MEDIA AND POLITICS
MEDIA AND POLITICS
We all agree that a well-informed public leads to a more open, just and civic-minded society.
Yet today it seems every major and minor news network has a Sunday talk show or weekly roundtable dedicated to "educating" the American public about politics. In addition, with the growth of the Internet, thousands of Web sites exist with information on politics and government.
The irony is that while the quantity of places we can go for political information continues to increase, the quality of that information has not. Recent voter turnout shows an American public with a general apathy toward government and the political process.
If we continue to focus on innuendo instead of insight, we threaten to create even more public apathy. For everything a quick sound bite delivers in sharpness, it often loses the same in substance when the message reaches the public.
While it may be easy to fault the media for the lack of public confidence in America's political system, policymakers are also partly to blame.
Because increased political partisanship has led to an adversarial relationship between policymakers, it has created a disconnect with the media who cover them. It is only natural for the media to present the news in this "crossfire" approach when that is all it hears from politicians on a daily basis.
Thus, instead of creating a well-informed society, policymakers, and the media can inadvertently work together to give the appearance that complicated issuesare black or white, with no in-between. We all know this is not true.
Adapted from: LSU HOLDS FIRST SYMPOSIUM ON MEDIA AND POLITICS Television and Political Speech
The medium exalts spectacle and slights words.
Wilson Carey McWilliams
For television, and the American media generally, the election of 2000 will be the first real taste of things to come, the beginning of the end of an era if not the end itself. Whispers of the "information revolution" could be heard in 1994, mostly in
We all agree that a well-informed public leads to a more open, just and civic-minded society.
Yet today it seems every major and minor news network has a Sunday talk show or weekly roundtable dedicated to "educating" the American public about politics. In addition, with the growth of the Internet, thousands of Web sites exist with information on politics and government.
The irony is that while the quantity of places we can go for political information continues to increase, the quality of that information has not. Recent voter turnout shows an American public with a general apathy toward government and the political process.
If we continue to focus on innuendo instead of insight, we threaten to create even more public apathy. For everything a quick sound bite delivers in sharpness, it often loses the same in substance when the message reaches the public.
While it may be easy to fault the media for the lack of public confidence in America's political system, policymakers are also partly to blame.
Because increased political partisanship has led to an adversarial relationship between policymakers, it has created a disconnect with the media who cover them. It is only natural for the media to present the news in this "crossfire" approach when that is all it hears from politicians on a daily basis.
Thus, instead of creating a well-informed society, policymakers, and the media can inadvertently work together to give the appearance that complicated issuesare black or white, with no in-between. We all know this is not true.
Adapted from: LSU HOLDS FIRST SYMPOSIUM ON MEDIA AND POLITICS Television and Political Speech
The medium exalts spectacle and slights words.
Wilson Carey McWilliams
For television, and the American media generally, the election of 2000 will be the first real taste of things to come, the beginning of the end of an era if not the end itself. Whispers of the "information revolution" could be heard in 1994, mostly in