The benefit of being Vegetarian Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The benefit of being Vegetarian - Research Paper Example Also, pesticides and insecticides used on animals to remove parasites can contribute to both land and water pollution, and as such the vegetarian lifestyle can help in the reduction of this kind of pollution.According to Iacobbo & Iacobbo (2006), another main benefit of being a vegetarian is that there are financials gains that emerge from this kind of lifestyle since meat is considered to be generally expensive as compared to fruits and vegetables. Food expenditures that are without meat products can be reduced by up to 25%. Almost 10% of most American spending is on meat and its related products. A standard American family can spend up to a projected figure of $4,000 annually on meat products. Since the vegetarian lifestyle is healthy, one saves a lot of money by lowering their health care and health maintenance costs. Better health means that one can avoid diseases such as gout and high blood pressure hence money spent on treatment of the meat related ailments is saved. Also, fina ncial resources spent on animal rearing for the purposes of meat production can be saved if people opt for this lifestyle. Conclusion In summary, the vegetarian lifestyle can be a viable solution to the major global issues such as global warming, the global hunger crisis, and the recent global financial crisis. Though it may be a bit difficult to convince everyone to adopt this kind of lifestyle, many can agree that its benefits are quite substantial and if opted for people can live a little bit healthier.

Employee-Organisation Relationship in Working Performance Essay

Employee-Organisation Relationship in Working Performance - Essay Example This study makes two major contributions to the academia and to the business community, which are as follows: A). Even though there are many studies that have focused on the topic of employee-organization relationship, most of them are based on different perspectives (e.g. organizational politics, strategic role of globalization, human resource management practices). Only a few studies have studied the employee-organization relationship from the perspective of inducement and contribution. Only a few studies have used the grass-roots employees as a basis to evaluate how to motivate employees, and then how to attain sustainable competitive advantages for an organization. Therefore, this study specifically looks at grass-roots employees as a basis, and thus will make some fresh contribution to the area of employee-organization relationship. B). Samples for this study are generally from China. The labour sources will be grass-roots employees with fewer inducements as this makes it easier to collect the realistic primary data with regard to the other mediating variables (such as organizational trust and organizational justice). Many developed countries, particularly multinational enterprises are likely to produce parts of their products in China to benefit from cheap labour sources. Therefore, this study also offers suggestions on how to effectively and efficiently motivate grass-roots employees in China for these large multinational enterprises. ... Nonetheless, attitude and behaviours of individuals in an organisation have also been identified as important factors to repair organisational trust. The findings also suggest that justice implies employee involvement and this boosts staff morale as they feel recognized and valued. Organisational trust is also responsible for job satisfaction that employees feel thereby enhancing performance. Key Words: employee-organisational relationship, organisational justice, equity, organisational trust, employee working performan ce. With the rapid development of the economy, the acceleration of globalisation and increased overseas business activities by multinational enterprises, the definition of organisational trust too has undergone tremendous change. Gibbons (2004) believes that organisational trust can be automatically generated through friendships. Organisations are required not only to keep high levels of friendship with their employees, but also to improve relationships with customers, suppliers as well as business partners. Olekalns and Smith (2005) assert that organisational trust is a key element in organisations. This is because it facilitates bargaining and negotiation while reducing transactional costs in inter-firm exchanges (Bharadwaj and Matsuno, 2006) and resolves international political conflicts (Kelman, 2005). Even in Poon's (2003) study, the issue of organisational trust is seen as the antecedent of organisational politics.

The Reasons Behind The Largest Corporate Scandal Of India Accounting Essay

The Reasons Behind The Largest Corporate Scandal Of India Accounting Essay Satyam means Truth and the truth was revealed very late in case of Indias one of the largest IT company, Satyam Computers Services Limited. By the time, Satyam fraud came to public light, Ramalinga Raju, the chairman of the company, had already committed Indias largest corporate fraud ever. The first section of essay will discuss the reasons behind the largest corporate scandal of India. It will discuss why people with billions in banks go corrupt. In this section, it will argue on the negligence and violation of duty by various elements involved in the wrongdoing. Then, the next section of essay will state some recommendations to avoid further frauds or scams. In the first section, we will discuss why big businessmen or rich people who are very famous and known to the world, sometimes, step out of line of honesty. By doing this, they break the trust of people and lose all their repute and name that they had gained by working hard in their lives. The first reason for their divergence from honesty to dishonesty is sense of ownership. If a person is the only owner or founder of the company, then he finds it easy to do what he wants with his business. He thinks that it is his business and money. Security of getting away with any wrongdoing makes him comfortable. He becomes unaware of the consequences and keeps on doing wrong things again and again. The owners and founders of companies, sometimes, dont like outer interference in their business and they do only what, they think is best in their interest. Hence, this sense of ownership, somehow, leads to greed. They dont think of other people who put their money in business. They justify themselves that they are permitted to do what they want with that money because it is their business. They just ignore the rights of other stakeholders who are involved in business too (Kaur and Mishra, 2010). Hence their unethical behaviour cost them a lot at the end because one day everybody comes to know about crime. In Satyam case, ownership structure of Indian companies is also responsible to some extent. The popularity of family owned businesses in India led to concentrated business control. In this system, independent directors agree to act in interest of family group. They just ignore the interests of the company and minority shareholders and act in the way that is best for their benefit. Some corporations are generally structured in a pyramid structure. The pyramid structure comprises of some separate business lines. Different businesses are considered as one entity and are controlled by one group at the top. Thus, they can transfer money from one entity to another as required (Winkler, 2010). Hence, it can lead to tunneling. Tunneling is a process in which a control group moves money from one company to another company, where they possess bigger share. Also, in pyramid structure, it is hard for outside shareholders to check inner performance of business entities (Winkler, 2010). Because of pyramid structure and consolidated control of the business, board of directors of Satyam didnt do their duty independently. They approved the purchase of family owned company of Chairman Mr. Raju, Maytas properties and Maytas Infrastructure. It was not an IT company and Mr. Raju had larger shares in Maytas than in Satyam. Thus, ownership structure of business impacted the performance of directors in another way (Winkler, 2010). Another reason for the professional misconduct of billionaire businessmen is the desire to do something different. Sometimes they think that they have achieved everything in their life, so what is next exciting job for them. Thus, the thrill of danger involved gives them the drive to do something unusual. So, they tend to try new things in their jobs to gain more advantage out of their business. Thus, gradually, this tendency leads to their deviation from right to wrong and they cant step back because they merge themselves in the offence to that extent that they fear to get exposed to the public. So they keep on doing that without expecting to get caught one day. Sometimes, people start their offence with small misconduct. To get benefit, they just try a mischief by manipulating the account books by little difference. They think that is very easy as they didnt get caught. So, next year they again do that to cover last years gap. Then, they feel uneasy to stop that as they dont know how to get out of this. Hence, they commit that mistake again and again until that mistake gets transformed to a blunder and then to a largest fraud. In case of Satyam, Ramalinga Raju had to overstate the income every quarter to cover the last gaps. When he finally disclosed the fraud, he mentioned, It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without being eaten (Winkler, 2010 pg 5). Thus, a small mistake led him to the edge, where he didnt know how to get back and he became convicted of the scam of billions. In a competitive corporate world, billionaires become prone to be more successful than their rivals. They become habitual of winning. So, when they perceive that next situation is not going to be in their favour, it hurts their sense of pride. Thus, they become ready to do anything to maintain their status and repute. They just forget that by choosing wrong way to success, their pride will sustain for short term. For the long term, they will have to pay for every wrong deed. Thus, all the above mentioned reasons together give an example of weak corporate governance of India. Personal greed of the chairman and negligence of duty by board of directors and the audit committee resulted in a worst scandal in Indian history. Now, the second section of essay will provide some implications to prevent these types of corporate frauds in future. After Satyam scandal, Indian regulators started working for the improvement in corporate governance of India. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is a main regulatory authority for Indias stock market (Afsharipour, 2009). It proposed some regulations that should be strictly followed by all companies to maintain good governance standards. But, still it is difficult for the corporate government of India to make changes in their standards in short period of time to prevent further frauds. Still, it can be achieved by facilitating strict enforcement of their rules. First of all, government should take initiative by being strict in its laws and regulations. Government can initiate this from the roots of crime, that is, bribery. They should punish the bribe givers and bribe takers. The persons, who give or take bribe for their own interests and grab the rights of other people involved in the business, deserve punishment. It will help to prevent further corruption as people will avoid it for the fear of strict punishment. If still any person is involved in any kind of fraud or scam, they should be sent to prison and their assets should be seized. They should make suffer hard so that in future nobody will feel secure or easy to get away with a crime. Also, there are some duties of companies towards their employees. Employees should be encouraged to whistle blowing. Whistleblowing helps to avoid and eliminate evil and to decrease the probability of misconduct and dishonesty in an organisation (Grace Cohen 2010). All the employees should be aware of the means that how can they disclose unethical behaviour of board member or any other person in the company without getting affected. This would create a strict and honest environment in the companies as everybody will be afraid of getting caught if they would chose to be corrupt. Also, to make this step successful, whistle blowers should firstly, provide full protection. That will encourage them to follow the moral behaviour and stand against evil. This practice will play an important role in the prevention of corruption and frauds. Moreover, to get best out of their workforce companies can encourage employees to buy some shares from the company. If employees have some shares in the c ompany, they are working; they will work for the best interest of the company. They will not favour any bribery and stand against evil in firm. Hence, it will lead to best corporate results. To avoid unethical behaviours in companies, business should be run on the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility. Under this concept, businesses become committed to behave ethically. In the companies, duties are performed morally towards contribution to economic development, while considering the interests of employees, all stakeholders and society as a whole (Ferrar, 2008). CSR works in long term interest of the company and it also increases companys reputation. Hence, a company working on the concept of CSR will have good quality workforce who will focus on the interests of all the people attached to the business. In corporations, there are two audit committees. First is internal audit committee that is comprised of independent directors of the company. They scan all the operations in the firm including income statements. They make sure that no unreliable and false information regarding financial report would be given to the shareholders (Solomon, 2007). They are responsible for the internal audit system. Hence they ensure the accuracy of all the operations inside the firm. External auditors are the auditors from outside the company. They review the performance of internal auditors, that is, they check internal audit functions. They scan companys whole financial reporting process (Afsharipour, 2009). In India, there is need for more clear functions of audit committees. There is need for more independence and better composition of internal auditors. More frequent meetings of audit committees should be encouraged. It will help in more effective internal control. Also, more meetings will help in effective judgement and decision making (Al-Mudhaki and Joshi, 2004). Moreover, an audit committee should not work with a company for more than five years. They should be changed after every five years, otherwise, they will get lazy working with same company and they might get involved with some people of company. That can affect their performance as auditors because their job needs total unbiasedness. Final check of the financial reports should be done by anonymous external auditors so that directors will not find any opportunity to bribe them. Hence, effective role of auditors is very necessary to avoid corporate failures. In India, corporate governance has been put into practice through clauses of Companies act 1956 (Farias, 2001). Companies Act in India has been drawn a lot from UK Companies Act 1948 (Afsharipour, 2009). But, still Indian Companies Act doesnt put more stress on the independence and qualification of board of directors and investor protection. In India, lack of independent and qualified directors leads to weak corporate governance. Most independent directors are the university professors or government officials. They show least interest in their duties and monitoring the performance of management. According to Zhang and Rajagopalan (2008), to ensure unbiasedness and quality of boardroom, foreign directors can be appointed. Also, India can open its market for foreign investors. Hence, independence of directors will ensure right and unbiased decision making and avoidance of any influence from anybody. India corporate governance needs to put great emphasis on transparency and disclosure. Transparency and disclosure are very necessary to eliminate corruption and to ensure precision of all the operations performed in a business (Zhang and Rajagopalan (2008). Corporations should not hide anything from the public. They should be transparent and clear in their operations and disclose their annual agendas every year. They should state clearly in the beginning of financial year what they are going to do and how they are going to use the shareholders money. Companies should work in favour of more voluntary disclosure. They should disclose their balance sheet position more than once a year, perhaps twice. This will help to avoid mismanagement of account books. If there would any falsification in the statements of balance sheet then it will be prevented on time. Hence, transparency and disclosure in business adds up to the value and quality of operations in the business. Companies will be mo re honest and true in their approaches leading to achievement of good corporate governance standards. Reaction of American government to Enron scandal resulted in Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) in 1992 which holds lots of reforms in corporate governance in America. SOA put great emphasis on certification system in corporations. According to this act, each quarterly and annual report must be certified by CEO and CFO of the company (Pinto Branson, 2009). They should review the financial reports themselves and should take responsibility. This law has been adopted by Indian Companies Act in Clause 49 but it doesnt put criminal liability in case of fake or wrong statement (Afsharipour, 2009). So, absence of criminal liability means there will not be any fear of law in people and they can easily alter the financial statements. There is no benefit in implementing a regulation with no strict criminal law on the violation of that regulation. Hence, if any law is implemented by the regulators, it should be strengthened with penalties, in case if somebody dares to break those laws. It will help to i nstall fear of law in minds of people so that they wont even think to go against laws in a corporation. Failure of Indian Judicial System to settle corporate conflicts is another reason for weak corporate governance in India (Afsharipour, 2009). Delays in making decisions in judiciary process often led to ignorance of issues. Hence, judiciary processes in India are strongly criticised because of their negligence of judicial system. Thus, more steps should be taken towards the reforms in Judiciary System. This will help in timely resolving of corporate disputes and ensure the effective corporate governance standards. Ministry of Company Affairs (MCA) is government regulatory body and Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is independent securities regulator. Since creation of SEBI in 1992, there have been continuous conflicts between SEBI and MCA. (Afsharipour,2009). Simultaneous exercise of all legislative responsibilities by both regulatory bodies is increasing tension between SEBI and MCA. This conflict and competition between two groups is putting hindrance on the way of corporate governance reforms. SEBI adopted most of the legislative regulations but implemented few of them. Both of the groups have least focus on corporate governance regulations and more focus on undermining each other. So, authorisation of SEBI and MCA on the regulations in the companies should be managed effectively so as to resolve conflict between both groups. Both of the groups should work in harmony for the strict implementation of all the regulations and thus, it will further help to achieve better standards for t he corporate governance. Apart from these reforms, one thing that builds the foundation of the corporate governance is the ethics of people. So, it should be reformed from the roots. That is, students should be taught ethics in schools (Kaur and Mishra, 2010). Especially in a country like India, there is need for the honest and ethical people. Introduction of ethical education in schools would strengthen the roots of corporate governance. In conclusion, there is an urgent need to take revolutionary steps for the governance reforms to prevent corporate failures due to scandals. Hence, as no business can operate in a vacuum, directors have some fiduciary responsibilities towards stakeholders. If directors step out of line of honesty, they should be punished. The first part of essay identified some reasons for convergence in behaviour of billionaires that leads to large corporate frauds. The second part of essay provided some recommendations for corporate governance reforms which would help to prevent frauds in companies. After analysing all the points, this essay puts great emphasis on the implementation of strict laws against corruption. This would mark the prevention of debacles like Satyam for a longer time in the future. Word count: 2650

Old Man and Sea Essay -- essays research papers

Perserverance, Courage, and Wisdom Used in Everyday Life Throughout a life, people have to overcome obstacle after obstacle to be successful in the world. Humans are thrown challenges day after day, week after week. Everyone must try hard at something to be truly happy in their life. In Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea, he used the marlin and the sharks as symbols, and gave Santiago certain character attributes to depict the perserverance, courage, and smarts needed to get through the ups and downs that life hands everyone. Santiago had gone 84 days without catching a fish and was about to surpass his previous record of 87 days, when there was a pull on his line. Santiago had finally caught a something. To make it even better, it was a marlin larger than his boat. Hemingway used this marlin to symbolize the struggle for life. Santiago was matched up against his perfect opponent to bring out the best in him. The marlin brought out his strength and courage to fight the fish for 3 days in his old age. Santiago had to overcome the fish to survive, to be a hero is his community and to himself. Towards the end of the story, Santiago told the fish, â€Å"I shouldn’t have gone out so far fish, neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry fish† (110). Santiago was telling himself the experience brought out so much strength and courage in him, but it was hard for him to accept the defeat of the sharks devouring the marlin.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One contrast to the marlin...

Stone Cold Essay

A character study of Shelter from Stone cold. Show how our view of the character changes throughout the novel. Shelter is one of the two first-person narrators in Robert Swindell’s Stone cold. In the novel Swindell’s follows the runaway teenager, Link, from his home in Bradford to the mean streets of London where his path crosses that of Shelter, an ex-soldier who creates his own army while also cleaning up the streets of the homeless people he despises. In this essay I will show how the character is portrayed and how our view of him changes throughout the novel.In daily routine orders 3 Swindell’s choice of language makes Shelter sound very negative and hateful in the way he talks about homeless people. Swindells also uses army terms such as ‘Tour of inspection’ and it tells us that Shelter must be an ex-soldier and must still believe he is one. This gives us the impression that there’s something not quite just right about Shelter. In daily r outine orders 4 Shelter goes on to explain how the secret of victory in any campaign is planning and preparation. He describes his planning as being â€Å"Meticulous and my preparations are now complete†.One of the things he has acquired has helped him to complete and that is a cat. He talks of the cat as his distraction to who he really is. â€Å"A man who keeps a cat can’t possible mean any harm, can he? † He also named the cat Sappho which will project an image of a kind man who cares. There’s not yet any indication of violent intentions but there is a suspicion of something untoward. Daily routine orders 5 & 6 enters into Shelter’s concept pf his ‘mission’ and we learn about his abnormal thought and views on murder.He believes that killing the homeless people on the streets is his job, his duty to his country. He creates a pleasant and warm atmosphere among the victims to make them feel safe and willing to do whatever he says for s helter and food and drink. â€Å"He fell for it, hook, line and sinker†. Shelter tricked someone therefore planning it and not feeling regret for it. He uses the words ‘do-gooder’ which simply means someone who does good things. He uses these words throughout the novel to mock people who actually are ‘do-gooders’. Further on in the novel Shelter describes the people he has killed as ‘waste’.This tells us he couldn’t care less about how those people who were humans just like him. He tempts them with food and warmth and when they have their backs turned he strikes. We start off thinking that there is something not quite right about Shelter and the further we get on through the novel the clearer it becomes that Shelter is completely insane. In daily routine orders 12 & 13 Shelter is much more open about his ‘army’. â€Å"My lad’ll not be doing a lot of yomping, so it doesn’t matter if the footwear is a bit slack or a bit snug†.Obviously he’s describing a sort of ‘Dead Army’ and he has been making them look the part; cutting their hair all the same length, giving them the same boots even if they aren’t always the perfect fit since they are not going to be marching around anywhere because, as we know, they are all dead, murdered by Shelter to be precise. By this point in the novel we can tell he is absolutely insane. Shelter’s claims to be clever are completely correct. The way he coaxes people into believing he is a genuinely kind, friendly, caring and approachable man, takes skill. He can put on such a good act.In daily routine orders 15 he plays the part of a man who is truly upset about his missing cat and asks Link if he’s seen it. Also in daily routine orders 15 he fools the police into believing he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Tanya. In terms of cleverness Shelter is brilliant, completely undetectable. Link and Shelte r finally meet but now we see Shelter through Links eyes. In this last chapter you start feeling sorry for Shelter. To get like he is he must of have a pretty rough life. Link goes on about how Gail will come to save him and Shelter says â€Å"She’ll let you down, they always do†.With that statement we are told that he must have had a girlfriend in the past that let him down which immediately makes you feel sorry for him. So yes, seeing Shelter through Links eyes does change our view of him. I still wouldn’t trust him more than Link, based on what I already know. To conclude my essay on how Shelter changes throughout the novel. I’d say my view of shelter changed when we came to the end of the novel. To start with he was just plain strange. He gradually went from strange to right out insane. When we came to see Shelter through Links eyes I felt sorry for him and he needed a lot of psychological help.

Media Bias in the Election of 2008

Connie Zhang Media Bias Against Hilary Clinton in the Election of 2008 The election of 2008 was monumental in many respects, the most significant being the fact that there was a chance that the first woman or African American would become president of the United States. After Obama won the nomination, claims that the media had been negative and unfair to Clinton were examined. In earlier studies conducted by D’Alessio and Allen, it was concluded there were no significant biases in most forms of media. However, from the focus of her marriage to the questioning of her social conduct, Clinton was definitely treated differently than Obama was.It is very evident that there was, in fact, negative bias towards Clinton, although it was not as numerous and severe as it seemed to be due to historical, situational, and personal matters. Using meta-analysis, a method that allows for the combination of many studies from relatively few media outlets, D’Alessio and Allen revealed no s ignificant net amount of gatekeeping bias and no significant coverage bias. However, statement bias found in newsmagazines was pro-republican, and those found on TV were pro-democrat. The key here is that the â€Å"net† amount of gatekeeping bias was equal to zero.What this meant was that the number of conservatively biased forms of media was equal to the number of liberally biased forms of media. If someone only read a republican-favoring newspaper, then individually, he would be experiencing media biases which would impact his voting choices despite the fact that â€Å"net† amount of gatekeeping biases was equal to zero. Another important fact demonstrated in this study is that Americans are increasingly relying on TV for campaign information, so they are increasingly exposed to liberal biases, further affecting their political choices.Although D’Alessio and Mike Allen are certainly correct in their claim that the identities of the presidential candidates chan ged many times, biases most definitely existed in the election of 2008. Using a positive versus negative coverage analysis, Moldovan found substantial evidence that Clinton received less coverage than Obama did. Historically, this trend has been recorded, and in 2008, it held true even when the female candidate, Clinton, was a front runner.Six top newspapers ran 59 stories with Obama being mentioned in the headline, while only 36 mentioned Clinton. Between January 2007 and June 2008, 343 articles were written about Obama, while only 293 were focused on Clinton. In Time magazine, 2 covers featured Clinton, 2 covers featured both Clinton and Obama, and a whopping 25 covers featured Obama only. Clearly, there is a bias favoring Obama in the case of agenda setting. Additionally, Moldovan found that coverage of Clinton was more negatively framed than Obama’s was, in both specific cases and in general.When Clinton cried after winning the New Hampshire primaries, there was plenty of coverage deeming her a phony trying to rally emotional support as a woman, whereas her victory was extremely likely due to her administration’s superior organization in that state. In contrast, Obama’s condescending â€Å"You’re likeable enough, Hillary†, remark, received substantially less time and focus. Another example where treatment of Obama was not was not as harsh or prolonged as it could have been was in regards to Michelle Obama’s remark about being proud of her country â€Å"for the first time in her life†.Furthermore, the treatment towards Obama’s connections to anti-American individuals, such as his former reverend Jeremiah Wright, was softer in comparison to criticism of Clinton’s fashion, lack of womanly characteristics, and marriage. Overall, Clinton’s coverage was more negative than Obama’s, from the amount the media covered her weaknesses to the way it framed them. But all the biases claimed to h ave existed may not really have been actual biases, as Moldovan further explains. Some may have only been believed to been there as a result of historical, situational, and personal situations.The year 2008 was a crucial time. The country was in the worst recession since the Great Depression, with foreign tensions only aggravating the situation. Despite Clinton’s political prowess, her marriage to Bill Clinton and its scandalous complications gave her a very â€Å"yesterday† feeling that Americans did not need in such a dire time. Additionally, her refusal to disclose her tax returns increased the feelings of secrecy that retrogressively reminded people of the Nixon and Bush administration. Furthermore, coming out of George W.Bush’s rule, the fact that she was a Clinton added to the feeling of the persistence of a family dynasty that Americans did not want again. Finally, Clinton’s approach to the campaign itself was not only perceived negatively, but was in fact negative. Clinton’s method to winning focused on questioning Obama’s foreign policy experience, military capabilities, and economic policies. Her offensive remarks about Obama’s kindergarten essay and her red phone call ad were things that didn’t need the media’s framing or bias for people to recognize that they were disrespectful and unappealing.Although the press unnecessarily focused on these negative aspects, it cannot be denied that most of Clinton’s campaign was, in fact negative in itself due to the fact that it had been an attack on Obama’s flaws as a person, rather than a logical and fair assessment of his abilities and potential as a leader (Moldovan, 2009). When coupled with the fact that Obama revealed his maturity and professionalism by focusing on substance rather than resorting to mud-slinging, the situation worsened for Clinton.Additionally, the most negative coverage about Obama may have emphasized a trait th at would have been unattractive in other times, but in this situation, served to help him. The media revealed Obama’s â€Å"elitism†, from his food choices, to his education, to his up-scale Chicago neighborhood. Normally, this would have harmed a candidate’s campaign, but in 2008 when Americans really needed a talented and intelligent president, it seemed to make sense to want more than just an average American candidate.Despite his race and lack of professional experience, in contrast to Clinton’s feelings of backwardness and her attack tactics, Obama’s youthful charisma and focus on hope were simply more appealing to the American people, and although the media did give him an unfair amount of attention in his positive traits and was biased in focusing on his image rather than his experience, Obama didn’t need the media’s framing for it to be known that the way he approached the campaign was much more mature and professional then Cl inton.Because people tend to react much stronger to emotional appeals rather than dense, political facts, the fact that Obama handled the campaign better as a person really assisted him to victory (Moldovan, 2009). Clinton’s circumstances may have been further exacerbated not by the media’s bias, but by the fact that in general, people are just harsher when judging a woman. In a representative national sample, 51 percent of the surveyed believed that Americans were not â€Å"ready to elect a woman into high office† (Lawless 74).In general, women are more likely to receive media coverage based on their appearance, feminine traits, and ability to handle women’s issues. The situation was worsened by fact that Clinton was not the average female candidate. From the perceived lack of affection towards her pets to her hard, tough demeanor, Clinton lacked many of the stereotypical womanly characteristics people expected from her. But as soon as she cried after he r New Hampshire victory, the press had an unnecessarily generous and negative focus on these womanly qualities.Although there is a general and accepted consensus that Clinton did not lose the race because she was a woman, she was forced to operate in a sexist environment and deal with different expectations and standards. Thus, her campaign in general was more difficult as voters relied on stereotypical ideas of women and men’s attributes, affecting the way people judged and viewed her differently from Obama. In this case, the media may not have been biased against Clinton, but simply reinforcing these sexist norms (Lawless 2009).A further reason why these biases may not be as strong as they are claimed is demonstrated by Watts, Domoke, Shah, and Fan. After examining shifts in public perception of media bias, press coverage of media bias, and coverage in presidential campaigns, they concluded that the rise in the belief of media bias is a result of increasing news self-covera ge focusing on the topic of news content bias itself. These authors discovered that a lot of people’s evaluation of media credibility is misinformed, especially when comes to political news and campaign coverage.In presidential campaigns, candidates may merely be attempting to generate support for themselves and opposition for their opponents, not intentionally wanting to create bias. With the increase in these patterns, allegations of biases may now be a part of the presidential campaign rhetoric, and journalists feel increasing pressure to make these claims of the existence of biases to prove that they are not biased themselves.The rise in media sources has further contributed to the pressure traditional media sources have felt to reinforce their reliability by supporting claims of biases. Doing so not only generates credibility from their audience, but their peers as well. In consequence, a cyclic effect has taken place in which news media find their attention as sources o f information in political campaigns to be of increasing importance.In these ways, biases that are claimed to exist may not be as severe—or even existent—as people believe them to be. Due to these historical, situational, and personal matters, the negative biases against Clinton may not have been as frequent and harsh as they seemed, although biases against her existed for sure. In both agenda setting and framing, the media seemed to be against her as she received less coverage overall, and the coverage she did received tended to be harsher than the coverage on Obama.Other biases that were claimed to exist, however, such as emphasis on her marriage to Bill Clinton, however, may not really have been biases, but true, negative facts that just didn’t help her campaign. In addition, she was operating under a sexist environment, so it cannot be said that the media was being biased against her gender since everyone else was too. Finally, assertions of biases may not h ave actually arisen from real biases, but could have been a result from increasing news self-coverage focusing on the topic of news content bias.Overall, as Moldovan points out, the press’ true biases lay in conflict, because conflict generates both viewers and revenue. It just happened to be that out of the two candidates, Hilary Clinton had more problems to talk about. Works Cited Lawless, Jennifer L. â€Å"Sexism and Gender Bias in Election 2008: A More Complex Path for Women in Politics. † Politics & Gender (2009): 70-80. Print. â€Å"Media Bias in Presidential Elections: A Meta Analysis. † Journal of Communication 50. 4 (2000): 133-56. Print. Miller, Melissa K. , Jeffrey S. Peake, and Brittany Anne Boulton. Testing the Saturday Night Live Hypothesis: Fairness and Bias in Newspaper Coverage of Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign. † Politics & Gender (2010): 169-98. Print. Raluca, Moldovan. â€Å"A TALE OF TWO CLINTONS: MEDIA BIAS IN THE COVERAGE O F HILLARY CLINTON'S 2008 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN1. † Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Studia Europaea (2009): 41-59. Print. Watts, Mark D. , et al. â€Å"Elite Cues and Media Bias in Presidential Campaigns – Explaining Public Perceptions of a Liberal Press. † Communication Research 26. 2 (1999): 144-75. Print.