In our country, journalists and the media certainly play a key role in elections in politics. The media acts as a gatekeeper, controlling what headlines and issues to focus on, as well as the organizer of “horse race journalism.” However, in the United States there is a clear line where journalists’ work ends and the politicans take over. This line is becoming increasingly blurred in Iraq as journalists are looking to run in the first election since the defeat of ISIS. Made popular after he threw a shoe at President George W. Bush and called him “a dog,” the Iraqi journalist,\u00a0Muntadher al-Zaidi has now announced he is going to run in the Parliamentary elections. And there are over ten others who are following in his footsteps. Since Iraq is still very divided among ethnic lines, not everyone is enthusiastic about how the journalists’ candidacy could affect the already tense atmosphere. Many of these journalists running used to host talk shows that made fun of the other political parties (which are greatly based on ethnic backgrounds), which has the potential to create more hostility between the parties. The benefit to having a journalist run for your party, however, is that they are already known by the public as a trustworthy figure, so they’re more likely to garner more votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In our country, journalists and the media certainly play a key role in elections in politics. The media acts as a gatekeeper, controlling what headlines and issues to focus on, as well as the organizer of “horse race journalism.” However, in the United States there is a clear line where journalists’ work ends and the politicans take over. This line… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1725,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions\/1725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}