The Development of Media Politics

In a press conference this Tuesday with president Bush, he was asked the most
unusual questions such as, “Which president started press conferences?” to which
the president replied, “ Franklin D. Roosevelt, he liked to keep a close
relationship with the American public.” The president was also asked if he felt
investigative journalism is good for political figures such as himself, “No,
politics should be Politics only, not reporting on the latest scandal in the
cabinet.” The last question that was asked was if the president felt better
about his press conferences being reported in the print media, or the broadcast
media to which he replied, “Any and all, whether by the print media being the
newspaper and magazines, or by the broadcast media being the radio, TV, or
internet, as long as America gets the information that it needs.” And with that bold statement, the president took no further questions.

All right readers, here is your history lesson for today’s edition:
In 1934 Congress established the Federal Communications Commission also known as
the FCC. The FCC has three basic things that it needs to do to regulate control
of the airwaves.
1) To prevent near-monopolies of control over a broadcast market
2) To conduct periodic examination of the goals and performance of stations
as part of its licensing authority
3) To make sure that there is fair treatment rules concerning access to the
airwaves for political candidates and officeholders

Narrowcasting: Cable TV and the Internet-Briana Shipley

Vocabulary quiz for today: What does narrowcasting mean?
A) A method of casting a fishing rod into the narrow part of the fishing
area
B) Media programming cable TV or the Internet that is focused on one topic
and aimed at a particular audience
C) To cast a narrow shadow on Mr. Richins
D) To give this group an A on this project

If you answered B, you are correct! This is done by many stations that are
specifically designed for certain purposes, for example, the History Channel,
the Disney Channel, the Discovery Channel, or any radio station that is designed
to have happy music all day, or slow jazz all day, or to have a flaming liberal
insult republicans all day; those would all be examples of narrowcasting.

Private Control of the Media-Also Briana Shipley

Private ownership is the exact opposite of publicly owned media. With a
publicly owned one, they can broadcast whatever they want and not have to worry
about the size of the audience that they reach, with a privately owned one,
their main goal is to have the biggest audience possible, this is because of
money issues. Generally, they form chains which are Newspapers published by
massive media conglomerates that account for over 4/5 of the nation’s daily
newspaper circulation, and they usually control the broadcast media as well.
They form chains to bring in money because they can’t gain money from donations like
PBS can, thus they have to find an alternate method of gaining money. So, if Mr.
Rassmussen were to do a TV show that was privately owned, he would have to join
in with a chain to keep the show running because the majority of people in Utah
are republican and would not donate anything to him if he were with a publicly
owned station.