Media and Politics

I don't think I have ever written in a blog, and if I have then it was a long time ago. Anyways, I want to talk about the recent Senate election in Massachusetts, and how the media was involved in this election. First of all I would like to say that I have never seen so many television and radio ads for a state senate election. Usually its not greatly publicized and voters will just go out and vote for whatever candidate they like or side with. In this past election almost every single commercial on the radio and T.V. was about the election, especially the few days right before the election. In my opinion these ads are a good thing, and a bad thing. They are good because it allows people to learn more about the candidates, and their policies. There are many people who don't watch the news, read newspapers or keep up with politics and they do not really care about who our Senator is. The ads during the election may have woke some of those people up and showed them that they need to start caring about policies and who makes them. The bad thing about the ads is the negative attack ads. In this past election Coakley put out extremely negative and false ads which bashed our new Senator Scott Brown. In my opinion it is awful that these ads are even able to be put on television. I understand that it is freedom of speech and freedom of the press to put these ads on the tv and radio, but it is very un-necessary to put false claims and un-true statements on them. I am very glad that her attack ads did not work for her, and hope that candidates stop using them in the future. The reason why I decided to use this topic for my blog was because of my love for politics, and how it ties in with this class. For me seeing this attack ads was only offensive, and it did nothing more then further prove to me who the honest and best candidate was.