Mass Media's Influence On American Politics And Government

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Introduction
Nowadays, the whole world is under a large umbrella which is called the media. When someone is reading the newspapers, watching the television, listening to the radio, holding a phone, or surfing the internet, s/he uses the media. The United States of America is a country that gave great significance to media, and press since 1789. Within the writing of the Bill of Rights. Nowadays it is known as “Fourth Estate” that plays vital role in US democracy, and that was guaranteed in the First Amendment of the constitution. However, the old and new media are important to American politics and government in three points. First, they represent the people, institutions, processes, issues, and policies related to politics and government. …show more content…

If the media are considered as a means of communication, then they are an important component of human history because human communication had been structured through gestures, writings, and speeches. Mass media indicate multiple devices that are used by people to communicate and interact with each other. It aims to reach the general public, through using different means of communication; such as: print media, broadcast media, social media and other types of communication. The media were emerged with the beginning of the United States of America, including the print media. It contains books, newspapers, booklets and brochures, house magazines, periodicals or newsletters and magazines. It was the dominant form of media. It is a tool of communication which is printed on paper. In the United States, it essentially started with The Federalist Papers, which aimed to promote the ratification of the Constitution. Newspapers were politically run for more than 200 years, because people at that time and even nowadays still read the news, so politicians find it easy to publicize their political ideas to the public through the newspapers. Some examples of the top American newspapers are: the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, which are often setting the agenda for other media …show more content…

It contains two types: libel and slander . The person can prosecute the media outlet for the harm done, if s/he was defamed. Second, the broadcast media regulation started from its historical development. It is more highly regulated than the print ones. When radio stations were first used, the stations used the same frequencies, the matter that led them to block signals of each other’s. The Federal Radio Act of 1927 found licensing procedures to give different frequencies to different radio stations since the airwaves were considered as a public property. In 1934, Congress enacted the Federal Communications Act, which continues to make the broadcast media, and the airwaves, still today. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is a federal government agency that is responsible for regulating the public airwaves. It controls everything that utilizes the airwaves. It checks the content of the airwaves. If it broadcasts obscene, indecent programming and profane language, this means it violates the FCC's Public Decency Standards, which leads the FCC to fine broadcasters, or even cancel broadcasting licenses. It also regulates broadcasts that include political campaigns. The last and not the least, there is no regulations concerning cable and Internet broadcasts since they do not use airwaves, but there are criminal laws limiting the access, creation and sharing of certain

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