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15.6: Politics, Filtered

  • Page ID
    287338
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    Our ability to assess how well our government is working depends on our ability to see it in action, and the only way for us to do so beyond the limitations of our personal experience is through media. In that sense, media function somewhat like a control panel or dashboard for the American political machine. We tend to instinctively trust the indicators and gauges on machines to alert us when an issue requires our attention. We usually don’t consider the possibility that a blinking light or beeping noise might be a false alarm — or, worse, that a serious problem might be present even though no warnings are announcing it.

    The nature of news is such that any image of the world it can provide us will necessarily be incomplete, simplified, and warped to a certain degree by a combination of partisan, ideological, governmental, and commercial influences. The end result might be a faithful account of what actually happened, or it might bear little to no resemblance to reality. Occasionally, these distortions are so blatant that we almost can’t ignore them, but the vast majority slip past our radars without us noticing.

    Yet as powerful as the media are, they do not determine what the news is and how it will be covered entirely on their own. The private, commercialdriven media environment in the United States ensures that news organizations are constantly trying to guess what their audiences want so that they can give it to them and keep them tuned in. This compulsion creates a chicken-and-egg scenario: the media’s agenda-setting capacity causes the public to believe that the stories they cover are important, but the media’s choice of which stories to cover is guided largely by what they think the public wants them to cover.

    The relationship between news media and their audiences demonstrates that we the people have some of the power to define the news. If we demand coverage that is accurate, unbiased, nuanced, and relevant to our role as democratic citizens (and choose our media based on these criteria), news organizations will offer it to us in order to keep us reading, listening, and watching. If instead we are content with dubious, one-sided, shallow, and trivial news stories — the media equivalent of junk food that satisfies without nourishing — news organizations have already proven they are more than willing to give it to us.


    15.6: Politics, Filtered is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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