On July 10th, 2008 then U.S. Senator John McCain was interviewed about his stance on requiring health insurance providers to cover birth control. He did not give an immediate response, or really much of a response at all. He stated that he did not know enough about the issue to comment on it. The reasoning the reporter used for asking the question was that he recently voted down a bill that would have provided such a benefit while some time before that he had voted yay on a bill that mandated insurance companies cover Viagra. I watched three different news clips of different news stations and paid attention to any possible discrepancies and differences between what information was presented and how that information was presented.
The first news broadcast was from MSNBC. The station aired parts of the interview that showed McCain stumbling on the question and avoiding it saying he didn’t know enough about it, as well as the part about his previous vote dealing with Viagra. There was then lengthy commentary on the hypocrisy of his vote and his inadequacy or unwillingness to answer the question shows how uninformed he is thus perceiving him as an irresponsible person. The next news station was CNN. On this broadcast they did not openly criticize McCain over the comments but proceeded to show footage of his campaigns co-chairwoman publicly speaking about her dissatisfaction with Viagra being covered and not birth control thus contradicting and going against McCain's actions as Senator which points to the disunity within his campaign and possibly McCain being on the minority on the issue. The third network was Fox News and on its program there was no open criticism or mocking of the presidential candidate, instead Bill O’Reilly criticizes Planned Parenthood, the organization that has pushed for health insurance companies to pay for birth control. He calls them “wackos” and states that they, “are using him [John McCain] to make their point”. A Planned Parenthood political ad is played after that which features a section of the interview of McCain meant to portray him as inept. O’Reilly also argues the case on why Viagra is covered and not birth Control.
It becomes apparent the differing skews that each station works off of. MSNBC was the most discernible with what purpose it was broadcasting the information for, openly criticizing McCain, justified or not. CNN did not openly interpret the interview, speculating on what it may or may not say about the candidate, but did show other footage and other information that put McCain in negative light. Fox News openly defended McCain's past voting record and his and others reasons for voting the way they did, and went after the organization behind the opposing movement. By doing so McCain was put into a positive light, at least to those who agree with the reasoning presented by O’Reilly.
