The media and politics 187candidates are likely to ignore. Potential candidates for the nomination in
2008 are already devoting a great deal of time to blogs, discussing issues,
answering questions put by bloggers.
The attraction of the internet to political campaigners is that it can have
a more personal touch than radio and television advertising and it is a lot
cheaper. The multiplication of television channels makes it more difficult to
get a candidate’s message across, whereas email messages can be downloaded
daily to the target audience and podcasts can deliver videos directly to vot-
ers. In 2006 the Federal Election Commission ruled that almost all political
activity on the internet would be exempt from the restrictions of campaign
finance laws. The effect of the internet is likely to be an even greater decline
in the coherence of the political organisations, in particular political parties,
as it puts more power into the hands of individuals to exercise influence over
the political process.
The influence of the media
Doris Graber concludes that ‘the mass media play a major role in political
socialization and in learning and accepting the beliefs, norms and rules that
govern political life’. Socialisation is a process which begins early in life and
continues over a long period, as political attitudes become well-established.
But the media can also affect public opinion on particular issues as they arise,
by the way in which they are presented, and the fact that individuals have
evolved particular beliefs about politics and particular political leanings does
not mean that public opinion is set in cement and cannot be changed. Thus
President George W. Bush had an approval rating of 80 per cent in Janu-
ary 2002, 58 per cent in January 2004, 50 per cent in January 2005, down to
33 per cent in March 2006. This slide in popularity had a number of causes,
but among them have to be the television pictures of the continuing violence
in Iraq, the press reports of the deaths of American military personnel, the
press assessments of the success or failure of the establishment of democracy
in Afghanistan and Iraq, the television pictures of New Orleans in the after-
math of Hurricane Katrina. Clearly the media have a great deal of influence,
but how objective is their reporting?
There is no such thing as complete objectivity; every writer, every com-
mentator is influenced to some degree by his or her own political views, by
the circumstances of the time, by the perceived impact of their work on
their employers, on the government, on the public, on interested groups. To
present a news story or an analysis of events involves the selection of some
facts rather than others, giving greater or lesser weight to differing aspects of
these events, offering opinions about what is or is not important. It is almost
inevitable, therefore, that a news presentation or current events programme
will give a particular ‘slant’ to the situation; the real problem is to decide
when selection, which is inevitable, tips over into deliberate distortion.