Media Dominance in Politics

The role of the media in politics seems to be a reoccurring theme in almost, if not every, politics class I've taken at UVa. The assigned reading in Schudson's The Good Citizen is clearly no exception, as the author traces the role of journalism over the course of the past few centuries as it relates to citizenship and political involvement. He begins with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which were "a high point of nineteenth-century American political discourse and political participation" (135). However, these debates were, according to Schudson, not all they were cracked up to be. By today's political standards, the Lincoln-Douglas debates would not have been very informative, or even entertaining, within the context of political participation. Yet, these debates did prove to be more effective in arousing the community's political interest than any such efforts we see today. There are many explanations for this, most of which Schudson covers in the reading, but the main culprit seems to be the emergence of a news media that is more concerned with entertaining than informing its citizenry. As Alan H. said in an earlier post, we are dependent on the media for information yet only want to hear the "interesting" or juicy aspects of it. This contradiction has led to a news media that is bogged down in gossip-like journalism that forces the citizenry to weed through the muck in order to find the information necessarily for political participation.

"The most devastating aspect of commercialization was the newspapers, once organs for the political parties, became more and more commercial and increasingly dared to be independent" (177). While this may have been the case at one point, I feel as though Schudson's remark is outdated because the press has become increasingly less independent over the years to the point where only a handful of corporations are controlling most of, if not all, of the media content available to citizens. For example, Rupert Murdoch controls News Corporation, which, in turn, controls entities such as the Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel. These domains in particular are known for their conservative political outlook and, subsequently, are avidly followed by conservative citizens. Whether or not these citizens are aware of the reputations of the Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel, they are subjecting themselves to a political outlook that is completely one-sided. Therefore, while citizens may feel like picking up a newspaper or turning on the news will make them a more informed, competent citizen- that is not necessarily the case. Subscribing to papers such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times actually pigeon-holes readers into believing that their ideologies and political outlooks are right because they are being reinforced by these major media platforms. The Rupert Murdoch's of the world are controlling our source for information as well as our insight into the political world. I believe that this has led to a decline in political participation because citizens are losing both faith and interest in the political system as a whole due to the idea that these media elites are controlling such crucial information. While this is obviously a stretch, it seems like a possible explanation because the news sources that we trust to keep us informed are controlled by parent companies that are, in turn, looking to forward their own political interests/agendas.

If we are to be a democracy in the way that the Framers envisioned, we need a reliable news media- one that we can trust even in times of political upheaval. Most of the stories we see on the news today involving war, etc. are sugar-coated for "our benefit"- but who is that really benefiting? The citizenry? Or the political actors who wish to keep upsetting, frightening, or even self-incriminating information a secret from the general public? So long as the news media is dependent upon these parent companies, which are, in turn, controlled by a few elite individuals, we will not receive information that is critical to our political participation as citizens.