Hopefully most people recognize that what the media tells us is not always true, or at least that it doesn't always match up with what the actual current situation of the world.
One of my favorite quotes from the book:
"It is one thing to learn from the CBS Evening News that serious crime is on the increase in the United States; quite another to be mugged on the way to the corner grocery store. In reaching judgments about national problems, how do Americans take into account these very different types of evidence-- evidence from television news, on the one hand, and from their personal experiences, on the other?"
The authors (Shanto Iyengar & Donald Kinder) claim that the media does partake in agenda-setting and that the media does influence the priorities Americans assign to national problems. However, they take this a step farther and introduce a concept called priming which refers to changes in standards that people use to make political evaluations.
A huge point made within the priming discussion is that the more television coverage intereprets events as though they were the result of the president's actions, the more influential such coverage will be in priming the public's assessment of the president's performance. So, take for example the 1982 recession. Was this because of President's Reagan's policies, or because of his predecessors? Or did it have anything at all to do with the presidency? The more the media connects the president with something such as an economic recession, the more people think it is of the president's responsibility.
Think about this: how often do we passively connect a person in an important position to an event? In Florida, a boy (Martin Lee Anderson) was killed by guards while in bootcamp. Though Governor Jeb Bush had no real involvement in the case (as it was a county bootcamp- Bay County to be exact), when students from Florida State University, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University and Tallahassee Community College (accompanied by none other than Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson) became outraged when they learned that no real action had been taken, it was Gov. Bush's office that was raided by these people proclaiming "justice delayed is justice denied."
We always seem to want to place the blame on the highest authority figure, even if that person shouldn't be the one punished. Though I do believe that responsibility ultimately rests in the hands of the "president" (read= the person who is in charge overall), I think we all too often rush to blame the wrong people. And by doing so, what does get done regarding the situation is done in an inefficient, untimely manner.
Oh... If you're interested, I received an email about me.dium. It is an add-on to your web browser that allows you to chat with others in your browser window and allows you to voluntarily share the sites you are visiting with others. Apparently this will be available, and good to use, during the MTV/MySpace "Presidential Dialogues."
To join, visit www.me.dium.com
No comments:
Post a Comment