Media Influence On American Politics

Do the public and the media influence American Presidential campaigns? Are there any connections between politicians, especially presidents, and the media? And how exactly does the structure of US politics look like? All these questions and many more are answered in this diploma thesis. The United States are a federal constitutional republic associating fifty states. The government in the United States of America is different from all others in the world. It developed as a result of historical events that changed this country. It reflects the U.S. history as a group of former British colonies. American government consists of three branches- judicial, legislative and executive. These powers are separated so that one branch can not overrule

Historically the main role in informing public played the press. Nowadays, however, this leading role was substituted by television. Also the development of the Internet influenced the ways of campaign management and it has brought revolution in fund-raising. Less important are then other types of media as radio, magazines and recording but they still reach millions of American.

The great media power rests in the hands of relatively small numbers of people such as reporters and editors. They are often accused by critics of being too powerful and influential. On the other hand, media could also help people, for example by earning money for charity projects. Among obvious functions of media as entertainment, identifying public problems, socializing new generations, and making profits there are also some other, rather political functions of media- newsmaking, interpretation, socialization, persuasion and agenda

The first two cases of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama represent the positive relation between the presidents and the media. The reporters were afraid to give Ronald Reagan a negative coverage and the thesis will try to explain the reasons for such a fear of media and background of Reagan’s popularity. The second part of the last chapter shows the importance of media in a political campaign, demonstrated on the example of Barack Obama, the president- elect from 2008 elections. He has lead an exciting and thrilling battle for the presidential seat against John McCain. He was using media to bring his focused message to the Americans and the whole world. His campaign was innovative in many aspects- the ways he earned money for the campaign, extensive use of Internet, army of volunteers traveling through the country searching for undecided voters and his thirty minutes long advertisement on television. All these things helped him to become the forty-fourth American President. The last example presents the negative relation between President Nixon and the media described on one of the most famous scandals in America, where both the President and media played an important