Television's Influence on Society

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Television's Influence on Society There is probably no greater influence on society than the television. It has become arguably the greatest invention of the past century. With it, we have witnessed countless historical events: Inaugurations of presidents; man's first steps on the moon; the assassination of John F. Kennedy; even disasters as they happen. Americans watch TV in the morning to receive the daily news. They eat chips and drink soda watching it. They watch it before they go to bed. But as television has saturated our lives, has it always resulted toward our betterment, or has it possibly led to the deprivation of American society? In our nation today, most citizens cast their vote on what they see on the news. The media primarily controls people's opinions on political issues. Unfortunately the world's most developed nations don't have time to carefully pick their leaders in any level. While vast opportunity of research is available to the American citizen to carefully pick their candidates; they choose to go along with what the media is telling them to do. The media depends on the public being stupid, and use this theory to influence our opinion. The media realizes that people will not watch what is hard for them to understand. For example, we all love to watch movies because they deal with broad enough topics that everyone can understand and enjoy. It can safely be said that politics is a type of a theatrical performance. In our modern world winning an election is based on image and performance, the best performer usually wins. People who have difficulty watching and understanding this political movie will easily become influenced by the media's opinion. The media is not afraid to call a candidate a "bleeding heart liberal," which causes many people to not vote for him even though they do not really know what a "liberal" is. Or, the media can focus on showing certain political issues over and over so the public figures they should be at the top of the agenda. It is the media that controls the nation, it is the media that selects the agenda, and it is the media that selects our government officials. When it comes to keeping up with news, I usually tune to several different sources such as PBS and ABC.

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