| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Media portrayal of Barak Obama and the threat of assassination

Page history last edited by Danielle Improte 15 years, 4 months ago

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/07/breaking-man-held-for-obama-assassination-threat/

Man held for alleged Obama assassination threat

August 7, 2008 

Posted: 09:40 PM ET

CNN National Correspondent Susan Candiotti

Accessed on October 21, 2008  

     A man by the name of Raymond Hunter Geisel, was being held in Florida on charges.  He told his classmates that he would kill Democratic pr esidential candidate Barack Obama if he was elected.  He was discovered to have a hand gun and other weapons.  This threat was made just a couple of days before Obama was scheduled to visit Florida.  When Raymond spoke with the secret service, he told them that “if he wanted to kill Senator Obama he would simply shoot him with a sniper rifle.”  Some of his classmates also heard him use a racial slur toward Obama and said, “if he gets elected , I’ll assassinate him myself.”  I think this article could be taken as slightly bias because they are showing that there are people out there who would want to assassinate Obama if he was elected president, but in the article they aren't saying that necessarily they agree or disagree with this thought of assassination. 

   

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1024327/Racism-threat-assassination-haunt-Baracks-historic-achievement.html

Racism and the threat of assassination haunt Barack's historic achievement

June 5, 2008

Phillip Delves Broughton

     In this article, we find out that Obama received secret service protection earlier than any other presidential candidate because of the threats of his assassination.  He has been protected 24 hours a day for almost a year.  The media itself has also been advertising this threat of assassination.  For example a magazine in Macon, Georgia, printed a cover showing Obama in the crosshairs of a rifle sight.  The article that followed this quoted a white supremacist saying “some idiot out there’s going to put a bullet in that silver-tongued devil and then there’ll be a race war.”  In recent polls it showed that 59 percent of the American public fears an attempt on Obama’s life if he became the Democrats’ presidential nominee.  This article isn't really showing a bias to either side, because it shows the media who is advertising the threat of Obama's assassination, but then also bringing up the point that he has alot of secret service protection.

 

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jan/07/obama-gets-beefed-up-protection/

Obama gets beefed-up protection

January 7, 2008

Brian DeBose and Christina Bellatoni

                Ever since Barack Obama had his dramatic win in Iowa, the safety of him becoming America’s first black president rose.  For many of his black supporters, there is a lot of worry on people’s minds that he will be killed.  Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a Princeton University said that he has “50 percent chance of getting shot.”  Officials also say they have tracked racist chatter on white-supremacist web sites.  Typing “assassinate Obama” is one of the top searches on Google and it brings up more than 2,000 hits.  I think this article is bias towards Obama getting assassinated, because it stated that there is a 50% chance that he will be killed but they never talked about the other 50% chance that nothing may even happen.

  

 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/08/obama-assassina.html

Plot unfolds to assassinate Obama on national TV, a 4th arrest, more details

Andrew Malcolm

In this article from the LA Times, it explains to us more details from the Denver case in which three men were involved with a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Obama with a high-powered rifle on national television during his outdoor acceptance speech at Invesco Field.  In the vehicle of one of the suspects, Tharin Gartrell, they found two high-powered rifles, ammunition, radios, a bulletproof vest, drugs and fake IDs.   When Gartrell had been questioned he revealed the names of the other two men, Nathan Johnson and Shawn Adolph.  Also under questioning the men admitted that there was a plot to kill Obama during his speech before about 70,000 supporters and a nationwide audience.  They are all now in custody on drug and weapon charges.  I think that this article is bias towards the feeling that there are many people out there making plots to kill Obama.

 

  

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2008/08/26/plot-to-assassinate-obama-white-supremacists-are-worried

Plot to Assassinate Obama? White Supremacists are Worried

Mark Potok

August 26, 2008

After having found out the possible assassination plot against Obama, white supremacists were suspicious at the fact that they were being set up by the federal government to take the blame for this plot.  Long before this Democratic convention in Denver, several white supremacists were arguing that an Obama victory could actually be good for their movement.  They predicted that if there was a victory it would shock white Americans, and drive millions of them into white supremacist groups.  I’m not sure if this article is bias or not, because the white supremacists do explain how they don’t want to be blamed for this plot but then they also go into how if Obama does win it will be good for their white supremacist group.

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/10/nobel-winner-obama-will-_n_85875.html

Nobel Winner: Obama Will Be Assassinated If He Wins

February 10, 2008

AFP 

     In this article written in the Huffington Post, it informs us that the Bristish Nobel literature writer Doris Lessing predicted in a newspaper interview that “if Obama becomes the next US president he will surely be assassinated.”  Lessing, a Nobel Literature Prize winner in 2007 also said that “Obama, who is trying to make history and become the first black president, would certainly not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would murder him,”  This article is very bias towards the fact that Obama will be assassinated if he does win the 2008 presidential election.

 

 

Assessment-

 

While reading all of the stories, I have been finding that many of the articles are bias towards the fact that there is a 50% chance that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will be assassinated if he should win the election.  They fear that he will be assassinated because he is of the African American race and many Americans would not want him as a president.   There have already been three or more cases of Americans who have come up with plots to assassinate Obama because they don’t want him to be our president.  I think that knowing there are Americans out there who wouldn’t be able to accept the fact that it’s the year 2008 and yes we can have an African American president is sad.  We should be open to experiencing new things in life, such as having a black president which would be a big part of our history.

 

 

 

 

When Barack Obama was first selected to be the Democratic presidential candidate, there was a lot of media coverage about the threats of Obama being assassinated.  Soon after, the threats calmed down and we didn’t hear too much about them anymore but, now as the election is getting closer there seems to be an increase again in those threats.  The media has a big role in publicizing the threat of Obama’s assassination if he should be elected.  The article “Man held for alleged Obama assassination threat,” I feel is a good example of how the media publicizes the threat of Obama being assassinated.  The article tells us about a man by the name of Raymond Hunter Geisel from Florida who had made a threat a couple of days before Obama was scheduled to visit Florida.  The article then goes on to state exactly what Geisel said “if he wanted to kill Senator Obama he would simply shoot him with a sniper rifle,” and other threats such as “if he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.”  This article is a good example of how the media publicizes this issue because it is not only informing that there are threats out there but they are saying exactly what the threats are.  This could put thoughts of assassinating Obama into the head’s of other people out there too.  I think it’s good to inform the public about the situation that there are threats out there and he does need to be protected but they shouldn’t be including the exact threats and the type of weapons they are planning to use to go through with the assassination.

 

 

 

Outline

I.                    Bias by commission

The article written in the Washington Times, Obama gets beefed-up protection, I think can be viewed as bias by commission when reading it.  To be considered bias by commission the article has to pass along assumptions that tend to support a “left-wing or liberal view”.  Throughout the article they only mention information such as typing “assassinate Obama” into Google is one of the top searches, and that there is 50% percent chance that Obama will get shot.  This can be considered bias by commission because there only telling us about the negative side of Obama winning the election such as him getting shot.  They don’t go on to inform us about the other side which are positive effects.

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.