Mass Media Bias

The United Sates has always been considered one of the freest countries in the world, and the U.S. also has one of the freest media’s in our world. The government does regulate some things with the media but at the same time realizes that some things fall under the 1st amendment. In this essay I will discuss many parts of the media and some of its past. I will go into the history of the media, the role of television, political campaigns and the media, government and the media, regulation of the media, and bias in the media. I will also discuss why the media is so important to our country today.
The mass media performs a number of different functions in any country. The study of people and politics—of how people gain the information that they
Some claim that the press has a liberal bias. Others conclude that the press shows a conservative bias. Still others do not see any notable partisan bias. In a classic study conducted in the 1980’s, researchers found that media producers, editors, and reporters (the “media elite”) exhibited a notably liberal and “left leaning” bias in their news coverage. Since then, the contention that the media has a liberal bias has been repeated time and again. In contrast, some journalists argue that the media has, on the whole, a conservative bias. They claim that unwarranted perception of a liberal bias has intimidated the media into presenting the more conservative opinions. They find that conservative bias is the strongest in the media’s coverage in economic issues. They also observe that the almost complete dominance of talk radio by conservatives has given the political right an outlet that the political left cannot counter. Others see the media as biased toward the “status quo,” meaning that the media are biased toward supporting corporate America and its aims. This group believes that the press tends to downplay the complaints made by people who are seen as being on the fingers of the political spectrum, especially on the left. Still others contend that the media are biased against “losers.” For example, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, concludes that if there is a bias in the press, it is not a partisan bias but a bias against losers. A candidate who falls behind in a race is immediately labeled a “loser,” making it even more difficult for that candidate to regain favor in the voters’ eyes. Calvin F. Exoo has offered yet another theory. In his study f politics in the media, he concluded that journalists are constrained by both the