Chapter 16 ~ The Media
Media- A Definition
Media is a very broad term, but can be any source from which we consume information about the world around us.
Media generally has three purposes:
- Report events
- Interpret events
- Educate citizens
Media outlets have a lot of power because they have agenda setting, which is the ability to choose what gets covered. Often, more entertaining topics will be chosen over important ones, meaning issues like government policies, climate change, or human rights will be underreported or ignored.
Though it comes in many different forms, it can generally be split into ^^two categories^^:
| News Media | Social Media |
|---|---|
| Newspapers, radio, television, magazines | Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter |
| One-way communication | Two-way communication, user interaction |
| Watch content | Create & share content |
| Cover important news and other events | Provides entertainment |
Over time, media has grown and evolved exponentially. The amount of information available has grown significantly, and media has been made more accessible to e^^veryone^^.
Anyone can provide commentary, be a journalist, and interpret events. Media hosts are like near ^^celebrities^^ and command ^^huge audiences^^. And, while some might argue this makes America more democratic, others beg to differ.
Media Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Educate citizens & make difficult information digestible | Extremist news is given attention and support, especially on social media |
| Linkage institution, lets people connect to the government & their representatives | News is forced to be entertaining, has to compete with social media and television |
| Independent of the government, and holds them accountable, exposes the truth (NY v Nixon) | Exhibits heavy bias, promotes echo chambers |
| Helps campaigns, transparency with candidates & elections | People who don’t like what is being said about them can declare news fake, making it hard to discern fact from fiction |
| Alerted of important and critical emergencies and other events | |
| Offer healthy counter to your worldview (Less popular in the 21st century with the rise of reaffirming algorithms) |
Media- A Timeline
- Cost: The first big change came when newspapers became cheap. Since everyone could buy them, newspaper businesses had to start making sure they kept their audience. This was the beginning of mass media, and this meant more sensationalist news that was more entertaining.
- Wire Service: With media gone mass, organizations started collecting news for media outlets to buy. The Associated Press is a wire service.
- Investigative Journalism: With larger audiences, journalists became less neutral and more investigative, digging up the wrongdoings of politicians and businesses. Especially popular in the Progressive Era.
- Broadband: With the advent of radio and television, everyone could watch the same thing at home. It brought the nation together, and was used tactfully by presidents. Famous examples include the fireside chats or Kennedy v Nixon debate.
- 24/7 News Cycle: In the 1980’s media was becoming more partisan. With the advent of CNN’s 24/7 news cycle, people now had news every single hour. Pressed to keep an audience, 24/7 news cycles gradually became more entrenched in a political ideology. Beginning of Fox News.
- Social Media: Led to exponential growth in the consumption of news. Everyone could have a voice. Entertainment and information continued to become more mixed.
Nowadays we are in the era of new media, which is all digital forms of media. As more media has become digital, and paper and newspaper have fallen out of favor. And while it might seem people are more informed of government and news, there are worries that it has increased partisanship, and worries that there has been a growing divide in who can access it.
A Digital Divide
With the growth of news media, certain people with less internet access have been left behind. People in rural areas, older people, less-educated people, Spanish-speaking people and more.
Media- Regulation
The government mainly tries to regulate ownership and content. However, as the media has become bigger and bigger over time it has become increasingly difficult to regulate without encroaching on First Amendment protections. Here are some examples of past regulation:
- Radio Act of 1927: Required licenses to broadcast media on certain frequencies. Created the Federal Radio Commission
- Communications Act: Established the Federal Communications Commission
- Telecommunications Act of 1997: Raised limit of how many media outlets a company could own.
- Net Neutrality: Obama policy that allows all content on the internet to have equal access to being shown
Media Consolidation
The government has also tried to regulate media consolidation. Media consolidation is when the number of companies that own media outlets decrease. This can be bad, as it gives companies more financial control over the news. It can lead to a decrease of plurality and variety of opinion in the news.
Net Neutrality is one way the government has tried to slow media consolidation. Net neutrality means that internet service providers cannot block, slow, or speed up content. Without it, internet service providers could create fast lanes to their content, worsening media consolidation and giving companies more control.
Media- Impact
Media has always played a big role in history. One of the first major examples was the publishing of federalist papers and anti-federalist papers during the Constitutional Debate.
Over time, as media becomes more “mass”, entertainment and information have continued to blend into infotainment. The increase of infotainment has caused people to be less informed of public affairs. Especially in comedy shows, it has also fostered a distrust of the government.
There has also been a growing preference for soft news: news about celebrities, personalities, and entertainment rather than events of more economic, political, and international significance. Because of this, newspapers have fallen out of popularity, and younger generations continually get more of their news from social media.
Over time, Americans have been increasingly concerned with partisan bias. Though many journalists identify as more liberal and impartial, people have increasingly complained about bias and trusted the media less. As of 2017, only 32% reported a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media.
Government Media
As media has grown more popular politicians have used it to spread their message. Often they will try to control the message people hear about them, appear on talk shows or choose to only associate with friendly journalists that will spin stories in a way that will benefit them. However, more media connections also mean that any bad thing they say will instantly be spread.
During elections, politicians also rely on media to assist them. However, sometimes media can only focus on points and who is winning. This focus on percentages instead of policy and platform is called horse-race journalism.