Election US-Style: an englishwoman’s view from the streets of new york
It’s all done and dusted, and by the time you read this, Obama will have taken over in the White House. The hype of the electoral process was well-covered in the British media, but what was it really like over there? Intrepid student, Emma Coker, on a 21st birthday trip to New York, was actually there on election day with her camera. This is her report.
I arrived in New York on the 30th of October, five days before the presidential election. It had been eight years since my first visit to the ‘Big Apple’ and I was yet to experience the city post-9/11. Perhaps it was arriving at night, driving south down Broadway in a yellow taxi, looking up in amazement as we passed Times Square, the city still so alive (or maybe ‘awake’ is a more appropriate term), that heightened my sense of anticipation of my stay. I was heading downtown to Tribeca on the Lower West side of Manhattan and within five minutes of my ride, I noticed the first evidence of the impact of the electoral race. In the window of an elegant 6th Avenue department store, two male mannequins attired in Armani suits each wore the mask of a potential president.
New Yorkers are of course world-renowned for their friendly, approachable demeanours as well as their seemingly genuine optimism. However, it was evident to me almost straight away that this positivism had amplified as the race to the White House reached the finishing strait. The people of New York were eager for, and expected, change. The city was consumed by election fever, and the Obama vs. McCain battle was completely unavoidable. New York is undoubtedly Blue through and through (rather confusingly, while blue for us means the Conservatives, in the US it stands for the Democrats). The face of Barack Obama was plastered or gratified on almost every street corner. Hundreds of New Yorkers wore pins on their lapels to confirm their partisanship, and I didn’t see a single one branded with the face of John McCain.
What surprised me the most, however, wasn’t how totally Obama-obsessed New York appeared to be, but the emphasis placed on the importance of voting, whichever way, and the sense of urgency do to so. Furthermore, it wasn’t just the public trying to spread the word to others, urging them to make the most of their most valuable civil liberty, but also franchises, including some of the world’s most well-known brands. Huge ‘VOTE’ signs were the centre-pieces of window displays in stores such as GAP, Urban Outfitters and American Apparel as well as several independent boutiques. Clever incentives were adopted to persuade people to make their vote count. GAP gave out free ‘Vote for _____’ T-shirts to anybody who made a purchase, whilst on election day itself, Starbucks gave away free lattes to anybody who could prove they’d already voted. The more creative types in SoHo and the meat-packing district used their artistic flair to illustrate the significance of voting, with eye-catching and witty posters and shop fronts. The Magnolia Bakery, made famous by an appearance in Sex and the City, was selling batches of cup cakes iced in red, white and blue, each with a mini stars and stripes flag. There was a queue around the block to get your hands on one. They tasted good.
Coverage of the electoral campaign was constant on American news channels, and while the general mood was positive and hopeful, there were reports of possible corruption in Virginia, a state with several marginal seats, and thus a heightened sense of urgency for everyone entitled to vote to do so. News of attempts by Republican support groups to sabotage Democratic voting emerged – and illustrated the darker side of such a critical election. It was suggested that several potentially Democratic neighbourhoods were targeted, and inhabitants were wrongly told that due to ‘unprecedented voter numbers’ Democrats had to vote on the 5th rather than the 4th of November – by which time the result of the election would have already been called. Specific groups, including recent immigrants and African Americans (seen as likely to support Barack Obama) were supposedly warned off voting with threats of arrest for trivial offences and deportation.
Five days later, as my trip neared its end, preparations were being made all over the city for the big day and the even bigger night that would follow. The Rockefeller Center, due to become ‘Election Plaza’, announcing the results from each state as they came in, already shrouded in tourists queuing for a skate on its famous ice rink, was crawling with news reporters awaiting the biggest story they’d surely cover in months and electricians making sure transmission went without a hitch.
To my utter frustration, I left New York City at 9pm on Election Day, just hours before Barack Obama was announced President. I can only imagine what it would have been like to experience such a momentous occasion in the flesh; instead I had to watch the reaction of New Yorkers on my television at home. As my bus headed to JFK airport, I caught my last glimpse of the big city, the Empire State Building lit up in the colours red, white and blue.
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 27, February 2009.
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Election
In MediaMagazine 13 Jerome Monahan provided a comprehensive account of the media tactics employed in the 2005 General Election. Here he looks in more detail at the party Political Broadcasts and provides:
– a list of blogging MPs, with links
– links to other blogs connected to the election or politics more generally
– suggestions for further online reading.
Party Political Broadcasts – General Election 2005
The highlights include Anthony Minghella’s extraordinary film for the Labour party, depicting Blair and supposed arch-rival Chancellor Gordon Brown in a series of intimate discussions about the philosophical roots and governing principles attaching to their policies. Vaseline had definitely been applied to the lense to give it a warm glow, and the settings for the conversations in first the wood-panelled cabinet room and then in a bright canteen provided subliminal messages about tradition and forward thinking. The film was described as a ‘love scene’ by some journalists and there was a great deal of eye contact between the politicians going on, as a rather restless camera flicked between them. As you watch, look out for Blair’s vanishing striped tie – a classic continuity blunder! Among the subsequent broadcasts one that really stands out is that using Alan Sugar of The Apprentice fame. The screening was timed to coincide with the later stages of the reality show and scored on all sorts of levels, not least suggesting that labour was the natural choice of top businessmen.
The Tories broadcast a number of different films, but the first had clearly had the most money lavished on it. It featured a series of eleven vignettes involving representative individuals, echoing the ‘dog whistle’ concerns in the manifesto and on the posters. The rather dull content, with some of the contributors appearing distinctly lack lustre in their delivery, was counterbalanced by an extremely artful editing job that ensured no scene lasted more than a few seconds and every speaker was heralded by a close up on something that seemed to define them. In the background a rock-music track provided a counterweight to the traditional views being expressed. Among the richest in connotations were those scenes of a lady striding among the pebbles on a south coast beach – ready to defend our shores, a sentiment in keeping with the views she was expressing about immigration.
The Lib Dems by contrast could not afford the kind of production values their rivals could manage, so their first broadcast was a rather down-market affair with Charles Kennedy superimposed on a computer graphic of Britain from which orange cones of light emerged to herald brief sequences celebrating the party’s record in such places as Newcastle, where they run the council. Far more effective was the party’s second film – a version of the ‘the boy who cried wolf’ cautionary tale voiced by Sandy Toksvig and ridiculing both Blair and ‘Howie’ for believing tales of bad things hiding in the woods.
However, in the end, first prize in the audacious broadcast stakes deserves to go to UKIP. Their film was a hilarious tribute to B-feature sci-fi featuring screaming crowds and a fabulously tacky European Union many-tentacled monster clambering over the Bank of England and the Palace of Westminster. The film was in the great tradition of nineteenth-century political cartoons by the likes of James Gillray or Thomas Rowlandson.
The last word on this score has to go to Channel 4 news who hired maverick ad-makers Lee and Dan to come up with a set of hilarious spoof broadcasts. At the time of writing this they remained online at http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=67
Blogging– General Election 2005
Blogging MPS
• Tom Watson http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/
• Boris Johnson http://www.boris-johnson.com/
• Shaun Woodward http://www.shaunwoodward.com/
• Sandra Gidley http://romseyredhead.blogspot.com/
• Austin Mitchell http://www.austinmitchell.org/
• Iain Dale http://www.iaindale.blogspot.com/
• Ian Lyon http://www.ianlyon.org.uk/
• Kevin Davis http://kevindavis.blogspot.com/
• Antonia Bance http://www.antoniabance.org.uk/blog/
• Anthony Little http://antonylittle.blogspot.com/
• Judith Blake http://www.labour.org.uk/home
• Keith Taylor http://www.keithforwestminster.com/h/f/KEITH/blog//2//
• Mark Young http://dyffrynt.blogspot.com/
• Jamie Bolden http://www.jamiebolden.com/
• Chris Whiteside http://www.chris4copeland.blogspot.com/
• John Hemming http://johnhemming.blogspot.com/
• Robert Buckland http://www.swindonforbuckland.com/
Election and political blogging
• Richard Allan http://www.richardallan.org.uk/
• Clive Soley http://clivesoleymp.typepad.com/clive_soley_mp/
• BBC Election blog http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/blog/default.stm
• Guardian Election blog http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/election2005/
• Times Election blog http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,20809,00.html
• New Statesman Election blog http://www.newstatesman.com/generalelection
• Bill Thompson’s blog http://www.andfinally.com/
• Slugger O’Toole http://www.sluggerotoole.com/
• Voxpolitics http://www.voxpolitics.com/index.shtml
• The Homeless Guy http://www.thehomelessguy.blogspot.com/
• Downing Street Says http://www.downingstreetsays.com/
• They work for you http://www.theyworkforyou.com/
• Election blogs, Keele University http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge05/electionblogs.htm
• Leon’s Election blog http://election-05.blogspot.com/
• Robin’s eDemocracy http://www.perfect.co.uk/
Blogs in the USA
www.blogpulse.com/papers/2005/AdamicG
Further online reading
Dog Whistle Issues
http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3789210
Sandy Walkington appointment
http://www.scotlibdems.org.uk/press/050105a.htm
Main Political sites
British National Party: http://www.bnp.org.uk/
Conservatives: http://www.conservatives.com/
The Green Party: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/
lanceBlogWWW.pdf
The Labour Party: http://www.labour.org.uk/home
The Liberal Democrats: http://www.libdems.org.uk/
Plaid Cymru: http://www.plaidcymru.org/
Scottish National Party: http://www.snp.org/
UKIP: http://www.ukip.org/
Respect: http://www.respectcoalition.org/
Sinn Fein: http://sinnfein.ie/
Ulster Unionists: http://www.uup.org
Democratic Unionist Party: http://www.dup.org.uk/
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Brand/Ross/Sachsgate: what every media student needs to know
When Brand and Ross left those infamous answerphone messages for Andrew Sachs, they little realised they were unleashing a scandal of national proportions – or that they might become enshrined as A Level case studies. Senior examiner Steph Hendry outlines the debates raised by the affair, the ways different media platforms addressed it, and the important issues it should raise for your media course.
For a recent issue of MediaMagazine I used the poster for the film Forgetting Sarah Marshall to demonstrate approaches to analysis. One of the points I raised was about the use of the image of Russell Brand in the marketing of the film. At that point Brand’s star was in the ascendency and he had begun to raise his profile both here and across the Atlantic. His ‘bad boy’ persona was an integral part of the way the film was promoted to British audiences. If, however, a week is a long time in politics then a few months is a lifetime in the entertainment industry. In October 2008 ‘Bad Boy Brand’ responded to public pressure and resigned from the BBC after being involved in a ‘phone prank’ broadcast on BBC Radio 2.
The scandal concerned answerphone messages left for the actor Andrew Sachs and the fact that Brand and Jonathan Ross had broadcast comments that some saw as abusive, inappropriate and vulgar. This story was high on the news agenda for the best part of a week in October. The event, the reporting of the event and the responses to both provide interesting insight into modern media culture for students. It is an ideal case study which shows how various media platforms act together to provide the momentum for a story to dominate the news agenda of all news outlets and to mobilise audiences. The broadcast itself generated very little public concern but the reporting of it created such interest that thousands who originally knew nothing about the prank felt compelled to complain (or defend the broadcasters) in the wake of the news media’s response to this radio show.
Institutional contexts
Radio
The offending broadcast was originally aired on BBC Radio 2 on Saturday Oct 18th during the The Russell Brand Show. Radio is a media platform which is often overlooked by students but it is still a very popular medium which mixes broadcasting of various types from music to current affairs and documentary to comedy. Radio is one of the most easily accessed of broadcasting platforms with radios themselves being cheap to buy. Radio is also broadcast on digital television, mobile phones and online either as live broadcasts or via recorded shows which are available as streamed audio or podcasts for downloading and listening to on MP3 players. The rise in the popularity of portable music players and downloadable material has made radio an exceptionally flexible format which allows audiences to control when and where they listen to radio shows.
On the day of the broadcast itself, it is interesting to note that there were only two complaints and that these were made about the use of bad language in the segment, not the content of the call itself. This could indicate a number of things: the radio audience for the show found the content of the programme within their expectations of the show; the radio audience did not feel the joke merited concern; proportionally, the audience for radio programmes such as this is relatively small (it is estimated that the radio show had around 400,000 listeners). Whatever the reasons, the initial broadcast did not generate much in the way of a public outcry. This only occurred when the issue was taken up by the national newspapers.
Newspapers
The first sign of ‘outrage’ came in an article published by The Mail on Sunday. The British press often positions itself as a guardian of public morality and decency and this was the tone taken by The Mail in its shocked reporting of the issue. No room was left for debate as the newspaper condemned the broadcast absolutely, describing Brand and Ross’s phone call as a ‘criminal offence’ (Oct 25th) and raising the institutional issue of BBC funding as an important factor given the fact that Jonathan Ross was working under a contract worth £18m over three years. This money comes from funds the BBC receives from the license fee paid by the general public.
The types of responses the different newspapers made to the event provide a lot of clues about the specific news agenda held by the titles. The Mail often criticises the BBC in terms of the way it spends money and the public service that it provides. The Mail broke the story and continued to give it a high profile over the course of the week. The Sun ran the story on the Monday on page 3 suggesting perhaps that it saw the event as little more than titillating entertainment. Their attitude changed and it took a more moralistic slant as the public response became clear but they also ran photographs of Sachs’ granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, which had been used in an attempt to launch her glamour model career some years previously.
Several papers, including The Mirror, The Express and The Guardian did not see the story as newsworthy enough on the Monday to include it at all – their coverage began on the Tuesday. The Star jumped on the bandwagon on the Wednesday by running pictures of Sachs’ granddaughter in her fetish stage gear. Max Clifford (a notorious PR agent) was employed by Baillie as the story broke and played a major part in ensuring her perspective was communicated through the tabloid press. The newspapers employed narrative techniques as villains (Brand, Ross, the BBC) were quickly identified and victims (Sachs and Baillie) were quickly defended. Each day saw a further conflict being brought to the story which allowed the papers to capitalise on the public interest being generated. Brand’s resignation, Gordon Brown’s statement, Baillie’s comments and the BBC’s responses all allowed the story to run for several days as each event added more discussion points. However, the main reason the story continued to run was due to the life it generated for itself outside the newspapers with audiences becoming involved in the debate, largely via the internet.
The Internet
The reason for the extended and expanded responses from all newspapers can be explained when looking at the role of the internet in the growth of the story. The initial story in The Mail on Sunday and its follow-up in The Mail on the Monday generated over 200, mainly negative, comments. This may not sound like a lot but, compared to the average number of responses received for a breaking news story, this indicated that the public’s feelings ran high and there was a large scale condemnation of both the broadcaster’s judgement and in the BBC’s decision to allow the pre-recorded segment to be aired.
The offending broadcast was the most accessed video ever on YouTube shortly after the story broke. One version of the clip on YouTube has been accessed by over 1.25 million people and the easy access to the ‘evidence’ gave people a chance to listen and evaluate the broadcast for themselves. In addition, online editions of newspapers now provide a useful way for the papers themselves to gauge audience feelings as stories on the internet provide a facility for readers to add their own comments.
Add to all this the sheer volume of outlets for reporting and commenting on the story provided by the internet and this story echoed across the media in news and gossip web pages, in blogs and in chat forums. Facebook currently has an area for people who are opposed to the suspensions with 43,000 members. Everyone who has felt the need has had an opportunity to contribute to the debate.
Wider issues and debates
• The events have put the BBC under the spotlight yet again. Questions have been asked about the accountability of individuals within the BBC when mistakes or bad judgements are made. Some commentators have criticised the fact that ‘success’ is always gauged by viewing figures and so the BBC is seen to be attempting to produce populist programming at the expense of broadcasts which seek to inform and educate. The enormous fees paid to presenters such as Ross has also been widely criticised and his subsequent suspension without pay has been widely reported as a victory as it saves the corporation over £1m.
• Wider questions have also been raised regarding the moral climate of a nation where the content of the broadcast is defined by some as ‘comedy’. This has been described as part of a wider culture of cruelty in popular entertainment.
• Debates have begun on whether we are witnessing evidence of a cultural generation gap. Sachs has been described as a ‘national treasure’ but this can only be of any relevance to people who can remember his performance in the 1970s sitcom Fawlty Towers. Although Ross is nearly 50 years old, he still presents himself as part of youth culture and Brand is a comedian who appeals directly to a youth audience. Has this been at the heart of the ‘scandal’? Is this a clash of adult and youth values touching on attitudes to public discussions of sexual behaviour and ideas surrounding showing respect for older generations? Is gender a part of this? Is the outcry based on a perception of Brand’s ‘ungentlemanly’ behaviour in talking crudely about his sexual encounter?
• Conversely, concerns have also been raised about the condemnation by newspapers and a minority of the population and the BBC’s response to this, seeing it as a form of censorship. There are worries that this may make broadcasters less willing to take creative risks and act to limit new ideas in the future.
• The affair also raises questions about the power of the audience (and British newspapers). As no programming could ever please all audience members, it begs the question as to who should be the ones to decide what can and cannot be broadcast. Who should have the final say: newspapers, a vocal minority or programme producers?
• The story taps into an idea of ‘people power’ and democracy created by the interactive potential of the internet. Have we been witness to an example of e-technology taking power away from the institutions and giving it to audience members?
For Media students investigating institutions, audiences, e-media, representations and ideologies, the events of one week in October 2008 provide ample material for further research and discussion which flags up key issues and debates within contemporary media. It’s a shame Ross himself was not a Media student as apparently he hadn’t given these issues much thought. He is quoted as saying:
you don’t realise that what you’re doing here [in the studio] has a reality outside. Cited in Harris, the Guardian, 28/10/08
This radio show, accessed by a relatively small number of the British public, has certainly shown that the reality outside the studio can sometimes be enormously wide-reaching.
Sachsgate – a timeline of events
• Sunday Oct 26th 2008: The initial Mail on Sunday report is published. There are two complaints generated by the broadcast itself.
• Monday 27th: The BBC apologises to Andrew Sachs. Complaints top 1,500.
• Tuesday 28th: The Mail runs a front page call for the sacking of Brand and Ross and included a YouTube video-link on the website. The Star prints images of granddaughter in fetish stage gear. All newspapers now report on the story; Gordon Brown and David Cameron both make statements condemning the broadcast. Complaints reach 10,500. Ofcom opens an investigation.
• Wednesday 29th: Brand and Ross are suspended by the BBC. Brand resigns his position from the BBC and releases a video apology. Complaints reach 18,000.
• Thursday 30th: Lesley Douglas, Radio 2’s Controller and Head of Popular Music, resigns. Ross told he is suspended for three months without pay.
• November 5th: Channel 5 broadcast a TV documentary on the affair which features an interview with Georgina Baillie. Complaints reach 37,500.
• November 7th: Radio 2’s Head of Specialist Music and Compliance resigns.
• November 8th: The BBC broadcast a second apology to Andrew Sachs on Radio 2. Complaints have reached 42,000.
• December 18th: The BBC demands that Ross tones down his swearing and smutty language when he returns to work.
• December 29th: Daily Mail reveals that Ross is currently joking about the situation online in his blog. It also suggests his most recent book Why do I say these things? is a flop at only 685 in the Amazon book sales charts.
• January 23rd: Ross returns to work with the line ‘Where were we?’. He apologises for his previous behaviour. Brand continues to refer to the incident in stand-up and other gigs.
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 27, February 2009.
