sputing the media’s widespread coverage of presidential elections, “last Sunday’s presidential debate was something of a dud in the ratings, drawing only three-quarters of the audience that say the first Bush-Clinton-Perot encounter in 1992. But no one who missed the event could possibly have felt left out-not if they glanced at a newspaper the next morning, or watched television news, or listened to a radio talk show, or tapped into any one of dozens of computer Websites. In fact, for the next 24 hours they could hardly escape the darn thing,” Zoglin, 1996: 1).
Yet, for all the widespread coverage of the debates, the actual issues of the candidates are often blunted by the fact that the mass media will report in the same widespread manner on any number of other pieces of news, regardless of its importance to the American people. This is not to say that “a presidential debate-even a dull one-is a big news event, so maybe it merited this full-blown media bombardment. In today’s overheated news environment, however, the same sort of saturation coverage is piled on even trivial events: Hillary Clinton's conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt, or a six-year-old’s suspension from school for kissing a classmate,” (Zoglin, 1996: 1).
Another aspect of the media’s expanded role is the way in which the private sector has such control and influence over the media. For example, even though we are seldom able to hear the views of liberals in the mass media to any extensive degree, hard-line partisan pundits like Rush Limbaugh saturate the airwaves. This has caused an analysis of the situation to illustrate that Limbaugh gets the media time because his views do not offend corporate America, which produces the show, “Why do Rush Limbaugh’s extreme, partisan views get so much airtime, while liberal, progressive voices are rarely heard in commercial broadcasts?…Though vulgar and mean, Limbaugh’s brand of extremis...