‘Nowadays, It’s Neither Politicians nor Voters Who Decide Elections, It’s the Media.’ Discuss

Picturing the Bible, by Spier J. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2007. 288 pages. Reviewed by June Cuffner.

McCombs, M. (2013). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion. John Wiley & Sons.

The media is important for us the people to inform us about our government. In this paper I will show the relationship between the media and Congress. There are many forms of traditional media newspapers and magazines and TV news programs. Until recently people got most of their information and news from traditional sources. I would agree with scholars who argue that the media plays a major role as an agenda setter by focusing the public’s attention on a few issues. Public opinion is shaped in large part by people’s exposure to the media. There are two main areas of media agenda setting the first is reporting the news the second is telling us how to view the news.

Fear is so deeply embedded in the human genome, as a defense mechanism. It is so old it is coded into the oldest part of the human nervous system. Throughout history, fear has been used to manipulate whole populations into starting wars, revolts, genocides, and discrimination. Never has that been more true than in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, his rise led to the deadliest conflict in human history, World War II. His consolidation of power and control over the people of Germany, can be attributed to using fear as a weapon of manipulation. In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson, follows the first American ambassador into this dystopia, and the fear he experiences while there. Erik Larson chose to set In The Garden of Beasts in Hitler’s Berlin to

Political scientist, journalists, and politicians alike often discuss the role of the news media’s place in affecting campaigns, and voter perceptions. Claims of media bias in political news coverage have risen over the past two decades. Scholarly research has explored concerns that broadcast and print media shape voting decisions in democratic processes.

The aim of this paper is to look at the relationship between the mass media, specifically television, and presidential elections. This paper will focus on the function of television in presidential elections through three main areas: exit polls, presidential debates, and spots. The focus is on television for three reasons. First, television reaches more voters than any other medium. Second, television attracts the greatest part of presidential campaign budgets. Third, television provides the candidates a good opportunity to contact the people directly. A second main theme of this paper is the role of television in presidential elections in terms of representative democracy in the United States.

The media, a powerful source of information but what are the affects? While the media is seen by many as a vital source of information offered through a variety of different outlets, the theoretical underlining affects of the media demonstrates how stories from within it can influence society. The imprtance of not only recongnizing but understanding the media’s affects remains a vital priority in all forms of information today in how it is received and interpretated by different audiences. The level of effect of the media however, has been disputed heavingly, as with different forms of media such as online have developed a different affect for the mass media consumer. When regarding the level of effect the media holds, the 2016 Presidential campaign presents a prominent case study that shows a limiting affect of the mass media that

There are three widely accepted options for influence and power to surge from in the election process, as stated above. First and foremost, the media is widely perceived as the top dog in the election process; society as a whole holds the assumption that media sets the agenda and controls the political process. This idea is embellished by the cynics of the world and there have been a number of studies with findings disputing these perceptions. Dalton’s paper tracked over 6000 newspapers articles, during the 1992 presidential election, from a stratified sample of counties across the nation and their research points to a much weaker position being held by the media as a whole, in respect to its influence over elections within the United States (466). The research focused of the viewpoint and time given to either candidate during the election season. Overall the findings showed little to no bias, outside of the editorial section, with in the overall information of each candidate. The argument is summed up in the article stating, “Certainly, some newspapers and journalists have distinct views, but such individual biases appear small and tend to cancel out when aggregated. Moreover, a newspaper’s presidential endorsement had little impact on its news coverage of the issue themes of the campaign” (Dalton, 476). The media seems to play a part in

The creation of a new life is a complicated process where many sperm cells travel a long road just so they can sacrifice themselves for that one lucky sperm cell.

Agenda-setting is one of the most important factors in shaping public opinion. Agenda-setting can be defined as the ability of the media to direct public attentions toward the issues they believe are important to the public. But whose choice is it that determines which issues are more important over others? The news media can set an agenda-setting by focus attention on selected issues on which the public will form opinions from (McCombs). The media can paint a memory in your head by repeatedly repeating the issues on different media sources as Internet, network televisions, newspapers, etc. Since these sources are the cheapest and easiest to access, the information can be view by vast number of audiences. As quoted in a 1922 classic called “Public Opinion” by Walter Lippmann,

The media also influences how the public perceives issues. The placement of political issues during news coverage influences the importance of political issues on society. The ranking of media issues and society’s ranking suggest that the media influence the public (Weaver, 1996). The importance of an issue may rests on its time slot, sequence in the news story, or in the advertisement for the news.

In today’s society, media is everywhere and it’s not something we can easily avoid. We use the media for almost everything, we use it to form our own opinions on certain topics, to get information about what’s going on in our communities and the world, and lately, for a lot of political information. We are constantly surrounded by it from our televisions, the news, internet, and all the information we can access on our phones and computers. There are many theories that have been created to explain how the media influences us and shapes the way we get information. Two of the theories that will be discussed in this paper are agenda setting and framing.

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." This quote by A.J. Liebling illustrates the reality of where the media stands in today's society. Over the past twenty years there has been an increase in power throughout the media with regard to politics. The media's original purpose was to inform the public of the relevant events that occurred around the world. The job of the media is to search out the truth and relay that news to the people. The media has the power to inform the people but often times the stories given to the public are distorted for one reason or another. Using slant and sensationalism, the media has begun to shape our views in society and the process by which

Laura Lane, Yahoo! Contributor Network Nov 14, 2007 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here." Media Bias Mass Media News Media Political Campaigns Political Views Flag Post a comment

This underscores why politicians have long perceived mass media as a veritable channel of disseminating an ideology so that the society can mirror itself against what the media feeds it and thus be manipulated. This further begs the question of whether the media is a contributor or otherwise to societal problems in the face of political ideological dissemination.