James Madison once said, “A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.” There is little dispute to the notion that a free media, and thus the flow of free information are necessary prerequisites to a functioning democracy. However, over time changes in the nature of mass media in the United States have lead to issues in the system that have raised questions as to the relationship between media and democracy.
The concentration of media outlets in several seemingly omni-powerful conglomerates has made the media market less competitive than ever before, which has, in turn, had negative effects on the media in its capacity educator and informer. News outlets have moved farther and farther from political centricity, all while programming has been adjusted in an effort to maximize profit. The sum of these changes has been an increasingly skeptical public and an increasingly inhibitory media.
Still, media output only matters because it bears significant influence on its audience. In the United States today the media plays a larger role than perhaps ever before. American households spend such a significant amount of time in the exposure of media that it is inevitable that they will be influenced by the media in some capacity. Furthermore, as the media has traditionally been relied upon as a sort of educator for the American public, the information delivered by the media carries significant powers of persuasion. For these reasons, it is necessary to consider and information that is transmitted from traditional mass media sources.
Nevertheless, the role of the media is certainly not entirely bleak. In the last decade the increased popularity of social media websites has opened up entirely new avenue through which news can be disseminated and analyzed. While changes in