Publicity Can be Good or Bad

Previously I’ve discussed how television videos, advertisements, and news reports are being posted online, which allows others to access them at a later time. While watching CNN News this weekend I saw a short report about John McCain making a joke about bombing Iran and MoveOn.org turning it into a joke against him. The report didn’t give much information about the story, but it did give John McCain some publicity.

I later decided this might make an interesting blog post that is to see if the story went into more detail on the internet, which proved true. I went to www.cnn.com and searched for the report under politics. The title was “MoveOn ad targets McCain's 'Bomb Iran' joke.” The article was about John McCain showing how he was joking with his veteran friends about bombing Iran. But, others can twist it into showing how he is reckless and that the nation doesn’t need another president who will be careless about going to war in the future. The article also mentions at the end that John McCain’s comments are posted on YouTube and how many times they’ve been viewed. I believe that adding this information to the report increases the connection between the two technologies as well as allows for readers to access more information on the situation.

I find it interesting to see how a brief mention of the joke on television can lead to a longer story online. It’s true that television news broadcasters usually only give a few seconds or minutes of a story in order to keep people interested or just inform the public. Yet, having the ability to post the entire story online allows the people to quickly gain more information on the topic whenever they wish as I’ve just demonstrated.

Now that the internet has become a common media source in the United States it’s common that news stations have their own websites that post more information, and stories than are broadcasted on television. The sites have even become somewhat interactive by providing links to email or contact them in various ways as opposed to television where most of the time is one way communication. The point is though that television stations who have websites are posting more information, which allows the public to learn and interact more in things they’re interested in.