Just Beat It

Agenda setting is commonly used in media to select what issues in society people should focus on and often leads to the over-coverage of undeserving events . By choosing to put greater emphasis on certain issues all aspects of media are telling the public what to think about and therefore are setting the agenda. If news stations are reporting stories with a conservative bias they are attempting to get their audience to think like a republican. The headlines of newspapers and magazines are typically the topics talked about around the water cooler, and because of agenda setting the topics talked about are not always the most important. For example, Michael Jackson was the headline of every magazine, newspaper and newscast for weeks after his death. I’m not saying that the loss didn’t deserve some coverage but so much focus was out put on the “King of Pop’s”  death that people forgot about the dying soldiers in the war, the dying health care debate, the dying of our environmental sustainability, and death of our nations priorities. Agenda setting would work if every topic, viewpoint, and problem was fairly represented but in today’s media dominated culture that is not the case.