Media

1. Media

2. The relationships between government and the media in this country are shaped by laws and understandings that accord the media a degree of freedom greater than that found in almost any othernation. • Almost all American radio and television stations are privately owned, though they require government licenses. • While the federal government does impose rules on American broadcasters, it does not have the power to censor or dictate the contents of particular stories. • In the US, law of libel is loose enough to permit intense and even inaccurate criticism of anybody in the public eye. • The Freedom of Information Act virtually guarantees that very little can be kept secret for very long.

3. The freedom from government control that comes with the private ownership of the media of mass communication has a price: • Newspapers, magazines, and broadcast stations are businesses that must earn a profit. • Some critics believe that the need for profit leads publishers and station owners to distort the newscoverage of politics to satisfy the desires of advertisers.

4. The relationship between journalism and politics is a two-way street: though politicians take advantage as best they can of the communications media available to them, these media in turn attempt to use politics and politicians as a way of both entertaining and informing their audiences. • There is inevitably a process of selection, editing, and of emphasis, and this process reflects, to some degree, the way in which the media are organized. • Degree of Competition • Newspaper circulation has fallen since 1967. Radio and television, by comparison, are intensely competitive and becoming more so. • The American press is made up of mostly locally owned and operated enterprises.

5. The American newspaper is primarily orientated to its local market and local audience, and there is typically more local than national news • This is part due to the regulations created by the FCC. Until the mid 1990s, no one could own and operate more than one newspaper, one AM radio station, one FM radio station, or one television station in a given market. The networks still today may not compel a local affiliate to accept any particular broadcast.

6. The National Media • The local orientation of much of the American communications media is partially offset, however, by the emergence of certain publications and broadcast services that constitute a kind of national press. • The wire services supply most of the national news that local papers publish. • The existence of a national press is important for two reasons: • government officials in Washington pay great attention to what these media say about them and their programs. • reporters and editors for the national press tend to differ from those who work for the local press. The national press plays the role of gatekeeper, scorekeeper, and watchdog for the federal government.