Hannah Milliken
Dr. Jami Carlacio
English 2880
December 11, 2008
Reflection
When I heard that we would be creating a short documentary for our final project in English
2880, I was probably more excited than most. While some people saw the project as a labor-intensive
and time-consuming undertaking, I saw it as an opportunity to use skills that I had already harnessed.
The making of a documentary is not something that is new to me. In the seventh, eighth, and ninth
grades, I competed in a program called History Day, which is run by the Constitutional Rights
Foundation. In 2005, I competed at the state level with a research paper that detailed the importance of
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s masterpiece Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the abolition movement. In both the seventh
and eighth grades, I came in fourth place at the state level with documentaries about Title IX (2003) and
Operation Babylift (2004). I loved the process of making documentaries, so when I found out about the
final project in English 2880, I was ready to tackle a new project using the skills that I had learned a few
years ago.
The hardest part, for me, was choosing a topic. I really had trouble narrowing my scope down to
reach a workable thesis. I have always been interested in photojournalism. I believe that it is a powerful
tool that often goes unnoticed in the sea of other types of media. Unlike written media, photojournalism
has the power to influence people at a glance with subliminal messages related to lighting, figure
placement, expression, and so on. I knew I wanted to do a project that related to photojournalism. My
problem was figuring out where to start. I originally wanted to do a paper that focused on
photojournalism and the 2008 Presidential election. First, I thought I would use newspaper
photojournalism, but then I realized that, quite frankly, I do not really like to read the newspaper, and I
honestly had little real-life experience in terms of looking at this type of photojournalism. Grasping for a
media vehicle with which I was more familiar, I settled on the Internet, which reaches billions of people
worldwide and has more outlets than we can count. Although I was happier with this media than with
the print news, I was faced with a new issue. The immense broadness of the Internet made it nearly
impossible for me to choose where to get my pictures themselves. Discouraged, I decided that perhaps
the Internet was not really the best place to look. Where, then, could I find influential photojournalism
that was available to the general public? I decided to sleep on it. Before I went to bed, I was flipping
through an old magazine when I saw a humor piece that focused on the presidential candidates’ fashion
“dos and don’ts.” Chuckling at the snarky comments, I wished that I could use this sort of piece in my
documentary. Then, it dawned on me. I could use magazines. Magazines are seen by millions of people
worldwide, and the cover of every single magazine is photojournalism of sorts. If I treated these covers
analytically, I could create a documentary that focused on the power of the magazine cover within the
2008 Presidential election.
The first thing I had to do was find magazine covers that featured the candidates. As I found
more and more covers, I was struck by the vast amounts of Obama covers. These covers showed him
laughing, smiling, brooding. With the exception of the infamous New York Times “terrorist” cover,
almost every single cover portrayed Obama in a positive light. Thinking that the covers certainly could
not be this one-sided, I moved on to looking up magazine covers that featured John McCain. This was
easier said than done. I would estimate that for every five Obama covers I encountered, I saw one
McCain cover. Furthermore, these covers were generally not as flattering as the Obama covers. In fact, I
stumbled upon the Atlantic Monthly scandal, in which photographer Jill Greenberg admitted that she
purposefully portrayed McCain negatively on the magazine’s cover. I was shocked. I never would have
thought that magazine covers could be this slanted. Looking at the covers, I knew I had a project on my
hands.
I knew it would be a difficult undertaking to prove that these covers had any sort of influence on
the public, but I really felt that my own personal experience in seeing these covers added to my
perspective. I come from Orange County, California, an enclave of die-hard conservatism within a blue
state. Only a short drive away from some of the poorest ghettoes in the United States, such as Compton
and Santa Ana, Orange County, by contrast, is famous for opulence, especially because of television
shows like The Real Housewives of Orange County, The OC, and Laguna Beach. Hundreds of corporations
call Orange County home. My own father is in management for Toshiba America, and although I don’t
lead the “lifestyle of the rich and the famous,” I certainly have had the typical sheltered upbringing of an
OC adolescent. I am religious, I am a member of the upper-middle class, I am white, and I am well-
educated. I support the right to life and until the middle of high school, I was against gay marriage. I was
even the vice-president of the Young Republicans club at my high school during my senior year. If you
had told me a year ago that I would vote for Barack Obama, I would have laughed. But as the campaigns
progressed, I, like many young people in America, found myself drawn to Obama. I saw him everywhere,
from Saturday Night Live to Ellen. I was moved by his speeches and struck by his interviews. Obama is
young and charismatic, smart and sharp, and even though he is a Democrat, I really started to feel that
Obama represented me more than John McCain could. So contrary to everything anyone would have
expected from me, on Election Day, when I filled out my ballot, I filled in the bubble next to
Obama/Biden.
So where do magazine covers fit in? I saw Obama’s face on every cover I saw. Sitting, standing,
looking straight ahead, looking into the distance, alone, with his family. The covers were in the grocery
store. They were in Barnes and Noble. They were in the doctor’s office, the mailbox, the library. They
were virtually inescapable, and contrary to what I would have thought a year ago, I found myself not
wanting to escape these images. When I saw the Rolling Stone cover that featured him laughing, I smiled
too, secretly thinking how handsome he was in comparison to old, wrinkly McCain. I really believe that
my vote for Obama was influenced by magazine covers, and although it would be difficult to prove, I
really wanted to investigate this phenomenon for my final project.
Once I started working on my project, it really came along pretty easily. My research consisted
mainly of finding the magazine covers to talk about, and once I had done that, I was basically ready to
begin. I found several clips that discussed the bias of the magazine covers, mainly from Fox News. I was
really intrigued by Rolling Stone’s blatant endorsement of Obama, and decided to dedicate a whole
portion of my documentary to the endorsement. When I found out that Rolling Stone owns US Weekly, I
was not really surprised to see bias on their covers as well, which I prove through the Sarah Palin vs.
Michelle Obama segment of the video. I also chose to focus on subliminal messages in the pictures
themselves, such as backlighting, which creates a halo effect. I found this effect in several Obama
covers, but never on a McCain cover. Furthermore, to advance my argument that the covers were anti-
McCain, I included a discussion of the Atlantic Monthly scandal. I explained hegemony in my own terms
at the beginning of the video and hopefully, this clarified my argument that the covers influenced the
general public to support Obama.
Something I found quite difficult was keeping the bias out of my project, to be honest. I do not
know if it stems from my conservative upbringing, or from something else, but I really ended up being
bothered by the Obama tilt on magazine covers, even though I supported Obama in the race. The
unbalanced portrayal of the two candidates really was not fair, especially if my thesis, that Obama’s
positive portrayal influenced the outcome of the election, is true. If I have learned one thing in this class,
it is that unbalanced journalism is essential to a functional American democracy. Biased magazine
covers, therefore, are contrary to the very idea of a media that operates in tandem with a democratic
society. They interfere with the public’s ability to make their own decisions by surrounding them with
subliminal messages that influence their opinions. I believe that this problem must be solved. It will be a
challenge to figure out the solution. It is a challenge to the American people, to the government, and to
any informed citizen of the world who values democratic journalism.