Media is a crucial force in the American democracy. It has multiple manifestations from the way politicians and political campaigns use it as an outlet to social media and ideologically targeted news media like Fox News and MSNBC. Most Americans describe their ideal state media as having aspects: investigative journalism, essentialism, professionalism, objective tone, and being far reaching in topics and influence. This standard stems from the 1960s era Walter Cronkite-like image of the newsman. However, this is not the current state of media. The current news media skews the editorial prerogative, is a collection of quickly assembled stories, and values quality over quantity. These critiques are not to say that all aspects of modern media…show more content… Modern media has allowed for a rapid dissemination of information. In fact, with the 24-hour news cycle and the social media outlets news is released almost the moment it occurs. This has allowed citizens to educate themselves continuously throughout the day. Many make the critique that the average citizen is lacking in the time, care, and knowledge to be able to understand the complexities of the information being disseminated. Fortunately, with the influx of news sources into social media, this information has been synthesized and simplified so that the average American can consume and understand it. The news produced by the media often has a negative tone and connotation. The same is true of campaign ads, they are becoming more and more negative and accusatory. Some find this trend to be abhorrent because it causes a more fatalistic view of the world in total. However, the negativity actually spurs a concern with the state among the average voter. As such they are likely to take more seriously the prospects of civic engagement. Furthermore for negative campaigns ads or ultra-critical news that attacks another party or candidate…show more content… As Naom Chomsky describes the job the media is not informing but misinforming. The media is a for profit business and as result, their agendas are often supported by the economic and political elites on either side of the aisle. In addition because of the sheer amount news sources available today they all are competing for money and influence in order to stay afloat. A possible solution to this problem is to re-regulate the media market. If the FCC regulated a number of national news sources they could limit the impact of political money because there would be a limiting of competition. Furthermore, if national news sources were federally subsidized if they provided an objective viewpoint and choose to not frame every piece of news as a conflict that pitted identity groups and pundits against each other, it would greatly decrease the influence of political and economic elites and decrease the manifestation of their agendas in the news media. While this solution would undoubtedly work it is incredibly unlikely that type of mass government expansion would ever pass a Republican Congress and President-elect. Furthermore if brought to the federal courts it is likely that this type of regulation could very easily be viewed as a violation of the first amendment, the equal protection clause, and the tenth amendment police and taxation powers.
