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Unlike any national election in recent memory, the 2016 presidential race started with a bang: a political campaign packaged as a reality show. With billionaire businessman Donald Trump taking the early lead in the crowded Republican field, the former host of NBC’s The Apprentice seemed inoculated from the scrutiny most politicians face when they say things that cause voters to question their sanity, like “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich”.1 In Trump’s case, his standing as a reality-show celebrity seemed to elevate, rather than sink, him in the early polls.

One of the appeals of reality TV, of course, is that viewers expect blunt opinions, outrageous actions, and crazy plot twists—and that’s exactly what Donald Trump delivered to the 2016 campaign. He criticized other candidates for taking “special interest” money (including from him); he denigrated legal and illegal immigrants, promising to build a wall between the United States and Mexico—and make Mexico pay for it; and he retweeted comments labeling Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly a “bimbo.” She had asked him tough questions during the first debate of the season—which, thanks to Trump’s celebrity, drew a record twenty-four million viewers.

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Particularly disheartening to many of the other Republican presidential candidates was the need to spend money on campaign ads to counter the Trump juggernaut. In response to Trump’s critical remarks about him, fellow GOP candidate Jeb Bush had to pay for ads reminding voters that Trump used to be a Democrat. Trump’s retort that President Ronald Reagan also started out as a Democrat, though, cost him nothing; his social media and TV interviews received so much attention that he didn’t need to repeat his assertions in paid ads. Instead, his shocking comments about other candidates were picked up and recirculated—for free—by CNN, CBS, Fox News, NBC, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among others. At one point early in the campaign, the conservative Media Research Center reported in a study that “Donald Trump [had] received almost three times the network TV news coverage than all the other [sixteen] GOP candidates combined. . . .” 2

Trump’s candidacy demonstrated the power of social media to gain free publicity and cheap access. Recently, office seekers have depended on their parties and outside partisan groups to afford the expensive TV ads campaigning usually requires. Following the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling by the Supreme Court in 2010 (see Chapter 16), election campaigns now benefit from unlimited funds raised by wealthy individuals, corporations, and other groups, causing partisan pundits and concerned citizens alike to fret about rich donors dictating election outcomes.

For the 2016 election cycle, Donald Trump used social media to share his own criticisms of political ads and the “big money” that pays for them, thereby making candidates beholden to special interest groups. Though most media today communicate primarily to niche markets, Trump seemed to offer broad appeal at the time—even Democrats who said they would not vote for him enjoyed watching him make other GOP candidates squirm. So will Trump’s TV strategies reshape political campaigning by forging a link with the sensibilities of reality television?

The fate of elections in the end increasingly rests with young voters and a candidate’s ability to draw them into the election, which could make the rawness of reality TV enticing to some strategists. In election year cycles, news media often reduce the story of an election to two-dimensional narratives, obscuring or downplaying complex policy issues like climate change, economic recovery, campaign financing, immigration reform, and worldwide terrorism. To his credit, Trump’s candid and controversial ideas during the 2016 presidential campaign forced the news media to pay closer attention. In a democracy, we depend on media to provide information to help us make decisions about our leaders. Despite their limitations, the media continue to serve as watchdogs for us over government and business. We must hope they are not too easily distracted by the power of celebrity to generate ratings and readers. As media watchdogs ourselves, we can point a critical lens back at the media and describe, analyze, and interpret news stories, reality TV shows, and political ads, arriving at informed judgments about the media’s performance. This textbook offers a map to help us become more media literate, critiquing the media not as detached cynics or rabid partisans, but as informed citizens with a stake in the outcome.

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SO WHAT EXACTLY ARE THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF NEWSPAPERS AND MEDIA IN GENERAL? In an age of highly partisan politics, economic and unemployment crises, and upheaval in several Arab nations, how do we demand the highest standards from our media to describe and analyze such complex events and issues—especially at a time when the business models for newspapers and most other media are in such flux? At their best, in all their various forms—from mainstream newspapers and radio talk shows to blogs—the media try to help us understand the events that affect us. But at their worst, the media’s appetite for telling and selling stories leads them not only to document tragedy but also to misrepresent or exploit it. Many viewers and critics disapprove of how media, particularly TV and cable, hurtle from one event to another, often dwelling on trivial, celebrity-driven content.

In this book, we examine the history and business of mass media and discuss the media as a central force in shaping our culture and our democracy. We start by examining key concepts and introducing the critical process for investigating media industries and issues. In later chapters, we probe the history and structure of media’s major institutions. In the process, we will develop an informed and critical view of the influence these institutions have had on national and global life. The goal is to become media literate—to become critical consumers of mass media institutions and engaged participants who accept part of the responsibility for the shape and direction of media culture. In this chapter, we will:

As you read through this chapter, think about your early experiences with the media. Identify a favorite media product from your childhood—a song, book, TV show, or movie. Why was it so important to you? How much of an impact did your early taste in media have on your identity? How has your taste shifted over time? What do your current preferences indicate about your identity now? Do your current media preferences reveal anything about you? For more questions to help you think about the role of media in your life, see “Questioning the Media” in the Chapter Review.