Presidential Debate News Story Analysis

Source Information      

Date:  October 4,2012

What news organization (or individual) produced this?:  MSNBC

What is the type of news source?:   Online News Report 

 

Content
 

What is the main headline?:  "Policy Differences Take Center Stage in First Presidential Debate"

What facts (statistics, important events, etc.) are included?:  

- President Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee debated Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee. 

-  The subjects Romney and Obama debated over

- Romney and Obama will have their next debate on October 16,2012

-  

Is anyone quoted? If so, who? What did they say?:    Romney was quoted for saying," My number one principle is there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit," and for saying “I like the way we did it in Massachusetts. I like the fact that in my state, we had Republicans and Democrats come together and work together..... What you did instead was to push through a plan without a single Republican vote.” Obama was quoted for saying,"The fact is that if you are lowering the rates the way you described, governor, then it is not possible to come up with enough deductions and loopholes that only affect high-income individuals to avoid either raising the deficit or burdening the middle class it's math. It's arithmetic." and for saying “At some point, I think the American people have to ask themselves, is the reason that Gov. Romney is keeping all these plans to replace secret because they're too good?” Jim Messina was quoted for saying “This is a race to 270 electoral votes in states like Ohio and Virginia and Florida, Romney’s positions on tax cuts and Medicare are going to be real problems for him. And he doubled down on those all night.”

What information or ideas might have been left out?:    

-The audience's' perspective was left out 

- 

 

Message

Who is the intended audience?:  

Eligible voters   

Does the author seem to have an opinion? If so, what is it?:    

The author did not have an opinion 

What is the tone of the source?:   Informative if a bit cynical; the author wanted to inform the reader about the debate on October 3,2012, but seemed to feel frustred that there was no clear winner. 

What words or phrases create the tone?:  

   " In a time-honored debate tradition, both campaigns’ surrogates declared victory for their candidate of choice. " 

"Obama didn’t score a knockout punch against Romney......" 

Is any one person or group discussed positively? Negatively?:    

Both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama were not discussed negatively or positively.