News Agenda Setting

Agenda setting is a vital strategy that fuels the media. Agenda setting provides news sources with information to broadcast to the audience, however the issues that are made most important in the news may not be the ones that are most effective for the public. I believe that the largest problems with agenda setting stem from the the policy and corporate agendas. These two sources of information are the least concerend with the publics best interest, as shown in this video below.



Policy agendas are a way for the governemnt to feed the public information it wants the people to know through media sources. These agenda can be a form of propaganda trying to sawy the public opinion one way or another. Corporate agendas are even more slanted toward the public because it often consists of advertisements for large corporations. Instead of delivering the audience important information, coporation agendas try to market a product or service within the news.
I believe that media and public agendas are the most valuable to the audience. The media tries to relay information or stories to the public that are commonly reported on in order to give the public a well-rounded view of current affairs. It is hard for the media's agenda to remain completely uneffected by the persausions of the government and other corporations, as to what should be the most important topics. I believe that a way for the media to create the most accurate and thorough coverage is to "multiple perspectives" as as Herbert Gans discussed in one of the articles. If journalists adapted a method of mulitple perspectives agenda setting may become more objective and be healthier for our democracy.
Lastly, public policy is an important issue in agenda setting because the public is receiving the messages sent by the media. Personally, I don't know how much of an effect agenda setting truly has on the public. I believe that the media has a limited effect and that audiences tend to seek out information that is of interest to them. Agenda setting may have a greater effect on the public regarding some issues over others. For instance, issues that directly effect the public like unemployment, gas prices, etc. are already important to the public, so the media's agenda setting won't make these issues more or less important. However, agenda setting could have a greater effect on issues that the public may not experience directly such as foreign affairs. Because people are less familiar with these issues the media, corporations, and government have more leverage in swaying the publics opinion.