The mainstream media's news coverage tends to be primarily focused on fringe candidates. D. The mainstream media's news coverage tends to be focused on who is winning and who is losing. Coverage of local and state news by the mainstream media is generally _________.
Politicians may use television commercials, advertisements or mailings to point out potentially negative qualities in their opponents while extolling their own virtues. The media can also influence politics by deciding what news the public needs to hear.
The most common charge is that the mainstream media suffer from a liberal bias. This bias makes them hostile to conservative candidates and causes. The charge is made so often and with such conviction that most conservatives believe it is true. The evidence is far less convincing.
More detailed coverage and analysis are available from cable news stations and programs like Meet the Press. The focus of political coverage is on the president; whatever the president says or does is newsworthy. Part of the White House press corps always travels with the president to make sure every word and deed is immediately reported.
Which statement best reflects how the mainstream media covers political news? The mainstream media's news coverage tends to be focused on who is winning and who is losing.
Which is the best explanation for why media coverage of elections's important? It is most people's only source of information on the issues and candidates.
Infotainment (a portmanteau of information and entertainment), also called soft news as a way to distinguish it from serious journalism or hard news, is a type of media, usually television or online, that provides a combination of information and entertainment.
How did the rise of cable television and the Internet change politics? The public gained access to a larger range of diverse news sources. Americans could consume news 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Public policy and government officials came under greater scrutiny.
Which statement best describes the media's role in informing the public on government affairs? The media presents information, allowing the public to stay informed about current and proposed laws.
Which statement best describes how the media influence policy development? The media keep lawmakers informed of what is happening in government. The media inform the public, who can then give their opinions to policymakers.
Which statement best describes the relationship between news producers and consumers given the influence of the Internet? Consumers can respond to news coverage and events via blogs and other new media outlets.
The media's function as an open channel through which political leaders can communicate with the public. The accepted responsibility of the media to protect the public from incompetent or corrupt officials by standing ready to expose any official who violates accepted legal, ethical, or performance standards.
Which of the following statements best characterizes media ownership in the United States? A small number of giant, privately owned corporations control most of the country's television networks, movie studios, record companies, cable channels, book publishers, magazines, newspapers, and digital media sites.
What role does the mass media play in setting the public agenda? The media's role in setting the public agenda is to bring the social problems of America to the attention of the public and the government.
Terms in this set (5) How has social media affected politics in the United States? It has increased the public's political involvement. Which of the following statements BEST reflects how the media have changed political campaigns? Candidates are tied to their party organization to a lesser degree.
The Internet allows easy access to information through blogs and websites and facilitates communication from news to people. Political campaigns and elections have been changed because candidates can post information and communicate with supporters easier through campaign websites.
The focus of political coverage is on the president; whatever the president says or does is newsworthy. Part of the White House press corps always travels with the president to make sure every word and deed is immediately reported. With the exception of the most sensational deliberations of Congress or the courts ...
The election of a president is a media event in which literally thousands of reporters descend on the states with early primary elections. Instead of concentrating on the issues and the candidates' programs, the reporters' coverage tends to stress which candidate is ahead or where each stands ...
In addition to hiring pollsters, presidential candidates employ media consultants who are responsible for presenting them and their messages in the most effective way.
A presidential news conference is packaged. The president may spend hours rehearsing answers to questions that the staff thinks are the most likely to be asked. Access to government officials is essential to reporters, and in return, they are expected to follow several unwritten rules.
In the 1988 presidential election, George Bush effectively used a photograph of Willie Horton, a rapist who committed murder while on a release program, to stress that Michael Dukakis was soft on crime. The expansion of radio and television talk shows has given candidates access to more free airtime.
H. Ross Perot used both of these longer formats quite successfully in the 1992 campaign. The Internet is a powerful resource in presidential campaigns. Howard Dean, a candidate for the 2004 Democratic party nomination, showed how to effectively use the Internet to raise money.
A White House staff person may agree to speak with a reporter only on background, which means that the source cannot be identified. This is why so many news stories quote "a senior White House official" or "sources within the administration.". Information that is given off the record cannot be reported at all.
However, the media also plays a key role in the responsibility of political leaders, by publicizing their actions that show the public how political leaders are being useful to society or how their political choices are being disastrous.
Much is said about the media's ability to influence society, especially the intervention on the political scene. The effect of the media is the holy grail of all media and political researchers. Of course, we know that the media has an effect on opinion formation, because almost all of the policy information voters receive in complex societies like ours comes from the media. However, the media also plays a key role in the responsibility of political leaders, by publicizing their actions that show the public how political leaders are being useful to society or how their political choices are being disastrous.
Wikimedia Commons – public domain. Because the press has a duty to serve the best interests of the citizens in a democracy , it is important that journalists act independently and that they remain neutral in their presentation of information. Objectivity was once the common term used to support this notion.
In the preamble to its statement of purpose, the Committee of Concerned Journalists lists as the central purpose of journalism “to provide citizens with accurate and reliable information they need to function in a free society (Committee of Concerned Journalists).”.
Blogging is sometimes criticized by more traditional journalists for the tendency, among some blogs, to include biases, unreliable information, and unfounded opinions —in other words, for instances of violating journalistic codes of ethics.
allows for commentary and opposition. All news stories contain some bias because of the diversity of journalists’ perspectives. While the news media is often criticized for representing a political bias in reporting, ethical journalists always strive to present issues in a fair and comprehensive way.
In 1916 , audiences across America tuned in to their radios to hear the first-ever breaking-news coverage of an event as the results of the presidential election between Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes were announced from the offices of The New York American.
Online, newspapers can compete with broadcast media for immediate coverage, posting articles on their home pages as soon as the stories are written, and supplementing the articles on their websites with audiovisual content.
The most common charge is that the mainstream media suffer from a liberal bias. This bias makes them hostile to conservative candidates and causes. The charge is made so often and with such conviction that most conservatives believe it is true. The evidence is far less convincing.
They believe the news is hostile to their particular point of view. This is true regardless of whether you are conservative or a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican. Bias is news that challenges your point of view. 2.
3. Most candidates—Hillary Clinton included—are deeply suspicious of the news media and are often visibly frustrated by the way they are covered. Clinton, you might recall, proffered the “vast right-wing media conspiracy” in 1998 during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Rumors or accusations of Bill Clinton’s infidelity were first covered by ...
News, even real news that starts from a politically suspected source, is discounted. Here’s a political reality: No candidate gets the coverage they want or they believe they deserve. 4. The public has little or no confidence in the news media’s ability to report the news fairly or accurately.
Media bias is, at best, a small and mostly trivial part of the equation . Most of the negative coverage received by Donald Trump has not been the result of a rigged political system or journalistic biases but instead reflects a poorly run campaign and an undisciplined approach to campaign communication.
Marshall McLuhan’s Influence on Media Studies. During the early 1960s, English professor Marshall McLuhan wrote two books that had an enormous effect on the history of media studies. Published in 1962 and 1964, respectively, the Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media both traced the history of media technology and illustrated ...
Early media studies focused on the use of mass media in propaganda and persuasion. However, journalists and researchers soon looked to behavioral sciences to help figure out the effect of mass media and communications on society. Scholars have developed many different approaches and theories to figure this out.
The relative salience of an issue determines its place within the public agenda, which in turn influences public policy creation. Agenda-setting research traces public policy from its roots as an agenda through its promotion in the mass media and finally to its final form as a law or policy (Dearing & Rogers, 1996).
This notion represented a novel take on attitudes toward media— that the media themselves are instrumental in shaping human and cultural experience.
Other theories focus on specific aspects of media influence, such as the spiral of silence theory ’s focus on the power of the majority opinion or the symbolic interactionism theory’s exploration of shared cultural symbolism.
By using symbolic interactionist theory, researchers can look at the ways media affects a society’s shared symbols and, in turn, the influence of those symbols on the individual (Jansson-Boyd, 2010). One of the ways the media creates and uses cultural symbols to affect an individual’s sense of self is advertising.
The media logic theory states that common media formats and styles serve as a means of perceiving the world. Today, the deep rooting of media in the cultural consciousness means that media consumers need engage for only a few moments with a particular television program to understand that it is a news show, a comedy, or a reality show. The pervasiveness of these formats means that our culture uses the style and content of these shows as ways to interpret reality. For example, think about a TV news program that frequently shows heated debates between opposing sides on public policy issues. This style of debate has become a template for handling disagreement to those who consistently watch this type of program.
The media influences politics by helping to shape public opinion. The United States has a democratic government, meaning that the people vote to elect leaders and change laws based on the majority. When these voters rely on the mass media to assist them in developing an opinion for determining a vote, the media influences politics.
When campaigning, politicians spend large quantities of money on media to reach voters, concentrating on voters who are undecided. Politicians may use television commercials, advertisements or mailings to point out potentially negative qualities in their opponents while extolling their own virtues.