the news about elections

The task of this week give us the opportunity to develop the knowledge of how the elections in Italy and in the United States are proposed in the newspapers of different countries. This work permits to compare the different perspectives or the similarities through language and images. I’ve to admit that generally I prefer to read a newspaper and not its online version; so, this is also a work in order to discover a new way to inform myself and to improve my knowledge of how it’s useful internet…sometimes more than a touchable thing.
For this reason I’ve decided to surf on famous and, I think, not too partial sites of newpapers: American newspaper New York Times (topics.nytimes.com), Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (www.corriere.it) and German newspaper Die Zeit (www.zeit.de) in order to understand how the elections are important in the countries which are interested in and in order to analyse if the American and Italian elections are considered (and how) in another European country. I have to say that I was really curios to know how we are considered abroad…and in particular in America, which is a so fundamental point of reference for us.

First of all I want to focus on the fact that in our online newspaper there is a section completely dedicated to the American election, called Speciale USA 2008, where you can find not only the articles about the political aspects of the elections, but also curiosities and links to videos of Hillary and Obama speeches or about the satire about them. There are more information about the challenge between these two candidates, also in the German news, because the newspapers live of the political fights and of the scandals!!! The news are recent and the sites are always updated with a lot of particulars of all different aspects of the American elections and of their worldwide importance. Both Italian and German sites are very precise and give a big visibility to the subject in the international section but also in the front page of the site, probably because all European countries are so dependent from the power and the influence of America.

On the other hand NYTimes offers obviously all the information about the American elections, the primaries’ results, all the rejections of the candidates, it’s possible to listen to the speeches again and to see the videos of interviews and conferences of the future inhabitant of the White House. Naturally, there are blogs and particular links where people can express their preference or only say their opinion and share information. In NY Times World section there are many news about, for example, France or other powerful countries which are politically or economically important for the general American and world situation, such as Iran and Afghanistan. But when I began to look for the news about the Italian political situation I was really disappointed: the site does not mention the Italian election or news about the electoral campaign and about candidates. The latest news about Italian politics was about the dissolution of the parliament by the president Napolitano and it was dated 25 Januar. That means that the Italian section of the site was not updated from two months…it is incredible how we are useless in the worldwide vision of what is important and not!

What I’ve noticed is that there are similarities in all three newspapers as regards the words and the images which are used to describe American elections and their protagonists, because I think that they are inspired from the own candidates words and gestures. For example, both German and Italian site underlines the points about the difference between Hillary as a woman and Obama as a man or the fact that Obama is black and, from this point, there are some discourses about the problem of racism. As both democratic candidates have same ideas and goals in their programs their battle focuses on their different personal roles.