The Media: Functions of the Media

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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.

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