Political campaigns are known for making hard-hitting strikes against opponents. But when a campaign hits its opponent’s campaign below the belt using smear tactics and attacking his character and reputation the real issues get set aside and citizens get irritated. The media loves to cover the smear tactics which only further pushes the real issues aside.
The problem is students often use the media as their primary source of candidate information, but the media isn’t a reliable source for such an important decision. There are much more reliable and accurate sources to find the information needed to decide whom to vote for.
Although debates and speeches are helpful in picking someone to represent you, the media’s coverage and spin can influence your mindset just as much as the speech did. Not to mention that some of the worst people in history gave great speeches8212;Hitler comes to mind.
To really look into the candidates, you need to do your own research. Stop counting on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX to get you all the details. If you want real information you need to find it yourself. News networks often have their own agendas and biases.
There are easily accessible tools to help you find out where candidates stand on issues. You can look at their voting history in the House or the Senate. Since both of our current presidential hopefuls are senators, visiting www.senate.gov is the fastest way to find out what their stance is on any topic.
Here you have a handful of ways to see senators’ voting records. The first is The Congressional Record. It is the official source for senate floor votes. It has every Senate bill and shows every senator that voted “yay” or “nay.”
The next option you have is to use THOMAS. THOMAS is a section of the Library of Congress, named in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, designed to make legislative information accessible to citizens. THOMAS is easy to use. You can search for bills based on subject and see if they were passed and the breakdown in votes.
The third option is a bit harder to use, but more compressive. CQ Weekly is a weekly magazine published by Congressional Quarterly. CQ Weekly records all votes taken in the House and the Senate each week. The magazine includes short summaries of each bill. Every state is broken down into congressional districts and there are charts and graphs showing all votes. The tricky part about reading CQ Weekly is that you have to get it from a Federal depository library. The good news is that our very own Marriott Library is a Federal depository library and you can request any issue be sent there.
With so many concrete options available to students there is no reason to turn to the media alone to find where any political figure stands on any topic.
Gina Lea Nickl