Politics and the media have always been joined in a symbiotic relationship. Politicians need the media to communicate to the public, and the media sells its product by covering what politicians say and do. Of course, the fact that they need each other has never stopped them from hating each other much of the time. But it would be fairer to say that politicians dislike the media more than the latter dislikes politicians – the media doesn’t care about love or hate. Its goal is to be objective, and not foster a love or hate relationship with a particular brand of politics.
Of course, some members of the media gleefully break this rule, as we all know. Fox News, for example, loves all politicians conservative, and MSNBC favors liberals, to take just two examples. Watching, listening and reading it all is the object of focus of both the media and politicians – you the public.
Today, public satisfaction with what people call “The Media” is at an all-time low. It’s hard to believe that just a few decades ago, journalists were among the most popular and respected professions in America. After a couple of tough reporters at the Washington Post exposed the Watergate scandal and helped drive Richard Nixon from office, journalism schools across the country exploded with droves idealistic young people eager to become reporters. In the late 1970s, journalists were among the Top 10 most respected professions. Today it seems like everyone hates “The Media.”
Part of the downfall of the media’s image can be tied to politics, but more specifically, to the way politics began to be covered mostly by TV journalists. TV news providers such as CNN and other political programs began to bring on super conservative politicians to have debates with super liberal politicians, with predictable – and entertaining – results. Fierce debates, back-and-forth shouting matches, one side calling the other “crazy” and so on – it all started to make politics a brutal contact sport like it had never been before. The result was a lot of negativity, public disgust and frustration with a persistent climate of rancor and attack – and much of this hate and anger rubbed off on the media itself — the “ring leader.”
But there is something interesting to observe: No media outlet can become popular for the way it covers politics unless it gives the public what it wants to watch. If the media presents news that bores the public, they will vote with their clickers – they’ll switch channels. So there is a great irony here. Large swaths of the public are disillusioned and angry with “The Media” – yet it is that very public that “voted for” this kind of media by the choices they made with their TV remotes.
Just as politics and politicians are shaped by what the public demands of them – so is the media. When people say they “hate the media” – well, this is the very media they ask for and “vote for’ every day.
Only the public can make a particular kind of political media coverage possible because they are the ones who chose what they watch and read. Of course, the public’s role in shaping the media and its relationship to politics is only one aspect of a very complex dynamic that creates the conditions we have today. It’s good to remember that some situations should not be oversimplified, and few dynamics are more complex than media and politics.
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