“Money and Media dominate modern day politics” – how far do you agree?

It is widely claimed that the media, and the notes available to dominate it, has a untold wider grasp over the voting normal than manifesto or policy. The volume of the worlds media sources hold some sort of partisan alignment, and its hold on the public means this bias is passed on to the electorate. How much it influences the electorate however, is polar amongst m any(prenominal) theories. The manipulative theory suggests that the media submerges real news in meaningless trivia in order to benefit itself.An example of this is Rupert Murdochs support of Labour exactly at once theyd dropped clause 4 of the constitution. The Hegemonic theory agrees with the accusation of the biased temperament of the media only if argues that it is less calculating. Any political stance it holds is the genuine opinion of the paper or broadcasters, and its publicising of these views is non in an attempt to manipulate the electorate. The pluralist theory argues that the customers shoot the m edia, not the other way rough, and their political views atomic number 18 reflected by their pickax of newspaper publisher or broadcaster, not changed by it.Though these theories fetch variant ideas on the motives of the media, they altogether essentially say the same thing, the hard verity that the media is biased, and that its opinions are carried by its consumers. Another undeniable fact is that the political groups with the ab give away money control the greatest chance of gaining the favourability of the media. Television has led the nature of elections, plainly more than so in America than Britain due to the differing regulations relating to media, and the different motives that broadcasters sire across the Atlantic.Firstly, the US doesnt start a publicly funded broadcaster, and all broadcasting channels have a profit-driven business plan. They will and so only show the most popular candidates in bite surface chunks, not allowing for in depth and democratic cov erage. Reports suggest that in the 2008 campaign, Barac Obamas images were larger, more colourful, and positive than the ones of John McCain. This also provokes voting behaviour base on personality as opposed to policy. Secondly, there are no rules brass the democratic spread of coverage regarding candidates.Campaigns can therefore spend usurious amounts to gain press time, such as the record setting 30 minute political commercial by Barac Obama in 2008. Britain however, has regulations on airtime, manduction it out proportionally to however many people that fellowship has stand up at the election. This is made possible through the publicly funded broadcaster, BBC, which is said to have neutral politics stance, though it has been accused of holding a crowing position. There is however, a much heavier influence coming from the press area of the media in Britain.Americas heterogeneous nature means that local press are the standard newspaper to read and these already reflect th e views of that state, which unlike Britain selects get together in an electoral college. In the 1992 general election, with Kinnock and Labour the favourites, the sun released the headline, get out the last person to leave the country turn out the lights. A few twenty-four hourss later, after a shock conservative victory, they released a follow up headline, It was the sun what won it. Just 3 historic period later they switched allegiance, with Sun backs Blair, something pointed out as one of the factors in Labours landslide 1997 election victory.This, along with the fact the paper has backed the winner in all hardly 3 elections in the last 50 years, implies that Britains biggest newspaper holds immense influence over the electorate. However, it can also be argued that with only 3 million papers in circulation, the Sun doesnt have sufficiency readers to change the result of an election. Not only has this but it faced emulation from big papers such as the mail and the telegra ph as sound. It is not just television and newspapers however, with recent elections universe dominated by the internet.Access to watch the debates at any time anywhere around the world and the use of social networking filled the electorate with images and stories of the candidates in every quoin of their lives. This also meant however, that the already low levels of genuine political news stories were being drowned out by an obsession with image and personality. Barac Obama spent an unprecedented ccc million on his campaign for election, spending about $10 per vote he gained. This was almost twice the amount his rival spent, and is likely to have been a factor in the outcome.The system in America requires any candidate to gain 5% of the subject field vote to receive national funding, so minor parties or independents stand a very light chance of breaking into the system. If they do manage to, they then have to have the ability of raising large sums of money. Billionaires such as Ross Perot (independent 1992) could combat this, but even the third party in 2000 (Ralph Nader Greens) claimed that he simply could not keep up with the spending of the two major parties and would never be in with a chance.There have been some limitations however, in the get of the Federal Election Campaign Act (1974) limiting individual contributions to $ gramme and corporate contributions (from PACs) to $5000. This seems less of a ceiling to expenditures and more of a skyline, considering the spending patterns of the last election. It is a little different in the UK, with a uttermost of i??7000 allowed to be spent in any one constituency, and candidates that hunt to spend less than three quarters of this.The heterogeneous nature of the regular army would obviously require more expenditure in a campaign, but the 5, 6, and sometimes 7 figure expenditures in senate races seem slightly out of proportion. In Japan the electoral system was making candidates of the same party cam paign against each other, which gradually pushed the price of campaigns up and up until clean up was enforced. The influence money was having on elections had created a rift amongst parties as well as losing a sense of democracy. It is clear that money and the media have a huge influence on voting behaviour, but not in the way it may first have been perceived.Where the theories generally carried the view that money could drive the media, and the media in turn influence the electorate, I believe it is changing voting behaviour in a different sense. Money and the media have glorified politics, and particularly in America have given it a Hollywood effect. The public are reacting to this by voting not based the manifesto and ideologies of candidates, but voting for the greatest celebrity. Money and the media do crook too great a role in modern day politics, and have replaced the electorates voting on policy with its voting on personality.