Election Coverage Drenched in Purple Rain

The most intriguing and barely noticed fact of the media coverage of the election was the color purple.

I am not referring tho the Alice Walker novel, or the movie or play of a the same name, but the actual hue.

What I mean is that in an effort to appear unbiased in any way, many network anchors and reporters wore 

purple or purple ties to show non partisanship. They could have worn yellow, orange, or green, but since blue

and red make purple, it seems like a reasonable choice.

According to espn.com writer Paul Lukas' uniform blog on November 5th, dozens of reporters on election night 

wore the color those in Baltimore and Minnesota associate with their football teams. Please press play and turn your volume up before reading the next part. 

When watching coverage I could not help but have Prince's "Purple Rain" 

rushing through my head as background music. He even made a T.V. screen  grab compilation 

(provided by his readers' submissions) of purple clad reporters including this shot which has 

an anchor with a purple straw in her drink. It is a pretty odd phenomenon, but if it makes the network honchos

feel good enough to sleep at night then they can go ahead and do it for all I care. Most people are smart enough 

to realize which way the networks usually slant and choose which one to watch based on this.

Overall, though, the media did a good job in delivering election coverage. Being politically non-partisan is

hard, but on election night all networks were forced to try and do it. Networks did the best job they could at 

delivering the news without appearing biased. Even when Barack Obama mathematically locked up the race 

by winning Ohio, the networks tried to wait the half an hour until west coast polls closed before calling the 

election for Obama. They went out of their way to fill air time; CNN interviewed musician Will I Am via, as 

unusual as this may sound, hologram in that time, while other networks just went over the mathematics of 

the situation.

Networks did gamble by projecting states for Obama and McCain as soon as the polls closed based 

on traditional values, mainly calling the election for Obama as soon as polls closed in California which was 

declared for Obama with 0% reporting. Fox News, what many consider epitome of conservative media, was 

the first network to give Obama the victory in Virginia, as well as being the only one to have given him the 

state when he was declared the winner. NBC, the supposed epitome of "Liberal Media", was very reserved 

in waiting to call any state for either candidate. All the networks, though, did best when the election was 

declared over to let the camera do the talking. By this I mean anchors and talking heads alike shut their 

mouths and let the candidates and supporters emotions show everything. The transition from McCain's 

concession speech to Barack Obama's speech had little to no words. The speeches had no commentary 

while being said, nor were any quotes from the candidates, typically inserted below the picture to show 

what the candidate had just said, shown. 

Other than two of the three major networks (NBC and ABC) referring to the Obama victory as a 

landslide during their morning news programs, when in fact the win was about 5 percentage points and 

not the huge victory they predicted, the coverage was pretty fair. The media let emotions cover the 

election's end game, not the other way around.

 

Works Cited

"Uni Watch" 5 Nov. 2008 <www.uniwatchblog.com>