There are numerous factors which influence policy making in American politics. The most obvious of these, of course, would be the structure of the government itself, how it is currently operating, the distribution of its members among the political spectrum, etc. Considering only the formulation of the government via the Constitution, it is clear that there was an intent to make the processes of policy making and law creating ones which had to go through several channels over time. However, when considering extra-governmental organizations and their influence, it is difficult to be conclusive as to how much they help or hinder the production of effective policy, at least when considering the organizations in general. When analyzing the specifics
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As conveyed by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, there are several large filters through which media most often must pass before being presented to the general population. These filters are as follows: the ownership of news sources and the profit drive of those owners, the advertisers without which news sources would be hard pressed to operate, the restrictions of larger news stories tending to originate from only certain sources, the need to avoid flak, and the need to avoid association with or support of communism. Combined, these filters severely limit what a news source is “allowed” to put forth and what kinds of events will typically warrant news coverage. With such limitations on the news, the general public will not always be able to make the most informed of choices or necessarily have knowledge about issues that could have been, but will not, be addressed by policy changes. Even worse, it is then conceivable that the news could be generally stretched in such a way as to nudge the general public into supporting certain policies which would not be as effective for the whole if the news were not so diluted and tinged by the interests of owners, advertisers,
As conveyed by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, there are several large filters through which media most often must pass before being presented to the general population. These filters are as follows: the ownership of news sources and the profit drive of those owners, the advertisers without which news sources would be hard pressed to operate, the restrictions of larger news stories tending to originate from only certain sources, the need to avoid flak, and the need to avoid association with or support of communism. Combined, these filters severely limit what a news source is “allowed” to put forth and what kinds of events will typically warrant news coverage. With such limitations on the news, the general public will not always be able to make the most informed of choices or necessarily have knowledge about issues that could have been, but will not, be addressed by policy changes. Even worse, it is then conceivable that the news could be generally stretched in such a way as to nudge the general public into supporting certain policies which would not be as effective for the whole if the news were not so diluted and tinged by the interests of owners, advertisers,