1. Media
American Government

2. Media
Mass media includes television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the internet
These media sources are widely responsible for the information we receive about candidates and races
Media events are used to control the agenda of what is being said about a candidate or politician

3. Reagan The Reagan White House operated on the following principles:
Plan ahead
Stay on the offensive
Control the flow of information
Limit reporters’ access to the president
Talk about the issues you want to talk about
Speak in one voice
Repeat the same message many times

4. Press Conferences
Press conferences are meetings with reporters to lay out the presidential message
FDR, the president who started presidential press conferences, had great power over the media
FDR would chastise poor reporters and use fear to stop reporters from covering what he didn’t want covered
These types of tactics ended in the late 1960’s
With Vietnam and Watergate, many reporters turned to investigative journalism

5. Media The first daily newspaper- 1783 (print media)
The newspaper industry is currently in slow decline
Radio and Television (electronic media)
Both the radio and television opened up the amount of people who had access to information
With the advent of daily news shows and 24 hour news channels, information was easily available
Unfortunately, with the need to cover a broad range of topics news has been boiled down to 30 second sound bites that are easy for public consumption

6. Narrow
Narrowcasting is the concept of presenting content that is appealing to a narrow audience
ESPN, MTV, VH1, History Channel, C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, FOXNews
Narrowcasting has had major impacts on how people consume media
Because of narrow casting people are generally only presented with information that agrees with their own view point

7. Policy Impact Policy agenda: Policy entrepreneurs
Policy agenda is the list of subjects or problems to which government officials, and people outside of government closely associated with those officials, are paying some serious attention to at any time
Healthcare, education, unemployment, immigration
Policy entrepreneurs
People who invest their political “capital” in an issue