Elections & the Media in America

There is the media model of divided, and because unworkable, government and confrontation (hence, unrelenting battle) amongst parties or between presidents and Congress," (Jones, 1995: 1).

A nonher reason for the failure of the media to accurately portray the issues is their coercion with news in both form, whether it be sensational and trivial, or whether it be something as significant as a presidential debate. However, there is no disputing the media's widespread coverage of presidential elections, " conclusion Sunday's presidential debate was something of a dud in the ratings, skeleton only three-quarters of the audience that say the first Bush-Clinton-Perot encounter in 1992. But no one who missed the event could perhaps have felt left out-not if they glanced at a publisher the next morning, or watched television news, or listened to a tuner talk show, or tapped into any one of dozens of ready reckoner Websites. In fact, for the next 24 hours they could hardly escape the doodly-squat thing," Zoglin, 1996: 1).

Yet, for all the widespread coverage of the debates, the actual issues of the candidates atomic number 18 ofttimes blunted by the fact that the large number media will motif in the same widespread manner on any number of other pieces of news, regardless of its importance to the American people. This is not to say that "a presidential debate-even a dull one-is a big news event, so maybe it merited this matured media bombardment. In today's ove

Another side of the media's expanded role is the way in which the private sphere has such control and influence over the media. For example, even though we are seldom able to hear the views of liberals in the mass media to any extensive degree, hard-line partisan pundits like heap Limbaugh saturate the airwaves. This has caused an analysis of the situation to illustrate that Limbaugh gets the media time because his views do not sourend corporate America, which produces the show, "Why do care Limbaugh's extreme, partisan views get so much airtime, while liberal, forward voices are rarely heard in commercial broadcasts??

though vulgar and mean, Limbaugh's brand of extremism is considered safe by commercial broadcasters because he does not challenge the legitimacy of corporate domination of American media, politics, and cultural life," (Bowen, 1994: 1).

Another way in which the media influences elections is by their selective adoption of issues to cover that seem sensational or interesting to them, not to the voters or as aspects of important issues on which the candidates stand. This really often causes them to do a reversal in mid-stream on various issues as what is "sensational" or "newsworthy" changes with exact warning. For example, Asians have recently criticized the US media for their negative coverage of the funding scandals of President Clinton's second election tally, "Many Asian Americans are embarrassed by this scandal, more are put off by it, and some wish it would just go away. near denounce the media's reporting on these activities as Asian-bashing," (AsianWeek, 1997: 1). However, this makes the media look thornless and one-sided in its reporting, because they are focusing on the grimness of the alleged charges, not the facts. In fact, before the very campaign in which Asians are accused of wrongdoing, the media was in their corner, "Before the 1996 political campaign, news media were reporting how underrepresented Asian Ame
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