Media Synthesis

The news media is a constantly changing collection of events, mainly composed of timely, dramatic, and compelling stories. The news has to be recent, eye catching, and arouse people's attention in order to gain viewers. The media has four main functions: Signaling, Common Carrier, Watchdog, and Partisan.

The signaling function is the media's responsibility to alert the public of recent, important events. Since U.S news organizations on their own do not have the resources to gather outside news on their own, they do this through wire services, such as the the Associated Press (AP), which station news reporters all around the world to gather news stories and transmit them to news organizations. However, the main goal of the news isn't to inform the public, but rather to attract a big audience and make money. Without ad revenue, US news organizations would go out of business. Because of this, there is a constant need for fresh news, with every day's story being different from the previous day's. Hard events are developments that have taken a clear and definable shape with the past 24hrs. An issue is likely to go unreported if it is not reverted into a hard event. Policy issues and problems do not change on a daily basis, making the undesirable and uninteresting, or simply “old news”.

The common carrier function is a political leader's means of communicating with the public and allowing the people to know of their plans and actions. Many presidents have adopted the Rose Garden strategy, where they announce their speeches in the rose garden by the Oval Office. However, political leaders cannot manage the news for two reasons: journalist's norm of partisan neutrality and the inability to monopolize the news. Journalists tend to report in a “he said she said format”, where when one officials say or does something newsworthy, there will be a contrary statement from the opposing party. In addition, on TV, journalists make use of the “shrinking sound bite” format, where candidates can barely even talk for more than ten seconds. In addition, journalists also make use of framing, the process of selecting certain aspects of reality and making them the most salient part of communication.

The Watchdog function acts as the unofficial 4^th branch of government that exposes corrupt officials and keeps power in check. One example of this has been shown when the Washington Post exposed the Walter Reed Army Hospital's neglect in treating its wounded U.S solders from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. After interviewing many patients, Washington Post managed to force the Department of Veterans Affairs into changing health care practices at its medical facilities. One area that supports the fairness of the watchdog function is objective journalism, reporting based on the facts rather than opinions (The New York Times is quite famous for this style of reporting). It's the exact opposite of yellow journalism, which tends to over-exaggerate stories and depict them in a negative connotation. In 1934, the Communications Act established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversaw broadcasting. Broadcasters had to be licensed and give equal time to all candidates, meaning that one could have more time than the other. In addition, the Fairness Doctrine stated that broadcasters were prohibited from using their news coverage to promote one party or issue position at the expense of another. Later on, however, after the Fairness Doctrine was eliminated (due to the increase of TV channels), broadcasters didn't have to air both sides to an issue anymore, and thus partisan talk shows were created.

The partisan function is the process of advocating for a particular viewpoint or interest. Traditional media, such as newspapers and broadcast networks, tend to more neutral when informing. However, rather than a strong partisan bias, traditional media tends to have a negative bias, or preference for bad news. After especially negative events like the Vietnam War and Watergate, the amount of negativity and mistrust in politicians increases. Talk shows tend to be mainly conservative, while the internet is mainly liberal. Republicans tend to favor the conservative Fox news while Democrats avor the centrist CNN and liberal MSNBC.

In recent years, there has been a shrinking audience for News. While literacy rates, urbanization, and radio widened the news audience, it was TV that played the biggest role. During dinner hour, 85% of all Americans in the nation would turn on their TV to the news channels, developing a traditional “news habit”. However, later on with the introduction of cable and Internet, people no longer had to sit and eagerly wait for news. They could simple watch the news at any time, or even record some programs if they really wanted to.

A majority of people today who pay attention and watch news are older adults, those over the age of fifty to be specific. Older adults are more likely to be exposed to news media and be updated with it, through the means of reading newspaper or watching news channels on TV daily. 40% of young adults pay little or no attention to news sources on a daily basis. And although older adults spend much less time on the Internet than young adult, when they do, they have a higher chance of accessing news related material when doing so. In addition, young adults tend to get. Strangely enough, from the 1940's to 1960's, young adults were actually more updated and informed about current news events than older adults, who many at the time had not even graduated from high school. Since the 1980's, the number of informed young adults has decreased, proven when younger adults could only answer 36% of factual politics questions in the ANES survey, as opposed to older adults's 55%.

News media from before and news media today differ quite a bit. Before, the media system was dominated by only a few powerful news organizations that had large audiences. In addition, back then news was reported in a more nonpartisan way, focusing less on patronizing or harming political parties and enhancing their roles in society. On the other hand, today the number of news outlets have increased, fragmenting the public new audience and decreasing traditional news organization's influence and audience. With so many different sources and outlets of news media, political leaders are portrayed differently, different aspects of politics are highlighted, and partisan polarization has become quite common. Some sides are praised and others are ranted on, leading to an increased split between liberals and conservatives. Today, people have less in common when it comes to politics than before. With the growing role of Internet in society, news media has becomes more flexible to access at different times of the day. Since people can easily bypass the news that hold little or no appeal, there is an ever increasing gap between more-attentive and less-attentive citizens.