Media and Politics essays

Media and Politics essays American politics have been quite a spectacle because of the influence of mass media and the way that American politics are run. Ideally, mass media is supposed to make it easier for people to participate in political decisions, understand how the government works, and hold government officials accountable. But in this day and age, the media is often used to manipulate and obscure the true form of political issues. Transparency in politics means to be seen through. People want to be able to see through what is going on in the head of the politician, so they turn to the media to give it to them. But instead, the people are like sheep. They see someone on the television and automatically assume that whatever they say is the truth because they said it on television. One strategy that politicians use is the diversion of attention. The attention of a group of people can be diverted by meaningless facts and words. With their minds somewhere else, it is harder for the public to recognize the real issues and separate the truth from fiction, thereby consuming time and attention. Another strategy used is the supplementation of reality. The politician seeks not to address the real issues, but instead to shift the ground of battle to issues of information management and technical questions of procedure. This insures that he/she will know what they are getting into before it actually happens. Th ese new issues can easily divert the attention of a large amount of people and the new issues often replace the old ones, now making the speaker a hero. Transparency can be a tricky tactic, but it is highly effective for the politician and can be beneficial to the election results. Transparency can easily change the thought process of a lot of a mass audience and is one way that the media has changed American politics. The television is an amazing medium for transferring and receiving information. Many differen ...