Title: Media: What is their impact? | United States Government
Headings: Media: What is their impact?
Media: What is their impact?
Learning Objectives
Media Effects and Bias
Coverage Effects on Governance and Campaigns
Questions to Consider
Terms to Remember

Content: While some argue media framing is the natural consequence of current media environment with its emphasis on reporting news with audience appeal focusing on conflict, sensationalism, and personality–others concede that media framing, when coupled with priming, can lead to political bias. [ 8]
The topic of priming by the news media and political bias are obviously closely related. Media news stories presented as fact can contain covert and overt politically slanted material. Covert content is political information provided under the pretense that it is neutral. A television broadcast might run a story on climate change by interviewing representatives of only one side of the policy debate and downplaying the opposing views, all without acknowledging the one-sided nature of its coverage. In contrast, when the writer of a publication makes clear to the reader only one side of the political debate, the political message is overt content. Political commentators such as Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow openly state their ideological viewpoints. While such overt political content may be offensive or annoying to a reader, listener, or viewer, all are offered the choice whether to be exposed to the material. To avoid either covert and overt political bias or priming, news readers, listeners, and viewers frequently self-select what media to watch. A study by University of Texas Communication faculty member, Natalie Jomini Stroud, found that media viewing habits are subject to partisan selective exposure, where the partisan or ideological orientation of viewers, listeners, or readers determines the choices made on news information sources. [