Waiting to board a plane can be a tedious matter, especially if your flight has been delayed for two hours and you have already been waiting for three. At Miami International airport, I waited patiently to board my flight to the John Franklin Kennedy (JFK) airport in New York City, so that from there I could return to Egypt.

During my patient wait, I found a means to pass my time which was courteously provided by Ted Turner’s Cable Network News, which we all know more commonly as CNN, and what they had provided were television sets all around the airport. Despite this generosity, there was only one channel that I or anyone else in the airport could watch on those television sets… CNN. The same television sets with CNN were also present at JFK airport.

The day that I was waiting in both airports was only a few days before “Super Tuesday”, which is the day that the greatest number of states in the U.S hold primary elections for each party’s presidential candidates. In that day in the airport, I learnt more about the U.S elections than I have since returning to Egypt to this day.

The amount of media coverage that CNN alone broadcasted of the election process was staggering to say the least. Just watching CNN alone shows how different Egypt and the U.S are different in their elections and use of the media; polls, expert opinions and analysts, interviews with the candidates and the electorates, news of the campaigns of candidates from all different states and so much more.

Everybody knows how elections are won; by votes, and the winner is the one who has the most. But to get these votes, you would have to convince voters that you are looking out for best interests. The candidates have done so in the primary elections and will continue to do so throughout the final election process.

The media is a very powerful and effective tool for informing the public about news. Part of informing the public involves the process of news selection; selecting certain news items to broadcast because this specific media outlet believes it to be more newsworthy than other pieces of news, and each media outlet has its own beliefs of what news is the most important and should be broadcast on television or printed in a newspaper or online on the internet.

Media organizations are all supposedly objective, without any agendas and non-partisan. This in all likelihood is a little untrue and the same may be said about the coverage for the elections. Media Research Centre (MRC) President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell believes that the coverage of the elections was not fair, “…personally I think that overall the media have done a pretty lousy job, the news media, with all the candidates on both sides. I think that there’s been a dearth of coverage on the issues, everything has been who’s up, who’s down, you know, who’s winning this caucus state, who’s got this primary state… no one’s looking at the issues on either side and I think there ought to be.”

Most media seems to have has focused on the more superficial incidents and happenings of each candidate rather than their plans and strategies for the country. Events such as Barack Obama’s Paster, Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his “God damn America” statement and Hillary Clinton’s “landing under sniper fire” in Bosnia seemed to be more highlighted and focused upon by the media. Even so, incidents such as those should not be ignored by the media because they do play a role in the election process by allowing voters to form opinions regarding the candidates.

Throughout this election, and most probably throughout the previous ones too, there has been a trend for sensationalism. Even though sensationalising news is considered to be an unethical practice, it is hard to deny that these hyped-up events have made more people interested in the elections and have probably made some play a more active role.

Weighing up the pros and cons in the end, people of any nation, not just America, should not need the media to help get them interested in their country’s own welfare. As much as the media does present news and analysis it is still up to the people watching whether to agree or disagree or have a completely different opinion. This agenda setting that goes on behind the scenes is not always obvious, but it certainly is there.

Now it has come down to the American people to choose between John McCain and Barack Obama. Lets hope for the good of democracy, freedom of expression and for a more non-partisan media that the American public vote for who they want, and not for who the people on television do.