Politics and The Media

The media has always been a part of influencing American politics however over the past decades media's role in politics has become increasingly noticeable. When our country was first founded, politicians would write pamphlets and articles to inform citizens of their political agendas. Candidates even back then might slander each other if they had opposing opinions. However, technological advances have significantly changed how politics is influenced. In addition to newspaper and printed information, first the invention of television changed how Americans absorbed politics and the internet followed. These forms of media impact what Americans think about politics or reflect what Americans think about politics depending on who you ask. I argue though that the media does both. Television, newspapers and articles posted on the internet by well known, reputable sources are assumed to inform the public on political information or take a stance on a political view. Having reputable sources publish political news in my opinion is the media telling Americans what to think. The internet however is also a space where anyone can post their views or create a blog which is referred to as citizen journalism. Citizen journalism is Americans posting media that reflects what Americans think. Citizen journalism is a form of democracy because it supports the first amendment and allows space for the voices of citizens (whether their political stance aligns with majority or minority opinion) to be represented. However, the drawback of citizen journalism is that there are no enforced professional or ethical standards that are required before citizens publish information. Therefore most information posted on the internet has to be read with skepticism and not taken at face value. Fact checking is very important because the lack of standards means a lot of political news can potentially be inaccurate or unverified. However, I would also say that even political news on television can be manipulated even though it comes from a political source. As the text mentions, television has influenced politics because it brought to life political issues and exposed Americans to politics inside their living rooms. This took away a level of detachment Americans may have felt by just reading the news because Television is a visual experience. Many candidates have spent millions or billions of dollars on TV campaign ads or ads that are posted on media. This is because Americans spend an increasing amount of time using technology. Anything an individual spends time on becomes a part of their reality and political campaigns use this to their advantage. Political advertisers use different strategies; positive advertising, attack ads, issue ads or even negative political advertising. In my opinion, these television acts impact America's politics not because of the content in the ads but the emotional reactions Americans have to these ads. Politics in the media is more about manipulating the emotions of voters rather than objectively focusing on political news. This brings me to the point that media has always been subjective however I do believe that especially over the last decade confidence in the media has decreased a lot. Once it is realized that more often or not there are biases that heavily influence the political news being publicly reported, the harder it is to believe the information being relayed (you would hope). For example, you can watch ABC News and Fox news the same day and still hear different headlines as well as different information about the same headline. In the recent election, the candidates used many campaign ads and media played a huge role in the months leading up the election. Candidates not only publicly attacked each other and had their own televised ads but the news sources also seemed to take very biased sides. For example, fox news glorified Trump and if fox news is the only media source an individual watched, they would have a whole separate understanding of Trump, his policies and opinions and national crisis’ (like the COVID 19 pandemic). Media is growing and becoming a mixture of not only professionally researched political news but bias political news and though it supports the idea of democracy where minority and majority voices can be represented equally, it does make Americans vulnerable to being manipulated or given false news if they do not fact check the media.