Jeremy Peters: The Inside to Political Journalism.

As consumers of news in the United States, we put a lot of trust into the journalists that deliver that information, and we assume that quotations, and direct accounts that they give are true and unbiased. We also have the same trust of in the responsibility of being unbiased in journalists, while they cover political campaigns. Jeremy Peters, who is a political journalist for the New York Times helped us understand that we need to understand the background of political journalism, and even further more the background on how political campaigns try to control the media, in how they want a candidate to be seen in the public light.
Peters introduced us his impressive resume of covering political stories of countless politicians, including his covering of the 2012 Barack Obama Campaign. While finishing up his covering for the campaign, he was asked by the Obama admiration if they could have his notes, so they could look it over to see if his article was going to make the President be depicted as decent. In addition the campaign offered to give Peters other quotes instead of direct quotes that he already had. Amazed at this, he found out that this was something that was extremely common in the field of political journalism, and that many journalists turned a blind eye to it.
Outraged at the whole notion of campaigns being controlling of journalist, Peters wrote an article on how this was going on. While writing this campaign hegemony was not only in the Obama administration, but it had occurred in multiple different political campaigns, but it had gotten stricter over time. Through this research he also learned about how campaigns can try directly convince voters to vote for someone that they know are “on the fence” about certain parties. After creating this article, he received criticism from a lot of his colleagues that were comfortable with campaign management over journalists, but he also created reform in the New York Times, and other news sources that sated they would no longer accept accounts from political campaigns.
After hearing Peters, I was surprised and frightened that sources we trust, and accept to be unbiased are being controlled by politicians. What is frightening though is that our politicians are trying to control the media, and our perspective of politicians in our country. As future deliverers of media at the Newhouse School, we need to stand up to sources trying to distort the truth, and in doing so trying to control your product. In this era of the obsession of domination, more people such as Peters need to stand up to this hypocrisy of unbiased journalism.