In today’s society, people are busy and don’t have as much time as they need to do their own research on important current events. Because they can not read every article on what is happening in the political spectrum, the buying power of the dollar, and foreign relations they rely on media outlets to explain the importance of these issues. The media has gained influence by getting the information they deem important to the viewers. Some people in the world that are like me, don’t have time to do their research so the majority of the news they hear about is what the media tells them. This can be beneficial but also can leave the public blind to the actual important topics. In today’s politics, the term Fake News has been through around more than a ball in an elementary schoolyard. But I am not going to refer to it as Fake News, but instead opinionated news because the people who are writing the information typically have a bias. And this bias feeds the emotions of the public who can make rash decisions on topics they do not completely understand. For example, the free college tuition is a big one that a lot of my peers enjoy hearing about and sounds like a great idea, but where is the money going to come from. The answer is in your taxes, so instead of paying for your own college, you will be paying for everyones with your increase in taxes.

As a result of our busy lives and lack of brainpower, we all have a personal agenda. This personal agenda is essentially “a small set of issues that’s most important to you at the moment”(368). The media understand that we have a lack of attention so they do their best to keep the important topics in the headlines so you click and read on while the ‘lesser important’ topics are shoved in the corner. Because of this, the media agenda is decided based on the “importance that the news media assigns to issues at a given moment.”(369). As current events change so does the media coverage to best adapt to the changing tides. But the most important topic is Agenda-setting. This is a widely adopted hypothesis that “over time, the media shapes the public agenda… [through] telling us which issues to think about…which aspects of those issues are most important… [and] how different issues are connected to each other”(369). 

Being educated in politics and current events has never been more important than in today’s day and age. We are always making decisions that affect the entire world on a daily basis and yet it is controlled through the media. When the media tells you what issues to think about this is actually a beneficial side of media. They will do their best, to tell the truth about the topic as a whole. For instance, is a new bill is introduced into congress that affects the majority they will tell you the bill and what it does, but on some occasions, they do not mention the entirety of the bill. They are going to tell you all of the benefits, but they can also leave out some of the key drawbacks of the bill. One bog topic is a living minimum wage, which sounds like a good idea, but what the majority of media outlets leave out is this is how inflation is caused. As well as the possibility of losing a lot of jobs because the employers are now looking for more qualified workers or even replacing them with automated machines. This natural bias in media leaves the public feeling educated but in reality not truly understanding the depths of the topic. The media