Listen to NPR’s “The Politics of Late-Night TV”:
http://www.npr.org/2011/12/03/143092882/the-politics-of-late-night-tv
Read “Talk Show Democracy” from the CQ Researcher (you can read the whole thing if you go through your online textbook which has the article in the chapter) – if you can only read the introduction, that is okay – you get the brief jist of the argument.
View the infographic for current trends / device usage
Listen to NPR’s “Bloggers and Cable Pundits, the New Newsmakers”
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=129031824&m=129090322
Look at the study results on whether or not citizens think media is biased
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/talkbias.htm
QUESTION:
Think about the current state of journalism in the U.S. Do you think the media is generally making a positive or negative contribution to Democracy? – in what ways? How much do you think the “institutional norms” developed by Cook and discussed in the lecture hold true in the current paradigm? Would you consider the media a fourth branch? Is it a successful “watchdog”? What can you say about citizen perceptions of media legitimacy?. REFERENCE AT LEAST THREE OF THE OF THE FIVE ARTICLES IN ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS