Agenda Setting: Is it really that great?

A popular example of agenda setting; the case of OJ Simpson.

Whether or not you want to admit it, the media often control what news we see and hear, and any opinions we have. This is part of a theory called agenda setting. Journalists play a big part in this as they are often who the public rely on to get their news from. Usually, the information that the public is exposed to is portrayed accurately and fairly. Public media usually does a good job of reporting the news that would be deemed more beneficial for the public. Commercial media are more focused on revenue and ratings and are a good example of agenda setting gone wrong.Situations which involve bad agenda setting where facts are twisted around or omitted completely can be, and usually are, damaging. Particularly when there are people’s lives involved.

A recent example of this is the Steubenville rape case. Many news stations, in particular CNN, were only telling the rapists' sides of the story and portraying them as the victims in the situation. Not one mention of the girl whom was raped was made. This particular case is a part of a bigger situation which, through the media and agenda setting, has now become a huge problem in western society: rape culture.

Agenda setting can be broken down into two different parts: First Level Agenda Setting (FLA) and Second Level Agenda (SLA) setting. FLA is described as, “the transfer of the salience of […] issues”, and is for the most part suggesting what the public should focus on through coverage. SLA is how the media focuses on the attributes of the issues at hand.

Sometimes agenda setting can be misleading or misplace the attention. For example; Justin Bieber’s new haircut trumped the topic of AIDs in the news a while back as this was what the media knew the public would be interested in it. This is referred to agenda cutting. Noam Chomsky once commented on this, “The real mass media are basically trying to divert people,” he said, “[…] let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems.”

Generally, unless it is of extreme import, newspapers and news channels will publish stories about celebrities or news stories with a news value of entertainment  newspaper about curing cancer. This is most commonly done in commercial media stations. The public are, however, very susceptible to the opinions the media give us about certain people, places and things. 

It is the opinion of one journalist, who wishes to remain anonymous, that agenda setting has more of a negative impact on society and journalism than positive. This is because they believe that the  media keeps the public in the dark on certain issues too frequently, or put a less important story ahead of a really important one, depending on which the  think the public will respond to better. 

What is your opinion on agenda setting? Do you think it has a positive impact on society or a negative one? Leave your comments below.