Politics and the Media

Sample Lesson - Introduction

Lesson 1.04: The Media's Messy Present

TMI
(Source)

As you probably guessed from the end of our last lesson, the story of the media in America pretty much ends with the rise of objectivity. Newspapers printed nothing but the facts, corruption and sensationalism vanished from the land, and everyone lived happily every after. Right?

Umm….

We don't know how to tell you this, innocent readers, and we sincerely don't want to burst your precious bubble, but the story of media gets even more complicated and messier through the 20th century and into the present. It's a cliché that things are changing faster than ever these days, but it's a cliché for a reason—because it's pretty much true.

This most recent era has seen the rise of TV, the Internet, electronic media, blogs, and more. It's seen the impending "death of print" and serious challenges to the ideal of objectivity. It's seen a new, more partisan media that makes today's media-scape look in many ways like something out of the 18th century. The good news is that you've got more choices than ever. The bad news is that...you've got more choices than ever.

Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 1.1.04: Tell Me What I Want to Hear, Please

The ideal of objectivity sounds great on paper. The media gives us the facts, and nothing but the facts. What could be wrong with that? Well, quite a few things. The ideal of objectivity still plays an important role in our mediascape—and at the very least, nearly all media will claim to be objective—but it's also subject to a number of problems in both principle and practice. Here are a few of them:

1. Perfect Objectivity is Impossible

We don't want to get all Matrix on you, but there isn't an objective truth just sitting out there, waiting for the media to hand it to you. No newspaper or website contains all of the facts of the world—and even if they did, they'd have to decide how to arrange them.

All the time, journalists decide what's important and what can be left out, what deserves to be on the front page and what can get buried, what's news and what's not. They decide which problems are worth covering and from what perspective, which sources are trustworthy, and how much attention to devote to each topic. All of this means that journalists and editors have to use their judgment on the job every day. Even the best of them can't give you THE truth. At best, they can give you their perspective on which facts matter—but that very perspective is a kind of opinion.

2. Bias is Unavoidable

Your news is still being reported by human beings—people who have hopes and dreams, people who just want to get out of this ugly journalism world and raise competition-grade poodles just like they promised their father they would on his deathbed. (Sorry, got a bit off track there.) More to the point, the human beings who report the news have opinions and politics of their own. They can do their best to turn them off, but over time, it's quite possible that they'll leave their impression on what gets reported, and how it gets reported.

Organizations can have biases, too—biases dictated by advertisers, the ownership, or their place in the economy. You'll often hear, then, that it makes more sense for journalists and news organizations to admit their biases than pretend they aren't there.

3. Objectivity Needs Gatekeepers

In practice, a large part of the image of objectivity depends on the dominance of a few large news organizations. Think of it this way—if there are dozens of news sources going around claiming to represent "the truth" or "the facts," but they all have different versions of truth and facts, then any one source's claim to objectivity starts to look pretty sketchy. But if there are only a few news organizations, you might only hear one or two perspectives....

It's no coincidence that the era in which objectivity had its greatest prestige—the decades through the mid-20th century—was an era of a few dominant papers, magazines, and TV networks. These organizations had authority because they could speak to millions of audience members at once. This meant that a fairly small number of media figures had significant power as news gatekeepers—in other words, people who decided what counted as news. The media is supposed to be a watchdog on the most powerful forces in society—but when a few media organizations become powerful in their own right, who's watching them? Ooh, deep.

4. Objectivity Isn't Always Popular

Last, and most basically, objectivity doesn't get a lot of people all hot-n'-bothered. There's a reason why Yellow Journalism was so popular—and why its descendants still are. Another reason that the ideal of objectivity thrived with a few dominant media organizations is that competition was limited. But the growth of cable TV and the Internet have meant strong challenges to the "just the facts" approach. Seriously, would you be more likely to click on "Proposed Changes to Gun Policy Spark Debate" or "The Gummint Is Coming to Take All Yer Guns!"?

Let's focus on this point: The era in which the ideal of objectivity was at its highest peak was also the era in which a fairly small number of organizations dominated news coverage: newspapers like the New York Times, magazines like Time and Life, and the three TV networks. That's not to say that towns didn't have their local newspapers—they definitely did—only to point out that the national conversation was dominated by the handful of organizations that had the money, the staff, and the prestige to shout the loudest.

That stayed true even when TV took over a dominant role in news coverage in the mid-20th century. A landmark year in media history was 1963—not just because of Beatlemania (we love you, Ringo!), but because it was the year the number of Americans getting their news from TV overtook the number getting their news from papers.

We'll talk more about TV as a medium in the next lesson—what we want to stress here is that, even as TV surged to dominance, just a handful of TV news programs could hold millions of eyeballs. In the olden days of the 20th century, millions of people actually used to gather around the TV every evening to watch the same program at the same time. (Ask your parents about it sometime.)

A great example of the influence of those national broadcasts: When hugely influential CBS anchor Walter Cronkite went on air to openly criticize the Vietnam War in 1968, President Johnson is supposed to have said: "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

The End of Objectivity?

There are plenty of journalists with opinions these days—but there are so many outlets for information, and so many competing claims to present the "real" truth, that no one journalist can wield that kind of influence. (What we're saying is that Cronkite was basically Spider-Man. Great power, great responsibility, etc.)

How did we get to this point, then? While a ton of factors contributed, we'll at least single out three.

First, the federal government repealed the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. The Fairness Doctrine had been one of the government's major tools in regulating the media: It said that a broadcaster airing one view of a controversial issue also had to give time to the opposing view, with the goal of creating balanced coverage. Without the doctrine in place, it's been easier for explicitly ideological media to make themselves heard.

Second, cable TV took off. Now there are dozens or even hundreds of TV news sources available, from CNN to conservative Fox News to liberal MSNBC to Al Jazeera to ESPN to Comedy Central. Cable news sources don't have to appeal to as many viewers to remain profitable—they care about ratings, but they can serve smaller niches. As a result, it's been harder for any one news source to claim a stranglehold on objectivity—and it's become much easier for viewers to turn to news sources that satisfy their political needs, and tell them what they want to hear, 24 hours a day. (Well, 24 hours a day if they're also shotgunning Red Bull and caffeine pills.)

In fact, a big change brought about by the cable news explosion has been the 24-hour news cycle. Whereas our parents and grandparents had to wait for the nightly news or the daily paper to find out what had happened in the world over the past day, we get news that's updated constantly as it happens. That's great for breaking stories that change and develop in real time—but it's less good when the need to fill 24 hours of airtime leads stations to broadcast tons of filler like car chases, or when the rush to be first with a story leads to distortion and misreporting.

Last but not least—the Internet. Ever since the Drudge Report helped break news of President Clinton's affair with a White House intern in 1998, it's been clear that the Internet would play an ever-growing role in driving national news coverage. In some ways, the effects of the Internet have mirrored the effects of cable—more options, more competition, more opportunity to build an ideological cocoon, if that's your thing. The Internet, though, has also had a unique impact of its own: Because it's easier than ever to post videos, news, and opinions, the role of major organizations and editors as news gatekeepers has plummeted in the last decade or so.

The good news: It means breaking news reaches us faster, it means more talented voices can find an audience, and it means the diversity of news and opinion on offer is greater than ever. Yay.

The bad news: It's a lot harder to enforce the standards of ethics, accuracy, and balance that typify the media at its best. Boo.

Finally, the rise of the Internet has done a serious number on the business models of TV networks and especially newspapers—in ways we'll discuss before long.

There's a reason we called this lesson "The Media's Messy Present." It's not just that there are more options than ever. It's that the history of media in our country can't really be described as a graceful evolution, a story of progress from one stage to another. It's more like a big, sloppy pile—like your bedroom floor when you haven't cleaned it up in a while, or a finger-painting masterpiece by a four-year-old.

Nothing goes away, and there's a little bit of everything. You can see traces of the openly partisan 18th-century media on Fox News or MSNBC. You can see a strong reminder of Yellow Journalism whenever CNN ignores everything else going on in the world to remind you that they still haven't found that missing Malaysian airplane. And there are still plenty of newspapers and websites holding down the fort for the ideal of objectivity.

In conclusion, the media is Burger King. Whichever way you want it, you can probably have it your way.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.04: TV and Social Capital

The changing media discussed in this lesson has also changed American society in more ways than we can count. One of the most interesting critiques of this changing mediascape came from the sociologist Robert Putnam, who wrote about the affect of TV on both civic (i.e. political) engagement and "social capital"—or the social bonds that tie us to our friends and neighbors and make us feel like we're part of a community.

When Putnam looked at the evidence, he found that TV has had a drastic effect on cutting down our engagement with our communities and neighbors. We spend more time alone at home being told about the world, rather than going out and talking about it with others. People aren't out on the streets discussing how Congress should be acting, but siliently simmering while watching the Tube.

Check out Putnam's article here: "The Strange Disappearance of Civic America"

When you're done, head on over to the discussion board and post a 250-word response to the ideas brought up in the article. In particular, we'd like you to answer the following question:

Do you think TV and the Internet has had a postive or negative affect on people's engagement with the political process in America?

In your response, be sure to mention Putnam's article and give at least 2 examples to back up your points.

Once everyone has responded, reply to at least 2 other people. Keep the discussion going for a few rounds.