Agenda Setting and Framing in the News Media

Exactly how much influence does the news media have over what we think? Where do we get these ideas and exactly how "biased" are certain news channels today? The news media can use agenda setting to decide what the public sees and to frame stories to further promote political ideologies that are beneficial to that news source.



Agenda setting is used by the mass media in order to decide what the public sees as relevant topics in recent news. Through framing the stories that the news decides to display, the public sees a one-sided idea of the topic of interest. Agenda setting and framing are especially relevant in today’s society because news media such as CNN and FOX news are becoming increasingly one-sided and biased towards certain topics in the news and towards political candidates. The line between delivering the news through a “surveillance” standpoint and a “interpretation” standpoint has gotten increasingly thin, furthering the divide between political standpoints in the American population. This divide is furthered by gatekeepers who decide what is to be displayed in news stories and have political motivation to display stories in a light that will further dominant ideology in the media. This is an important concept because hegemony must be continually won and secured and is not a constant in society.

One example of the furthering of ideology in the news media through framing and gate keeping is recent headlines of FOX news. FOX news, which is owned by well known conservative Rupert Murdoch frames stories in such a way that the receiver of the message is influenced not only by the story chosen, but by the title of the story. One recent headline claimed “Boehner Would Vote for Middle-Class Tax Package if That's the Only Option.” This title slants recent support of only middle class tax cuts by republican John Boehner as being only a beginning to the amount of tax cuts that should be taking place. This conservative agenda in the supposedly "unbiased" media clearly displays Murdoch's motivation to further the positive idea that lowering goverenment spending is necessary and inevitable. Below is a link to the biased news story:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/12/obama-economic-adviser-afford-tax-cuts-high-end-earners/


PICTURE TAKEN FROM: http://www.bruceongames.com/2008/02/12/videogames-will-destroy-the-environment/