The news media is trusted by fewer people (24%) than who trust Congress, give or take a few points.
You seem to be of the mind that the news media, or TV in general, leads...rather than follows.
For that to be true, Obama would have had to have had face time prior to becoming a political force.
I’d suggest to you that the opposite is true...that the news media saw the *popular* appeal of Obama and then followed him onto his bandwagon.
Another example would be immigration. The illegal alien amnesty of 2007 wasn’t stopped by the news media, wasn’t aided by Hollywood, and wasn’t a popular topic among college professors.
Why has Hollywood made a movie about Myspace? Shouldn’t the internet be following TV if the world works in the way that you allude?! Shouldn’t it be the other way around?!
What made “24” popular?
Anyway, what I am doing is forcing you to see that “culture” is more powerful than you’ve been led to believe.
Sure, you make valid points about TV influencing views. That does happen...but you need to put that fact into the correct context by recognizing that TV can only influence a little bit.
There’s no TV show about going to church each Sunday, but every candidate in this election has campaigned inside one.
Why is that?!
So while TV can influence a little bit, it still has to accept that it is the tail wagged by the larger cultural dog.
TV is *great* at reinforcing a message that one group or another is committed to pushing, but keeping people on one side is a far cry from reaching over to new converts.
For instance, a TV show isn’t going to convince our society to tax emails, but such a program could easily keep constant the number of voters who already *want* to tax emails.
And when TV overreaches...straying from its ability to keep into an attempt to persuade, the effect is often the opposite (e.g. 60 Minutes slamming Bush with a fake Texas ANG story just before the 2004 election).
Another thing to realize is that U.S. culture was more liberal a generation or two ago than today. Today, partial birth abortion and smoking in public is banned.
Go back 60 years or more and the whole concept of holding a father responsible for child support was gone, too.
Go back even further and gambling and prostitution were legal (or prohibitions actively flaunted) just about everywhere.
So the culture war continues...
I’ll make a couple of points then get back to you later.
First, our general election this year is going to be between the most Liberal Democrat Senator and the most Liberal Republican Senator (base on ACU ratings for the past few years, not McCain’s lifetime rating).
McCain is a classic example of a Media Creation, something that has been going on for the past 8 years.
Another thing: Most people will not admit they are influenced by advertising or asy they trust advertisers when making buying decisions. The same goes with the media...people say they don’t trust the news media, but they are influenced by it. They just don’t want to admit it.
And...very few candidates have campaigned in churches WITHOUT a TV camera present to record it!
24. I never watch the show on the networks (I never watch network shows, really), but I have all the seasons on DVD after recommendations from Freepers. It’s moving left as well.
I’ve enjoyed the debate.