Hillary and Barack Alabama visit: Report the significance accurately!

Although, I have been under the weather since Thursday, I hope I am not stealing anybody’s media watch critique. The Washington Post and the Boston Globe both wrote pretty decent stories on the presidential candidates marching in Selma, Alabama for the 42nd anniversary of the March 7, 1965 “Bloody Sunday”.

In a peaceful voting-rights march back in the civil rights hay day, the activists were beaten in Selma by police with night sticks, revealing the racist voting practices that kept blacks from the polls.

The Post chooses a pretty neutral headline with “Clinton, Obama Link Selma March to Present: Civil Rights Cited as Enabling Their Campaigns”, while the Globe chooses a more fierce headline with “Two rivals mark civil rights struggle: Hillary Clinton, Obama attend Alabama rally”.

However, the Post’s lead only contains Obama, placing him before the mentioning of Clinton’s involvement in the second paragraph. This can indicate to the readers that Obama, due to being black and being the “fruits of labor” of the residents of the Alabama town, gets more priority.

The Globe’s lead has Clinton and Obama side by side, with a more solid lead explaining simply and plainly, the gist behind their involvement with Sunday’s march.

The Globe takes a biased move and in the fourth paragraph in, the writer gives the reader the impression that Hillary brought her husband to Alabama as a “special lure” to attract voters. The writer also has the nerve to include that Bill Clinton, in the fifth paragraph, “is” popular among the black voters. Come on Hillary, or Nedra Pickler at the AP, we aren’t reading this article to see how Bill Clinton will fan out.

The Post’s writer did not go out of his way like the AP writer in the Globe article to mention Obama’s “call to action” in his speech that the younger generation of black Americans do not always honor the civil rights movement and that urban neighborhoods are littered with 40 oz. bottles and trash, as well as “voting instead of complaining that the government is not helping them.”

Was this a smart move to print this? I am not too sure. Then again, the Post’s two bylined staff writers may have had more time to compile their info, while the AP writer’s deadline to get the story syndicated was more prompt.

I felt as though the Post article stuck more with the issue at hand: why the two presidential candidates were in Selma, Alabama and the significance of it. As a reader, I want to know more about the history behind the event, then secondarily wonder about the first black presidential candidate and the first female presidential candidate’s motives and reasoning in their speeches. The Globe’s article failed to capture my attention to the real reason why the story is newsworthy. It is concluded mentioning that the former president stole the show in his speech for his induction into Selma's Voting Rights Hall of Fame. Why should I care to know this?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/04/AR2007030400475_2.html

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/03/05/two_rivals_mark_civil_rights_struggle/