Being the Common Carrier
The media plays a common-carrier role by providing a line of
communication between the government and the people. This communication goes
both ways: The people learn about what the government is doing, and the
government learns from the media what the public is thinking.
Setting the Agenda
Journalists cannot report on an infinite number of stories, so they must
choose which are the most newsworthy. By choosing which stories to present to
the public, the news media helps determine the most important issues; in other
words, the journalists set the agenda. Agenda-setting is crucial
because it shapes which issues will be debated in public. Sometimes political
scientists refer to agenda-setting as signaling because the media
signals which stories are the most important when they decide what to
report.
Pack Journalism
Critics allege that journalists often copy one another without doing
their own investigating. When one newspaper runs a story, for example, many
others will run similar stories soon afterward. Critics refer to this
tendency as pack journalism.
Acting as the Public Representative
The media sometimes acts as a public representative by
holding government officials accountable on behalf of the people. Many people
argue that the media is ill equipped to play this role because the media does
not face the same type of accountability that politicians face. Serving as the
representative of the public, moreover, could undermine the media’s objectivity
because the act of representing the people might require reporters to take a
position on an issue.
Example: The classic example of
watchdog journalism, or activist reporting that attempts to
hold government officials and institutions accountable for their actions, is
the Watergate investigations of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The
Washington Post reporters doggedly pursued allegations
of campaign misdeeds and presidential crimes despite the fact that many
Americans did not care. Journalists have exposed many other government
scandals and misdeeds, including the Iran-Contra affair and the Lewinsky
scandal.
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