American Media, Types, Functions & Government Regulation
To view other note of American Government Click Here.
Overview
The United States probably has one of the most varied and expansive news media industries in the world. Americans have hundreds of cable channels to choose from, thousands of newspapers and magazines, many radio shows, and countless websites and news blogs. With the rise of twenty-four-hour television news stations, most Americans have access to the latest news almost immediately. Because the vast majority of people rely on the media to keep them up to date, the media wields significant power: It decides what is newsworthy and runs or publishes stories accordingly. For these and other reasons, the media is a significant facet of American government. Many people lament media bias, although these same people disagree about which way the bias runs. To understand American politics fully, we must therefore seek to understand the role of the media.
Types of Media
The term news media refers to the groups that communicate information and news to people. Most Americans get their information about government from the news media because it would be impossible to gather all the news themselves. Media outlets have responded to the increasing reliance of Americans on television and the Internet by making the news even more readily available to people. There are three main types of news media: print media, broadcast media, and the Internet.
Print Media
The oldest media forms are newspapers, magazines, journals, newsletters, and other printed material. These publications are collectively known as the print media. Although print media readership has declined in the last few decades, many Americans still read a newspaper every day or a newsmagazine on a regular basis. The influence of print media is therefore significant. Regular readers of print media tend to be more likely to be politically active.
The print media is responsible for more reporting than other news sources. Many news reports on television, for example, are merely follow-up stories about news that first appeared in newspapers. The top American newspapers, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, often set the agenda for many other media sources.
The Newspaper of Record
Because of its history of excellence and influence, the New York Times is sometimes called the newspaper of record: If a story is not in the Times, it is not important. In 2003, however, the newspaper suffered a major blow to its credibility when Times journalist Jayson Blair admitted that he had fabricated some of his stories. The Times has since made extensive efforts to prevent any similar scandals, but some readers have lost trust in the paper.
Broadcast Media
Broadcast media are news reports broadcast via radio and television. Television news is hugely important in the United States because more Americans get their news from television broadcasts than from any other source.
Television News
The main broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—each have a news division that broadcasts a nightly news show. For the past fifty years, most Americans watched one or more of these broadcasts. Since the 1980s, however, cable news channels have chipped away at the broadcast networks. CNN and MSNBC both broadcast news around the clock. Because the cable news channels are always broadcasting news programs, many people who want to follow a story closely tune in to these stations first. The relatively new Fox network news program has also drawn numerous viewers away from the big three networks.
Radio News
The other type of broadcast media is radio. Before the advent of television in the 1950s, most Americans relied on radio broadcasts for their news. Although fewer Americans rely on radio as their primary news source, many people still listen to radio news every day, especially during morning and evening commutes. Local news stations have a particularly large audience because they can report on local weather, traffic, and events.
Talk Radio
Since the 1980s, talk radio has emerged as a major force in broadcasting. Talk radio is a radio format in which the hosts mix interviews with political commentary. As a result, many talk radio shows are highly partisan. Conservatives have a strong hold on American talk radio through programs hosted by influential commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
The Internet
The Internet is slowly transforming the news media because more Americans are relying on online sources of news instead of traditional print and broadcast media. Americans surf the sites of more traditional media outlets, such as NBC and CNN, but also turn to unique online news sources such as weblogs. Websites can provide text, audio, and video information, all of the ways traditional media are transmitted. The web also allows for a more interactive approach by allowing people to personally tailor the news they receive via personalized web portals, newsgroups, podcasts, and RSS feeds.
Weblogs—known colloquially as blogs—have become very influential since the start of the twenty-first century. Leading bloggers write their opinions on a variety of issues, and thousands of people respond on message boards. Although many blogs are highly partisan and inaccurate, a few have been instrumental in breaking big stories.
Functions of the Media
The media has immense power within the American democracy because just about all Americans get their news from the media rather than from other people or other sources. Media coverage shapes how Americans perceive the world and what they consider to be important. Voters and politicians alike must pay attention to the media. In the American political system, the media perform a number of functions important to the democratic process. The media reports the news, serves as an intermediary between the government and the people, helps determine which issues should be discussed, and keeps people actively involved in society and politics.
Reporting the News
Perhaps the most important role of the media in politics is to report the news. As noted above, the vast majority of people must trust the media to provide them with information. Democracy requires that citizens be informed because they must be able to make educated voting choices.
Media Bias
These days, politicians often complain of bias in the media, usually a liberal bias against the views of conservative politicians. They complain that the media’s ability to decide which stories to report often reflects its partisanship. Although this is true to some extent, most major newspapers and television news stations report the same stories more or less objectively. Bias is often restricted to the media outlet’s commentary and opinion pages.
Types of Reporting
For much of American history (until the early twentieth century), most news media were clearly and openly biased. Many newspapers, for example, were simply the voices of the political parties. This type of journalism is called partisan journalism. Other newspapers practiced yellow journalism, reporting shocking and sordid stories in order to attract readers and sell more papers. Objective reporting (also called descriptive reporting) did not appear until the early twentieth century. Newspaper publishers such as Adolph Ochs of the New York Times championed objective journalism and praised reporters for simply reporting the facts. Although most journalists today still practice objective journalism, more and more are beginning to analyze and interpret the material they present, a practice called interpretive reporting.
Yellow Journalism
The media has influenced politics throughout American history. The most prominent—and notorious—example is the role of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers in starting the Spanish-American War in 1898. According to the legend, Hearst’s papers ran many stories chronicling the cruelty of Spanish colonial rule. When the American battleship Maine exploded under mysterious circumstances, Hearst seized the moment, alleging that the Spanish had destroyed the ship. War soon followed. Few media moguls have this much direct influence, but with media consolidation, some worry that the media has too much power.
Being the Common Carrier
The media plays a common-carrier role by providing a line of communication between the government and the people. This communication goes both ways: The people learn about what the government is doing, and the government learns from the media what the public is thinking.
Setting the Agenda
Journalists cannot report on an infinite number of stories, so they must choose which are the most newsworthy. By choosing which stories to present to the public, the news media helps determine the most important issues; in other words, the journalists set the agenda. Agenda-setting is crucial because it shapes which issues will be debated in public. Sometimes political scientists refer to agenda-setting as signaling because the media signals which stories are the most important when they decide what to report.
Pack Journalism
Critics allege that journalists often copy one another without doing their own investigating. When one newspaper runs a story, for example, many others will run similar stories soon afterward. Critics refer to this tendency as pack journalism.
Acting as the Public Representative
The media sometimes acts as a public representative by holding government officials accountable on behalf of the people. Many people argue that the media is ill equipped to play this role because the media does not face the same type of accountability that politicians face. Serving as the representative of the public, moreover, could undermine the media’s objectivity because the act of representing the people might require reporters to take a position on an issue.
Example: The classic example of watchdog journalism, or activist reporting that attempts to hold government officials and institutions accountable for their actions, is the Watergate investigations of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The Washington Post reporters doggedly pursued allegations of campaign misdeeds and presidential crimes despite the fact that many Americans did not care. Journalists have exposed many other government scandals and misdeeds, including the Iran-Contra affair and the Lewinsky scandal.
Government Regulation of the Media
Even though the Constitution guarantees freedom of the press, the government does regulate some media. Print media are largely unregulated, and newspapers and magazines can print nearly anything as long as they don’t slander anyone. The Internet has also gone largely unregulated, despite congressional efforts to restrict some controversial content. Broadcast media, however, are subject to the most government regulation. Radio and television broadcasters must obtain a license from the government because, according to American law, the public owns the airwaves. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issues these licenses and is in charge of regulating the airwaves.
FCC Police
The FCC also acts as a police agency of the airwaves, and it can fine broadcasters for violating public decency standards on the air. In extreme cases, the FCC can even revoke a broadcaster’s license, keeping him off the air permanently. The FCC has fined radio host Howard Stern numerous times for his use of profanity, for example, and fined CBS heavily for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime performance at the Super Bowl in 2004.
Media Doctrines
The FCC has also established rules for broadcasts concerning political campaigns:
- The equal time rule, which states that broadcasters must provide equal broadcast time to all candidates for a particular office.
- The right of rebuttal, which requires broadcasters to provide an opportunity for candidates to respond to criticisms made against them. A station cannot air an attack on a candidate and fail to give the target of the attack a chance to respond.
- The fairness doctrine, which states that a broadcaster who airs a controversial program must provide time to air opposing views.
The FCC has not enforced the fairness doctrine since 1985, and some allege that the FCC has taken a lax approach to enforcing the other rules as well.
Media Consolidation
The government has also regulated ownership of media outlets to ensure that no one broadcaster monopolizes the market. Since the 1980s, however, the government has loosened restrictions on media ownership, and Congress passed the Telecommunications Act in 1996 to allow companies to own even more media outlets.
Due to the loosening of ownership restrictions, more and more media outlets are falling under the control of a few giant corporations, a tendency called media consolidation. The Hearst, Knight Ridder, and Gannett corporations own most of the nation’s newspapers, whereas Clear Channel Communications owns many radio stations. Large companies also own the major networks and other television stations. The Walt Disney corporation, for example, owns ABC and ESPN, along with the Disney Channel, and Viacom owns CBS and MTV. Rupert Murdoch’s Media Corporation, meanwhile, owns all of the Fox channels, several radio networks, satellite television providers, and newspapers in many countries. And Time-Warner owns dozens of magazines, including Time, Life, and Sports Illustrated, as well as the CNN and Turner television networks.
Critics of Media Consolidation
Critics contend that media consolidation limits consumers’ choices because a small number of companies own all the media outlets. They argue that consolidation is not competitive and that corporate owners might restrict or manipulate news coverage. Some critics also lament the homogenization of American culture due to media consolidation. Because radio and television formats have become increasingly uniform, people throughout the country receive the same broadcasts.
Cable Exceptionalism
It is not clear if the FCC has the authority to regulate cable television. The FCC is entitled to regulate those who broadcast over the airwaves because the people (not the broadcasters) own the airwaves. Cable television, however, is not sent over the airwaves: Cables transmit the programs directly into people’s houses. Presumably this means that cable television cannot be regulated, but some members of Congress have still sought to do so.
