The Bocker.com

In CNN’s initial story on Hillary Clinton’s victory in the West Virginia Primary, the focus of the coverage was in Hillary position to move forward from the tremendous victory and the gain the win had given to her campaign hopes. The problem with this framework? CNN did not acknowledge that Barack Obama’s delegate lead would only be cut by 16 or so total delegates until the 11th paragraph of the story. Considering that Clinton was forecast to win mightily in West Virginia and that it would not do much to impede Obama’s nomination bid, why would CNN release a story that focussed on Hillary’s forward movement when West Virginia would not tell us anything new?

Because CNN would like to see the Democratic Primary to stay news worthy and keep people tuning on every primary date until the party’s convention this summer.

Three other news outlets, The Washington Post, New York Times and BBC News all highlighted how Hillary’s victory, though huge, would not do much to alter the course of the primary. West Virginia is just too small a state in terms of total voters and delegates allotted to make a big difference in the primary.

What differs between these more reputable media outlets and CNN is that CNN looks to gain viewers. While they did not report falsely on the West Virginia Primary, the “Hillary on the rise” angle looked to build up Clinton’s chances. Assuming that CNN does not actual care whether Barack or Hillary win the nomination, it would follow that CNN wants to milk this story for all of its television time worth.

Thus, the when the next primary occurs, viewers will more likely feel as though there is a race to be contested even though under the delegate count (i.e. the method we use to select a Democrat Presidential Candidate) Obama seems uncatchable.

CNN has proceeded throughout the campaign like this, calling each forthcoming primary “Judgement Day” even as they used their coverage to to purposefully insert uncertainty, creating another “Judgement Day” of primaries.