Chapter 13
Chapter 13: The Media
Study Plan
Key Chapter Concepts:
- The primary objective of the American media is to make profits. They create and distribute content to attract an audience and earn revenues by selling access to that audience to advertisers and by charging fees for content.
- The market for news is extremely large, as most Americans rely on the media to find out about important issues, the activities of the government, and electoral choices. The centrality of the news media in informing the public makes this private industry into an important part of the public sphere.
- Reporters and journalists rely on politicians, government agencies, organizations, and average people as sources of information. This provides politicians, bureaucrats, organized interests, and private citizens the opportunity to try to shape how the media portray public issues.
- Rather than try to run the media as a public trust, the U.S. government takes a comparatively light hand in regulating media ownership and operation and instead relies on the marketplace to produce a robust flow of information about politics and government affairs.
Organize
- Follow this Study Plan to access your chapter assignments.
- Print out the Chapter Outline and bring it to lecture to help structure your note-taking and check-off topics covered in class.
- The Chapter Quiz provides a chance for you to measure your understanding of course content prior to the exam.
Learn
- Read Chapter 13 in your textbook or ebook.
- Read the Chapter Review of Chapter 13. Note any material you have difficulty remembering from the text.
- Master the key terms for this chapter by working through the deck of Flashcards.
- Take the Visual Quizzes to test your knowledge of the concepts presented in this chapter’s figures and diagrams.
Connect