The Role of Media in Government
Phase 3 Individual Project
Isaac Joseph
March 9, 2015
Colorado Technical University
GOVT201-1501B-09
Prof. Constantinos Scaros

The U.S. has one of the most varied media industries with expansive media outlets ranging from newspapers to broadcast television. The American people have access to every moment happening in the world with thousands of magazine, blogs, website, and 24 hour information broadcasting. The majority of the people rely on these outlets to gain insight into society, entertainment, and politics. The media hold a deciding power with American people and for this reason the media play a major role in politics. With that being said the media has the power to sway the people and their political views. The main issue with politics and media is media bias. Those in charge of media outlets decide what is reported and these often reflect partisans. For example, for many year people have stated the FOX News represented the GOP and lobby’s their agenda by airing stories that are untrue, or making false claims against opposing views. At the end of 2014 it was found that 66% of the stories reported by FOX News were false or inaccurately reported. The stories that were reported reflected the agenda of the GOP. FOX News has approximately 2.8 million viewer who are only 33% accurately informed. Media bias has several types of reporting style that reflect their bias, such as partisan journalism, yellow journalism, and agenda setting. These types of reporting are bias and use by many media outlets such as CNN, FOX News, MSNCB, and HLN. Nevertheless there are some benefits that come with the media being involved with the government.
The media can provides communication between the government and the people, such as the State of Union Address. People learn about what government is doing through the media, while the government can hear from the people more ways than one. One particular way that the government hears from the people is through media representation such as watchdog journalism. For example, it was through the efforts of Marvin Zindler of KTRK-TV in Houston that legislation created a law in Texas stating that a house where more than 15 women live in at a time and is not part of any educational institution is considered a brothel. Through public outcry Marvin Zindler was able to