Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The impact of the media on political life
The impact of the media on political life
The impact of the media on political life
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The impact of the media on political life
The Rise and Fall of Newspapers
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspaper without a government. I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."(Thomas Jefferson, 1787). Newspapers today are said to be crucial in the democratic process and preventing complete corruption throughout our society. They provide the public with information and facts that help them form their own opinions that are necessary for them to speak on issues facing the world. The newspaper industry has had a long journey all the way from the first newspaper, Acta Diurna to their current battle with radio, television, and the internet. They have had a major impact, and helped shaped our very nation.
In 59 B.C Julius Caesar wanted to inform the public of Rome about important social and political happenings throughout the cities. The first newspaper Acta Diurna was created and put in the bath house to provide the people with such information as government scandals, military campaigns, and executions. The next great leap in the newspaper industry was the invention of the moveable metal type by Johann Gutenberg in 1447. This was the first version of the printing press and allowed the production of hundred to thousands of copies. This made it a lot easier as well as a lot more cost effective to print newspapers.
The first newspaper to appear in the US was published in Boston in 1690. The newspaper Publick Occurrences was published without authority and was quickly shut down, with all copies being destroyed and the publisher being arrested. Fourteen years later John Campbell produced the first successful newspaper called the Boston New-Letter. It was heavily controlled by the colonial government and had a limited circulation that caused the paper to almost be a complete failure. The idea was very slowly catching and a few other newspapers starting popping up such as the Pennsylvania Journal and Maryland Gazette. As the papers were starting to spring up and gather movement in 1765, the British Parliament was trying to pass the Stamp Act, which would place a tax on the American newspapers. The papers upset by this tax calling it the "Fatal Black-Act" printed essays and newsletters protesting it. As November 1st approached as the day that the act was to take effect, many of the papers stated that they were shutting down in hopes of one day coming back.
When the British passed the Stamp Act, the colonists reacted in various ways. The Stamp Act, passed in 1765, put taxes on all printed goods in the colonies. Specifically, newspapers, legal documents, dice,
The Prime Minister of Spain once told an American, “The newspapers in your country seem to be more powerful than the government.” This statement was never more true than in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The rulers of the New York newspaper empire, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, battled against one another in the ultimate test of journalism. With a real war on the horizon, these men fought to produce the most sensational stories Americans had ever read; and, as a result, they brought forth a new age in the American newspaper business, an age of fighting for the little guy, and beating back tyranny one paper at a time.
“Passed by Parliament in 1765, the Stamp Act mandated the sue of stamped paper for all official papers, including diplomas, marriage licenses, wills, newspapers, and playing cards. The stamp, embedded in the paper (not a topical stamp), indicated that a tax had been paid on the document” (Shultz, 2014, p. 85). Opponents in Massachusetts wanted to force Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. To do this they created a circular letter that invited all of the colonies to send representatives to discuss resistance to the Act. This was known as the Stamp Act Congress, they met in New York in 1765. The Stamp Act Congress “acknowledged that
To pay off their debt, England scheduled the initiation of the Stamp Act, which placed a tax on 50 different documents, on November 1, 1765 (Gale ¶ 2; Brindell 13). This act was to put a tax “upon every paper commonly called a pamphlet and upon every newspaper” (Copeland 193). Because the Stamp Act was an internal tax, which meant this tax law was only enforced in America, this made the colonists even angrier (Burgan 23).
News outlets within the United States have always formed an agenda to persuade the people to formulate their decision between the two political party systems. This essay will examine how the Federalist Papers helped shape this nation and give reason as to why this nation needed a strong federal government. Also, comparing the “agenda setting” of our earliest construction of this nation and how the news of today uses “gotcha” journalism to move the public to support the democratic process or even go against the government. News throughout the United States history has used political and economic means to move the society to achieve the elitist agenda. For instance the Federalist Papers were used to give the public a raising concern why the Articles of Confederation was failing and the need for the ratification of the United States Constitution. Today the news industries are owned by corporations that seek a rightist or leftist view and move the people to one of these views to achieve their own interest. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the overall agenda of the news to persuade the public to achieve the corporations or politicians agendas.
The passing of the Stamp Act by Parliament in 1765 caused a rush of angry protests by the colonists in British America that perhaps "aroused and unified Americans as no previous political event ever had." It levied a tax on legal documents, almanacs, newspapers, and nearly every other form of paper used in the colonies. Adding to this hardship was the need for the tax to be paid in British sterling, not in colonial paper money. Although this duty had been in effect in England for over half a century and was already in effect in several colonies in the 1750?s, it called into question the authority of Parliament over the overseas colonies that had no representation therein.
Back in the 1840’s, word traveled quite slowly. A message from New York to Georgia could take as much as two months to arrive to its destination. Thus was invented the Newspaper, a proper media outlet for its time period, it lowed news to travel ten times faster than before. Between the years of 1810 and 1835 the amount of newspaper coverage tripled. From the years 1775 to 1835 the amount was 38 times the original. During the election process, having an excessive amount of media coverage on you could be seen as a great
The printing press was invented in 1453. The movable printing technology was invented in China in 1040 but Johannes Gutenberg was able to perfect this technology by creating the Gutenberg printer in 1440. The printer was a movable type. A movable type was where individual blocks could be set up in order to print almost anything. Before this, wooden blocks, carved by hand were used to print things. These blocks would have consisted of what the individual wanted to print which would take an incredible amount of time. Gutenberg’s invention of a movable type printer established the ability for mass communication.
Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440 to multiply written documents easily, making books cheaper and more nationally available. In 1798, Alois Senefelder invented Lithography to copy graphical designs, developing the culture of advertising (wet-canvas, no given date, Jules Cheret: the father of the modern poster). Ho...
... small media reforms (like public journalism) will be enough to reduce the commercial and corporate imperatives driving our existing media systems (Hackett and Zhao, 1998, p. 235). Instead, a fundamental reform of the entire system is needed, together with a wider institutional reform of the very structures the media systems work within, our democracies. This will be a difficult task, due to powerful vested interests benefiting from the status quo, including media, political and economic elites. Reforms will need to be driven by campaigns mobilising public support across the political spectrum, to enable the citizens of the world to have a media system that works to strengthen democratic principles as opposed to undermining them. This task is challenging, but it will become easier once people begin to understand the media’s role in policymaking within our democracies.
Newswriting, as it exists today, began with the adoption of the telegraph, which roughly coincided with the start of the American Civil War. The necessity of getting at story through before the telegraph’s occasional malfunction forced a radical change in the style of writing used in reporting. Before the telegraph, much of writing news was just that: writing. News was reported much like books were written. The reporter would set the scene with a detailed account of the setting or the mood and tell the tale just like any other narrative that one might read simply for pleasure. Since the telegraph made it possible for news to be printed the day after it happened; it was immediately adopted as the preferred method of getting news to the newsroom. Occasionally, however, the telegraph line would go down. Often this happened during a transmission, and the remainder of the message could not be sent until the line was repaired. Since a detailed description of the setting and the mood are useless without the actual piece of news, the system of writing, now known as the inverted pyramid, in which the most important items are written first in a concise manner, was born. The inverted pyramid system, born of necessity, was absorbed into newswriting over the proceeding century, and exists today as the standard style for reporting news.
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." This quote by A.J. Liebling illustrates the reality of where the media stands in today's society. Over the past twenty years there has been an increase in power throughout the media with regard to politics. The media's original purpose was to inform the public of the relevant events that occurred around the world. The job of the media is to search out the truth and relay that news to the people. The media has the power to inform the people but often times the stories given to the public are distorted for one reason or another. Using slant and sensationalism, the media has begun to shape our views in society and the process by which we choose our leaders. There was once a time when the government used the media as a medium to influence voters, committees, communities etc. Recently, it has been the presidents of major media outlets that have not only exercised power over the public but also made their presences felt in government and in the halls of congress. When the word democracy is thrown about it usually has to do with the rights or original intentions for a group or organization. The first group intended to be influenced by the media was the informed voter. Political parties along with the government used a variety of media resources to persuade the voter or in effect receive a vote for their cause. Returning to the thought of ?democracy? the question is, what was the original intention of the media with relation to the theme of democracy and the informed voter? To analyze this thought thoroughly one must first grasp an understanding of the basic definition of democracy.
ways as I have explained in this essay. It is a fact that The Mirror
The newspaper industry presaged its decline after the introduction of the television and televised broadcasting in the 1950s and then after the emergence of the internet to the public in the 1990s and the 21st century with its myriad of media choices for people. Since then the readership of printed media has declined whilst digital numbers continue to climb. This is mostly due to television and the internet being able to offer immediate information to viewers and breaking news stories, in a more visually stimulating way with sound, moving images and video. Newspapers are confined to paper and ink and are not considered as ‘alive’ as these other mediums.
Through technological advancements the television and internet now deliver the news instantly into our homes, which has inadvertently put pressure on the traditional newspaper to deliver up-to-the minute news. As technology developed swiftly over the 20th century, some academics could see the demise of the newspaper as early as the late 1960s. Marshall McLuhan (HREF1) an academic and commentator on communications technology prophesied “that printed books would become obsolete, killed off by television and other electronic information technology”. To compete with other more sophisticated electronic media systems, and to survive, newspapers joined the technological revolution and many publications went online in the fight to remain the number one information provider (Kesley 1995:16). In contrast, Kelsey (1995) states the main reaso...