Media-Driven Culture, Essay Example

As someone who is constantly watching television news, political talk shows and news magazines, as well as reading the daily newspaper from cover to cover, I believe that I am in a good position to assess the media’s impact on culture.  My observation is that clearly, it is the media that drives culture rather than the reverse.  In this essay, I will provide examples that support my perspective.

Over this past week, the story that has completely dominated news coverage has been the release of thousands of pages of documents regarding the Afghanistan War from an organization called Wikileaks. This group has been serving in the role of whistleblower for several years, and with the release of the documents, a debate about the war in Afghanistan has begun in earnest for the first time in years, as a matter of public policy and debate.  For far too long, it has been easy for U.S. citizens to look the other way when it comes to the fact that we are currently involved in two, serious, deadly engagements of war.  Indeed, the only people that seem to be aware that there are two wars going on are the small number of people directly affected: those serving in the military and their families.  A critical, thorough evaluation of the war effort, including the reasons why we are in Afghanistan, has been long overdue and in this instance, the media has forced the issue into the light.  Prior to this last week, congressional leaders have simply voted to approve funds to continue the battle without looking in detail at what is happening there, what our  goals and endpoint are, and what outcome can reasonably be expected.  If not for the media’s coverage of these documents’ release, this dialogue would not be occurring.

Another example of the media driving the agenda of the culture was last week, when a civil rights icon was disparaged and called a racist because of the irresponsible reporting of a partisan right wing provocateur.  The media’s ridiculously incomplete coverage of the story until the harm had been done mirrored as well the shortcomings of the White House vetting process regarding this woman, and resulted in an entire week spent on the discussion of race, racism, and finally, the actual iconic stature of a woman who had been branded as a racist.

Finally, my experience with presidential elections has been that the media basically selects the winner.  During the 2000 election the press was extremely kind to George W. Bush, overlooking some tremendous gaps in his knowledge and experience, and I recall reading that part of this was because the Bush staffers were nice to the press and gave them refreshments on their press bus.  On the other hand, John Kerry was not popular with the press; his nature was somewhat aloof and he did not make a great effort to engage with the press, so that much of the positive coverage was directed towards the Bush campaign.  Finally, during the 2008 primaries campaigns, Hillary Clinton was treated in a sexist,outright nasty manner by the press, while Barack Obama was treated as a golden child, was clearly the choice of the mass-media, was under-scrutinized and virtually selected to be the presidential nominee.  Although I am a supporter of the media generally, I find that their influence over the democratic process contradicts the very principles on which our country was founded: one person, one vote decides elections.