Television's Influence On Presidential Elections

In previous elections throughout the years the media has found so many ways to impact each election. With the many advances of technology continues to have there will only be more opportunities for the media to influence the people. Especially with so many people having easy access to television whether it be from their mobile phones to the television in the living room. With the recent election, our 45th president it is crucial for the people to know where the influence comes from. The media is the main influence during elections. Television specifically has impacted presidential elections negatively. Television cheats the voters of their participation in elections. Before television man people had to go to debates and speeches in person …show more content…
The television also affects elections negatively because the stories purposely want to alter the judgement of the voters towards candidates in a bad way. Hart and Triece write, “Presidents are losing their distinctiveness as social actors and hence are often judged by standards formerly used to assess rock singers and movie stars” (par.1). In other words, Hart and Triece are saying the presidential candidates are lowered to being judged at the same level as a movie star or famous singer. The presidential candidates should not ever be judged on the same scale to any singers or movie stars because they are the ones who could possibly run our country. The reporters for different news channels on television purposely alter questions to catch candidates off guard to see how they respond. Similarly, Menand claims, “that television had dumbed down the issues by forcing the candidates to respond to questions instantaneously” (par.2). From this we can see the reports are setting candidates up to fail which makes them look bad to the public. This alters the public's judgement about the candidate because they can seem unprepared. When there is an election an important aspect to television is the number of views. The reports of different channels do whatever is possible to obtain viewers even if the information is redundant. This information can cause candidates to look even worse and change the voter’s perspective …show more content…
Many television channels may appear to favor a candidate. Similarly, Menand says “Kennedy benefited because his image on television was “crisp”,” (par.2). From this we can conclude that Kennedy was favored and possibly had lots of television appearances to obtain a great “crisp” image on television especially since most television broadcasts try to make candidates look bad. This can be negative because the people don’t really have someone else’s image to compare and through television the people view candidates as normal people not really leaders. Viewing candidates as movie stars or famous people instead of a leader makes a joke out of many traditional election procedures such as debates and elections. According to Koppel, “it is a joke to call and event like the one that transpired tonight a debate” (par.3). This shows a distorting effect of television that can confuse voters because usually one would think the news would want more debates so they can cover the m and have more stories but, this is the exact opposite. Koppel is stating that debates are a joke through the eyes of television. Through televisions distorting eyes many people have strayed away from focusing on policy. Likewise, Hart and Triece claim, “those who watch politics on television are increasingly turning away from the policy sphere” (par. 1). This proves that television can cause people to