This might not be properly Great Debates… but I have a feeling that it will become a debate soon enough.
How is the result of the Spanish Elections being portrayed in the US media ? Are they “interpreting” it somehow ? What about the american public ? Are they very little aware of it… or are they following the attack and aftermath ?
Please indicate if relevant which media (Fox, ABC, NBC, Newspaper, Radio) and what american public (Ohio, conservatives, elite, workers) please. Their reactions.
I want to have a feeling of how this is coming through in the USA, opinions of course can be skewed by personal bias so indicate your bias too. Its also something for Americans themselves to analyze their own media’s portrayal of the events in Spain.
Good OP! I think maybe our overseas posters get an exaggerated idea of how much politics is discussed by the average American. The demolition derby of the SDMB usually gives way to little golf carts IRL.
The bombing happened too late to make the Thursday morning papers here, so most people found out via TV news. They didn’t have much information but I immediately though ETA escalating, because that’s the kind of thing they do. People here felt just terrible about it, realizing how helpless they were feeling over there. It dominated the conversation for a couple of days. People signed condolence books and devoured the news about it. Most people hadn’t known there was an election too, though, and the results took them by surprise a little until they found out how slim the margins were.
The American media like CNN, which I watch, seems to be cutting them a lot of slack, as they were forced to make a big decision while still in a state of shock. I haven’t heard anyone here in NY say bluntly that Spain rolled over like the Andrea Doria in the face of terror, but there does seem to be puzzlement as to why they don’t seem to want to crack down harder on the situation rather than withdrawing. Then again, Spain is seen as a nation just recently emerged from facism, and very poor compared to the rest of Europe. It would be much more shocking if the UK voted like that.
We’ll see what the big opinion-makers say on the Sunday morning talk shows.
Bill O’Reilly said something like “the Spanish have handed the reins of government to terrorists”. Other than that, it’s been mostly, “this horrible attack was their September 11th,” and outpourings of sympathy. We really haven’t appeared to be nearly as caring as we ought, especially given 9/11.
Well, one opinion that I heard expressed by someone interviewed on NPR (which is, of course, a bit out of the mainstream) was that things aren’t looking very good in the election booth for politicians who align themselves too closely with Bush…citing the examples of Germany, South Korea, and now Spain.
Here, Rashak, is a link to a New York Times article on the subject. (You may have to register in order to read it but it’s free.)
An excerpt:
*In March 2003, at the height of opposition to the Iraq war, the Socialists were ahead in polls. With the economy roaring and the Socialist Party in disarray, the Popular Party pulled ahead. On March 7, the last date in which polls were published, an Opina poll showed that the gap had narrowed, giving the Popular Party 42 percent, compared with 38 percent for the Socialists.
Four days later, terror struck. With Madrid under siege, voters were expected to rally around the flag and stick with the party that had talked the toughest against terrorism, at least initially. Even the Socialists braced themselves for that outcome, said two senior party officials.
But interviews with scores of Spaniards of both parties indicated that a number of things happened after the attacks that shifted the balance to the Socialists. Voters flooded the polls on Sunday in record numbers, especially young people who had not planned to vote. In interviews, they said they did so not so much out of fear of terror as anger against a government they saw as increasingly authoritarian, arrogant and stubborn. The government, they said, mishandled the crisis in the emotional days after the attacks.
Voters said they were enraged not only by the government’s insistence that the Basque separatist group ETA was responsible, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, but they also resented its clumsy attempts to quell antigovernment sentiment.*
Aside: Man, what a dufus Bill O’Reilly is. :rolleyes:
Those who opposed Bush somehow got good election results too: Schroeder and Putin. Any other examples ? Iraq was only a year ago so I suppose not many.
The ousted South Korean President was pro-Bush ? Didn't know that... didn't follow much about his impeachment. How much of the discontent was Bush related though ?
Putin isn’t a very good example as he went virtually unopposed. He could have been just about anywhere in regards to Bush and it wouldn’t have changed the results. As I understand it the South Korean debacle had little to do with his ties to the much to do with internal politics, though I am less certain about this.
Spain is probably the best example of a government’s relation to the US affecting elections to date. From what I understand the people are overwhelming against the Iraq war and this incident motivated those people to vote.
Actually, I think Germany is a pretty good example also. Gerhard Schröder’s SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) was not doing very well at all, and it looked like they might lose the elections in 2002. All the major parties had pretty much the same opinion when it came to foreign policy especially in regards to the USA. Then, two months before the election, Schröder said there was no way he would support George Bush if there was no clear UN mandate to attack Iraq. The opposition CDU/CSU (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands/Christlich-Soziale Union) at first said that Schröder was using the German population’s fear of being involved in a war to help his campaign, and then they kind of said that they would also prefer to wait for a UN mandate (thus giving the impression they were wishy-washy and out for votes even more than Schröder was).
Many people in Germany think that this might have been the little bit that helped the SPD and Grünen squeak by (and they just barely did) in the 2002 elections.
While a few right-wing media sources (Fox News and talk radio) have taken the “Spain surrenders to terrorists” approach, most mainstream news sources have a more nuanced view (as in the NY Times piece).
There has also been plenty of sympathy expressed for the Spanish people. (And this thread seems as good a place as any to send my own condolences and best wishes to our Spanish friends.)
I’m not kidding, or paraphrasing. Listening to the morning talk show on my local Clear channel station, all three DJs were calling the Spaniards cowards, gay cowards at that, and saying they had surrendered to terrorists. This is not my opinion, but it’s definitely what they were saying.
NYC here. Really, from TV news (broadcast, not cable), NPR, and the papers, all I’m getting is straight fact-reporting. No spin. The attacks occurred. No one knew who did it. Then the ETA was suspected. Then Islamic fundamentalists/Al Qaeda seemed more likely. It’s Spain’s 9/11. Then there was an upset election, and the new party says they’ll pull out of Iraq. Period. I’m not seeing any “interpreting”.
Further, the Putin victory, IMO, isn’t being looked upon with any great enthusiasm. Most of the stories, while noting his victory, tend to imply how shady the elections seem over there. Basically, the sense is that things are back to Soviet-style business as usual.