Cable News and Agenda-Setting Theory
We are in a historic period in our nation's history. Not only are we fighting a deadly pandemic, but there has been an attempted insurrection on our Capitol, and now Fmr President Donald Trump has been impeached for a second time. This is a traumatic time for our country and a test of our democracy.
Over the last couple of days, the impeachment trial has been trundling through the Senate. There has been wall to wall, uninterrupted coverage on the major cable news networks. We saw multiple lawyers representing Trump, multiple impeachment managers making their case against Trump, numerous pundits providing commentary during breaks of the trial, and reporting on multiple Senators’ reactions to the trial. Yet I am wondering, are we giving even weight to our other drastic news item, COVID-19?
Walter Lippman’s idea and McComb and Shaw’s agenda-setting theory tells us that the way in which the news media represents current affairs in its content creates an overall view of our society in the public’s mind. (Guo, 2017, p. 26) The related idea of aggregate agenda-setting effects says that the news media sets what is important news, how we should feel about each issue, and how we see the issue in a complex system of other current events. (Guo, 2017, p. 27–28)
I do not disagree that the first second impeachment of a president is a newsworthy topic. Any impeachment of a president should be within the top five topics of the day without a doubt. This trial started on February 9 and will end on February 16. The news over the last few days has been relentless on this topic. Under normal circumstances, I would agree that the trial should take up a large amount of the public’s concern. Unfortunately, we are battling a deadly pandemic and there are several newsworthy items that the public needs to know to keep themself safe and to give them hope.
Aside: I am not an insurrectionist sympathizer, a Trump supporter, or an impeachment critic. Personally, I hope to see insurrectionists charged with the full extent of the law, I voted for Biden, and believe the incitement of the insurrection is impeachable and Trump deserves to be impeached.
COVID-19 has ravaged the globe for over a year now. It does not discriminate against who it will kill. It does not matter your race, gender, health status, etc. It has killed the healthiest among us and has ravaged vulnerable communities like the elderly. The good news is that the US government just acquired enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire population. The bad news is that there are new variants that appear to spread more easily and are more difficult to recover from. More good news — double masking has shown to guard against 92% of particulates in our environment. This is absolutely critical, newsworthy information that every American (and every person on the planet) needs to know to protect themself and, for Americans, to give us some hope. The problem is that the impeachment has cast a dark shadow over COVID-19 when it comes to news coverage. But in our actual lived experience people are dying all over this country. To be precise, 3885 people died of COVID-19 today. These numbers are expected to increase due to the spread of new variants. Is this not more important? In my personal assessment, I have to weigh my personal safety above the impeachment trial. This is a failure of this theory.
Gatekeeping is another offramp of agenda-setting. “Gatekeeping is in charge of and has control of the selection of content discussed in the media.” (Agenda Setting Theory, n.d.) Gatekeepers here are the producers and editors of our mass media. They are controlling what we see and deciding what is and is not newsworthy. At this moment, they are deciding there is one singular topic that we should be focused on — impeachment. Of course, they have other motives like profits and ratings to think about, which are clear conflicts with our media diet.
Agenda-setting is present in other areas of our news media like print media and online news sites. The difference here is the gatekeepers have different profit incentives and can dive into more niche topics. Agenda-setting is something that will affect us in the short-term as news moves rapidly from topic-to-topic but in the long-term, it could lead us astray. What if we begin to interact with only one media source? That could be risky. We will be at the whims of that source's ideas of newsworthiness. If it wasn’t for my Twitter feed and a few news sites I follow, I would not have written about the above news imbalance. We should be critical of cable news agenda-setting. They have a great deal of power and they need to wield it responsibly.
Citations
Agenda Setting Theory. (n.d.) Communication Theory. https://www.communicationtheory.org/agenda-setting-theory/ Accessed Feb 11, 2021.
Guo, L. (2017). Agenda setting Individual level effects versus aggregate level effects.
