The media and American politics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words

The media and American politics - Essay Example US media has been often criticised as being manipulated by the government and ends up serving biased and distorted news to the general people. My article will examine the role of the US media in the political scenario, in the context of the 2000/2004 elections, and will examine to find out as to whether the media does really have a slant/bias, and whether it really acts as a propaganda vehicle for the political party in power. The Media and American politics 1 Introduction â€Å"Balanced coverage [is what] plagues American journalism and ...leads to utterly spineless reporting with no edge. The idea seems to be that journalists are allowed to go out to report, but when it comes time to write, we are expected to turn our brains off and repeat the spin from both sides..."Balanced" is not fair, it's just an easy way of avoiding real reporting...and shirking our responsibility to inform readers† (Ken Silverstein, 2008). ... esidential speeches, various TV ads, press meetings, or even through the normal routine daily news, which creates a form of ‘virtual reality’ for its viewers. Though the results, as have been observed in the various elections, are quite far from being virtual, and are indeed real and turning out to be critical too, for the political parties. In the context of conducting political campaigns, the magnitude and scale of the US elections in the recent years, is something which would have been unimaginable even 60 years back. These transformations in the political field can be to a large extent laid at the door of the media and press coverage of the political policies.. John Zaller summarily defines this slowly evolving new process in the arena of US media and politics as, â€Å"the attempt to govern on the basis of words and images that diffuse through the mass media† (2009, 389). There is no denying the fact that in this twenty first century modern world, the news me dia does indeed play a pivotal role in the functioning of the political regimes, and the shaping of a nation’s democracy. In a modern democratic country, the right to information forms a vital criterion for its citizens to assess the functioning of the political party in power, and to receive this information they rely on different various news distributing agents like the television, newspapers, amongst many others. This free access to the media for information related to the actions of the political leaders, in terms of various policies and legislations and their consequential aspects, are essential for the proper functioning of a democratic country. â€Å"It ensures that citizens make responsible, informed choices... [While] information serves a â€Å"checking function† by ensuring that elected