15.1: Introduction

The New York Times, one of the world’s most influential news organizations, is headquartered in a skyscraper bearing its name in downtown Manhattan.

When British statesman Edmund Burke described reporters as a “fourth estate” in 1771, he placed them on the same level as the three estates (the church, the nobles, and the commoners) which had traditionally determined the course of European politics. Over a century later, American journalist Douglass Cater deemed the press “the fourth branch of government.’ Though they operate largely outside of formal government institutions, news media have long been recognized as a formidable political force.

Despite this powerful reputation, Americans pay surprisingly little attention to the media. We consume media, of course—staggering amounts, in fact. But when we do, we almost never look at the media. Instead, we look through them at the events on the other side. Intellectually, we know the media are there, with their journalists and anchors and cameras and graphics. Yet they become for all practical purposes invisible, like the glass pane separating us from what we see when we look through a window.

But neglecting the glass between us and what we see can be dangerous (as any pigeon will tell you). If we forget about it, we won’t notice the ways it magnifies, minifies, blurs, obscures, or otherwise distorts our vision. Worse, we might mistakenly attribute those qualities to something other than the window itself. Similarly, what we observe through media is not reality but merely one version of it, filtered through a lens that, whether by accident or intention, does not always faithfully render the world as it is.

A media environment completely free of these distortions is impossible. Nor can we do away with media entirely and perceive the world directly. The world is too big, and we are too small, to personally encounter everything that matters to us. What we can do is will ourselves to think about media themselves as our windows to the world. In doing so, we can discover what media are, how they work, and how they shape our politics.