Question 9

Gatekeeping is the process through which information is filtered for dissemination, be it publication, broadcasting, the internet, or really any type of communication. It is the media's way of placing an imaginary gate between them and the public to filter certain parts of stories, artciles, etc. Gatekeeping was first applied to the study of news in 1950 by David Manning White, an assistant to the man who actually later coined the term and took credit for it. Agenda-setting is the theory that the news media have a large influence on audiences by their choice of what stories to consider newsworthy and how much prominence and space to give them. As Jamie Warner argues in his article, Political Culture Jamming, the quality of media has gone way downhill, especially in daily news stories as well as shows and programs such as "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." In today's society we receive more factual information through sarcastic daily shows that only highlight certain entertaining parts of news stories but somehow these small segments become the ultimate truth behind what actually happened. Warner suggests that Stewart is "purposefully obtuse" (148) when telling what happened in the news because he embellishing the stories for humor and to make his ratings go up. Real news is not what the viewers want to watch, it is sarcastic news that is eye-catching (151). I chose an article from Onion News titled " Obama's Deficit- Reduction Plan Includes Spending Cuts, Robbing Fort Knox, Tax Reform." This article outline Obama's recent plan to end the deficit in the United States, however this article spins the actual news story and incorporates humor into and is less attacking of Obama, even though the article clearly thinks it is not the most brilliant plan. The Onion News network clearly conveys the point of their article through satire. However, I found an article from Fox News on the exact same plan, however they were bashing Obama and making the article create intense argument and debate about how unintelligent Obama is. Due to their conservative nature, they set the agenda for their audience to only include parts of the plan that they did not like and made Obama look stupid, which in a sense is also gatekeeping due to the fact they were filtering information. It is interesting that a real news broadcasting station gave less factual evidence and more opinion than that of a satirical one.

news stories:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obamas-deficitreduction-plan-includes-spending-cut,20195/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/21/budget-panel-obama-deficit-plan-saves-advertised/