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15.7: Politics, Filtered

  • Page ID
    287429
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    Our ability to assess how well our government works depends on our ability to see it in action through media. In that sense, media function somewhat like a control panel or dashboard for the American political machine. We tend to instinctively trust indicators and gauges on machines to alert us when an issue requires our attention. We rarely 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.

    The nature of news is such that any image of the world it can provide us will necessarily be incomplete, simplified, and warped by some combination of partisan, ideological, governmental, and commercial influences. The end result might faithfully recount what actually happened, or it might bear little to no resemblance to reality. Occasionally, these distortions are so blatant that we can’t ignore them, but the vast majority slip past our radars.

    As powerful as media are, they do not determine the news entirely on their own. The private media environment in the United States ensures that news outlets are constantly guessing what their audiences want so that they can give it to them and keep them tuned in. This 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 by what they think the public wants them to cover.

    The relationship between 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), media will offer it to us. If instead we are content with dubious, one-sided, shallow, and trivial coverage—the media equivalent of junk food that satisfies without nourishing—media have already proven they are more than willing to give us that instead.


    15.7: Politics, Filtered is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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