction: in this part are the rationale, the scope of the research, the aims of the research, the research questions, the methodology, some background information about the

2008 U.S Presidential Election and the design of the research

Part 2 – Development: this is the main part of the research and has three chapters

Chapter 1: Theoretical background: this chapter present related theoretical background for the research

Chapter 2: Methodology: this chapter describes steps and procedures of the research

Chapter 3: Data analysis and Discussion: this chapter analyzes the data and discusses the findings of the analysis

Part 3 – Conclusion: this is a summary of the findings and some suggestions for further research

Part 2: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 What is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)?

According to van Dijk (1998) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias It examines how these discursive sources are maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical contexts

Fairclough (1993) defines CDA as discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped

by relations of power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony (p.135) To put it simply, CDA aims at making transparent the connections between discourse practices, social practices, and social structures, connections that might

be opaque to the layperson

1.2 The development of CDA

In the late 1970s, Critical Linguistics was developed by a group of linguists and literary theorists at the University of East Anglia (Fowler et al., 1979) Their approach was based

on Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) CL practitioners aimed at "isolating ideology in discourse" and showing "how ideology and ideological processes are manifested as systems of linguistic characteristics and processes." This aim was pursued by developing CL's analytical tools (Fowler et al., 1979; Fowler, 1991) based on SFL Following Halliday, these CL practitioners view language in use as simultaneously performing three functions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions

According to Fowler (1991, p.71), and Fairclough (1995b, p.25), whereas the ideational function refers to the experience of the speakers of the world and its phenomena, the interpersonal function embodies the insertion of speakers' own attitudes and evaluations

about the phenomena in question, and establishing a relationship between speakers and listeners Instrumental to these two functions is the textual function It is through the textual function of language that speakers are able to produce texts that are understood bylisteners It is an enabling function connecting discourse to the co-text and con-text in which it occurs Halliday's view of language as a "social act" is central to many of CDA's practitioners

in Europe In his News Analysis (1988), he integrates his general theory of discourse to the discourse of news in the press, and applies his theory to authentic cases of news reports at both the national and international level What distinguishes van Dijk's (1988) framework for the analyses of news discourse is his call for a thorough analysis not only of the textual and structural level of media discourse but also for analysis and explanations at the production and "reception" or comprehension level

By structural analysis, van Dijk posited analysis of "structures at various levels of description" which meant not only the grammatical, phonological, morphological and semantic level but also "higher level properties" such as coherence, overall themes and topics of news stories and the whole schematic forms and rhetorical dimensions of texts

This structural analysis, however, he claimed, will not suffice, for “discourse is not simply

an isolated textual or dialogic structure Rather it is a complex communicative event that also embodies a social context, featuringparticipants (and their properties) as well as production and reception processes” (van Dijk, 1988, p 2)

By "production processes" van Dijk means journalistic and institutional practices of making and the economic and social practices which not only play important roles in the

news-creation of media discourse but which can be explicitly related to the structures of media discourse

Van Dijk's other dimension of analysis, "reception processes", involves taking into consideration the comprehension, "memorization and reproduction" of news information What van Dijk's analysis of media (1988, 1991, 1993) attempts to demonstrate is the relationships between the three levels of news text production (structure, production and comprehension processes) and their relationship with the wider social context they are embedded within In order to identify such relationships, van Dijk's analysis takes place at two levels: microstructure and macrostructure

At the microstructure level, analysis is focused on the semantic relations between propositions, syntactic, lexical and other rhetorical elements that provide coherence in the text, and other rhetorical elements such quotations, direct or indirect reporting that give factuality to the news reports

Central to van Dijk's analysis of news reports, however, is the analysis of macrostructure since it pertains to the thematic/topic structure of the news stories and their overall schemata Themes and topics are realized in the headlines and lead paragraphs According

to van Dijk (1988), the headlines "define the overall coherence or semantic unity of

discourse, and also what information readers memorize best from a news report"(p 248)

He claims that the headline and the lead paragraph “express the most important

information of the cognitive model of journalists, thatis, how they see and define the news event Unless readers have different knowledge and beliefs, they will generally adopt these subjective media definitions of what is important information about an event” (van Dijk,

1988, p 248)

For van Dijk (1988, pp.14-16), the news schemata ("superstructure schema") are structured according to a specific narrative pattern that consists of the following: summary (headline and the lead paragraph), story (situation consisting of episode and backgrounds), and consequences (final comments and conclusions) These sections of a news story are sequenced in terms of "relevance," so the general information in contained in the summary, the headline and the lead paragraph According to van Dijk, this is what the readers can best memorize and recall

Van Dijk (1995) essentially perceives discourse analysis as ideology analysis, because

according to him, "ideologies are typically, though not exclusively, expressed and

reproduced in discourse and communication, including non-verbal semiotic messages, such as pictures, photographs and movies" (p.17) His approach for analyzing ideologies

has three parts: social analysis, cognitive analysis, and discourse analysis (1995, p.30) Whereas the social analysis pertains to examining the "overall societal structures," (the context), the discourse analysis is primarily text based (syntax, lexicon, local semantics, topics, schematic structures, etc.) In this sense, van Dijk's approach incorporates the two traditional approaches in media education discussed earlier: interpretive (text based) and social tradition (context based), into one analytical framework for analyzing media discourse

1.3.2 Wodak

Discourse Sociolinguistics is one of the directions in CDA associated with Wodak and her colleagues in Vienna (The Vienna School of Discourse Analysis) According to Wodak

(1996, p.3): Discourse Sociolinguistics…is a sociolinguistics which not only is

explicitlydedicated to the study of the text in context, but also accords both factors equal importance It is an approach capable of identifying and describing the underlying mechanisms that contribute to those disorders in discourse which are embedded in a particular context whether they be in the structure and function of the media, or in institutions such as a hospital or a school and inevitably affect communication

In the discourse historical method approach (similar to Fairclough's) it is believed that language "manifests social processes and interaction" and "constitutes" those processes as well (Wodak 1996, p.12) According to Wodak (1996), viewing language this way entails three things at least First, discourse "always involves power and ideologies No interaction exists where power relations do not prevail and where values and norms do not have a relevant role" (p.12) Second, "discourse … is always historical, that is, it is connected synchronically and diachronically with other communicative events which are happening

at the same time or which have happened before" (p 12) The third feature of Wodak's approach is that of interpretation According to Wodak, readers and listeners, depending on their background knowledge and information and their position, might have different interpretations of the same communicative event (p.13) Therefore, Wodak asserts that

"THE RIGHT interpretation does not exist; a hermeneutic approach is necessary Interpretations can be more or less plausible or adequate, but they cannot be true" (p.13)

of CDA Systematic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has been the foundation for Fairclough's analytical framework as it has been for other practitioners in CDA

In this approach of CDA, there are three analytical focuses in analyzing any communicative event (interaction) They are text (e.g a news report), discourse practice (e.g the process of production and consumption), and socio-cultural practice (e.g social and cultural structures which give rise to the communicative event) These closely resemble van Dijk's three dimensions of ideology analysis: discourse, socio-cognition, and social analysis [analysis of social structures] respectively

1.4 Principles of CDA

Principles of CDA, outlined by CDA practitioners (Fairclough, 1995; Kress, 1991; Van Dijk, 1998; Wodak, 1996) can be summarized as follows:

1 Language is a social practice through which the world is represented

2 Discourse/language use as a form of social practice in itself not only represents and signifies other social practices but it also constitutes other social practices such

as the exercise of power, domination, prejudice, resistance and so forth

3 Texts acquire their meanings by the dialectical relationship between texts and the social subjects: writers and the readers, who always operate with various degrees of choice and access to texts and means of interpretation

4 Linguistic features and structures are not arbitrary They are purposeful whether

or not the choices are conscious or unconscious

5 Power relations are produced, exercised, and reproduced through discourse

6 All speakers and writers operate from specific discursive practices originating in special interests and aims which involve inclusions and exclusions

7 Discourse is historical in the sense that texts acquire their meanings by being situated in specific social, cultural and ideological contexts, and time and space

8 CDA does not solely interpret texts, but also explains them

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter is, firstly, the author provides an account for the choice of The New York Times and New York Post as the source of database for research Secondly, basic steps in the process of data collection and sampling are described Then are brief description of the analytical framework for this paper and the analytical tools

2.1 Data

2.1.1 Data source

The data under analysis are news report on 2008 U.S Election in The New York Times and New York Post, from 31st August 2008 to 1st November 2008 These two newspaper are chosen because they are both among the oldest reliable newspaper with huge circulation (thus have great influence on the public) in the U.S

2.1.1.1 The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded in 1851 and published in New York City The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"

- named for its staid appearance and style - is regarded as a national newspaper of record With the motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print." (printed in the upper left-hand corner of

the front page), The paper trails in circulation only to USA Today and The Wall Street

Journal Of all news organizations in the U.S, The New York Times has won the most

number of Pulitzer Prizes – a very prestigious award for achievements in newspaper journalism, literature and musical composition

2.1.1.2 New York Post

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continually as a daily The Post at this point was the only surviving afternoon daily in New York City, with over 600,000 in daily circulation Although more famous for its Sport and entertainment column, politics news on the Post is also much updated and treated as an important part of the daily The Post also runs a website version of the newspaper, and this online version ranks 8th among the online newspaper with most readers

2.1.2 Data selection and sampling

In the first step, news reports published from 31st August to 1st November in the two dailies were collected Then, the news under analysis in this paper were chosen randomly As the study aims at analyzing news discourse only, all the editorials, comments and opinion articles were excluded (they belong to different genres thus need different analytical framework)

Two set of data are under analysis in this minor thesis are 35 headlines and 24 full-text news reports Those headlines and full-text news are sampled randomly

2.2 Analytical framework and methods

In this paper, the author employs a combination of approaches as the framework This comprehensive approach has also been used by many CDA practitioners, as the science of CDA is still in evolution and basing on a single scholar‟s approach is risky for producing valid study result in CDA

Also, the analysis in this research is a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, focusing on the following linguistic aspects: transitivity in analyzing headlines, and naming referents as well as lexicalization in full-text news reports These linguistic features and strategies are believed to be effective analysis tools in discerning ideologies in media discourse

2.2.1 Headlines analysis

In the first step of analyzing the headlines, the framework used is Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) of M Halliday With his SFG, Halliday provides different approach to interpret the clause In this research, each of the 35 selected headlines is treated as a clause Since the headlines analysis aims at uncovering The New York Times‟ and the New York Post‟s representation of the two candidates in the 2008 U.S presidential election, the Transitivity system of these headlines will be studied and analyzed

In Halliday‟s SFG theory, the system of transitivity consists of three components which are process types and their participants as well as circumstances described within text In English, there are six process types namely Material, Mental, Verbal, Behavioral,

Relational, and Existential Process These six process types are summarized in the table below:

Table 1 Summary of process types

Attribution „attributing‟ Identified/ Token

Identification „identifying‟ Indentifier/ Value

By analyzing the transitivity system, we can understand “who did what to whom, in which context” Thus, all the selected headlines in this thesis are examined in terms of transitivity system The roles and processes attributed to each presidential nominee, in each newspaper, will then be calculated to find out the prominent trend of representing the candidates In other words, after the transitivity in each headline is studied, we can see how the reporters represent the two presidential nominees and why they build up such representations

The discussion of findings in the headlines‟ transitivity is much influenced by van Dijk‟s point of view According to van Dijk (1998), headline is a crucial part of any news report Headlines “defines the overall coherence or semantic unity of discourse, and also what information readers memorize best from a news report They express the most important information of the cognitive model of journalists, that is, how they see and define the news

event Unless readers have different knowledge and beliefs, they will generally adopt these subjective media definitions of what is important about an event.”

Since this thesis is concerned with making transparent the ideologies encoded in The New York Times and New York Post discourse, in the way they construct the representations of the two candidates in the 2008 U.S presidential election – Mr Obama and Mr McCain, the transitivity analysis of headlines is to answer the questions:

- What are the prominent processes attributed to Mr McCain and Mr Obama?

- What are the roles assigned to these two candidates? (Actor or Goal/Receiver/Patient? Sayer or Target? Etc.)

2.2.2 Full-text news reports analysis

Based on the framework of van Dijk, Fowler and Kress, this full-text news reports analysis realized through the naming referents analysis and lexicalization analysis

Fowler and Kress (1979:200) point out “the different possibilities of naming signify different assessments by the speaker/writer of his or her relationship with the person referred to or spoken to, and the formality or intimacy of the situation” For them, forms of addressing people vary according to the degree of formality and respect the speaker/writer assesses and show to people

As van Dijk (1988: 27-28) points out, the full text of any news reports provides the whole story It is through the full-text reports that the ideologies or bias are more clearly revealed News events are presented and reproduced by journalists through “a social and ideologically controlled set of constructive strategies” That is, discursive practices can have major ideological effects

In this paper, all the naming references that The New York Times and New York Post gave

to the two candidates are listed and counted, to distinguish their ways of addressing people

as well as uncover the bias in their naming choices

The two dailies‟ wordings/ lexical choice for the two candidates (Mr Obama and Mr McCain) are also investigated, to find out how different their way of covering news about each candidate are, thus reveal their favorite candidate or who they endorse as the new president

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter is the analysis of headlines and full-text news reports In the first stage of headlines analysis, a detailed description of representation of the Democratic candidate (Mr Obama) and that of the Republican candidate (Mr McCain) from The New York Times and New York Post will be presented Later, the full text analysis can provide the most prominently discursive strategies employed by the two dailies in representing the two candidates The findings in the full-text analysis are to strengthen what is primarily found

in the earlier headlines analysis

3.1 Headlines analysis

Through the analysis of headlines, an attempt is made to answer the following questions: 1/ What are the most prominent processes attributed to Mr Obama and Mr McCain by The New York Times and New York Post?

2/ What are the most prominent roles assigned to the two presidential candidates by the two newspapers?

3/ Why are the two candidates involved in such processes and roles in the two dailies? The data in the corpus were taken during the period of two months before the Election Day

of 4th, November 2008 During this period, all eyes are on the two presidential candidates Their performance and information about their actions and events during that time would

be crucial to determining the next president of the US Therefore, looking at the discourse

of election coverage in The New York Times and New York Post in these two months can reveal their ideological construction of representation of the two candidates

3.1.1 The New York Times

3.1.1.1 Representation of Mr Obama

Table 2 Mr Obama’s roles in percentage in The New York Times

Material Mental Relational Verbal Behavioural Existential

Obama Wraps His Hopes inside Economic Anxiety

Obama Raises a Record $66 Million in a Month

Obama Briefly Leaving Trail to See Ill Grandmother

Obama Appeal Rises in Poll; No Gains for McCain Ticket

Obama Led Opponent in Spending in August

Obama Attacks McCain on Health Care and Medicare, in Some Ways Inaccurately McCain Attacks, but Obama Stays Steady

Positive events relating to the Democratic candidate and his actions are often covered and stated right in the headlines, clearly, briefly and simply straight to the point without

Process

Role