Media Influence On Presidential Elections

News outlets have changed since the first presidential election; we have come all the way from a single media outlet source, such as word of mouth all the way to mass media like television and the internet. Regardless of the era the news media have played a critical role in the supply of viewing the information in regards to the presidential election. The news media have increased the amount of pressure put on United States’ presidents. Our forefathers expected the legislative branch to to play the largest role in government. One could argue that the news media has the same or close to the same amount of influential power when compared to the legislative branch. To understand how large of a role the news media really plays we must first look

Though our forefathers had the intention of the legislative branch to be the most important; it would appear, due to the introduction of mass media, that the president is the most important branch of government. However, the legislative branch was functioning before the first president was even elected. Platez shows the huge role the legislative branch initially served, “The Continental Congress took the king’s power to handle war, peace, send and receive ambassadors, enter into treaties or alliances, and to coin money.” (Platez, Owen, and Cook, 2012.) Though the legislative branch still holds a huge amount of power, the mass media seem to focus a lot more on the executive branch. A popular hypothesis of why the media outlets choose to focus on the president over the legislative and judicial branch is because it is easier to blame a single person rather than a group of people. History has shown us, that when times are hard we like to have a single person to point at for blame. Unfortunately the amount of hatred a presidency receives is not always representative of his or her performance. Though it should not be used as an excuse, some aspects of a president’s performance are beyond their personal

Every new outlet has a biased leaning toward either left or right. The problem is that a large majority of viewers are voters and take these biased opinions as objective facts. The ideal voter would question every single thing they hear through the new media and then research to find whether or not what they heard was accurate. Unfortunately, obtaining unbiased information is an extremely difficult task in this day and age making the ideal voter nearly extinct. None-the-less the information age has brought us many different incredible tools that enable quick and easy communication. It would appear that these tools, designed to bring us together could be the very factor that drives us apart. Mass media does not feel as if it should be considered a new technology when in reality it is. Media plays a both a positive and negative role in politics. Time will tell us whether the positives of mass media outweigh the negatives. Regardless of one’s view on the pros and cons of mass media no one can deny it plays an enormous role in providing the voter with biased information. Some could go as far as saying news media outlets are the fourth branch of government. Don’t underestimate the role of mass media and research the information collected from these media outlets so as a voter your job is to be