Watch and learn! Carefully selected media links will help bring key concepts and theories to life, preparing you for your studies and exams. 

Click on the following links which will open in a new window.

Audio Links

• On the Media: Whether Forecasting: TV coverage of the health care reform process focused mostly on the political gamesmanship surrounding the bill, with very little time spent on what was actually in the bill itself.

• On the Media: All About Elections: This hour of On the Media focuses on elections, including why voters make the decisions they do, and how campaigns try to influence them. This corresponds very to Ch. 7’s focus on media effects, voter decision making, and the use of media to influence and manipulate viewers.

Video Links

• Kennedy vs. Nixon - 1st 1960 Debate: A clip from the famous televised debate.

• War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death: This documentary examines the strategies used by administrations, both Democratic and Republican, to promote their agendas for war from Vietnam to Iraq.

• TED Talks: Bruce Schneier: The security mirage: Computer-security expert talks about the disconnect between security-risks as portrayed by the media versus more probably risks.

• A Brief Note About Not Feeding the Trolls: Jay Smooth describes how media coverage leads to public interest in Donald Trump and vice versa.

• Stephen Pinker on The Colbert Report: Scientist Stephen Pinker discusses how our perception of risk is influenced, in problematic ways, by the media.

Web Resources

• The Newseum. Educational resources from the Washington, DC-based museum of news media.

• Current Online. Website of the biweekly publication about public radio and television.

• The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. Studies news and entertainment media.

• Columbia Journalism Review. Website of a national magazine that takes critical look at news media.

• Media Matters for America. Progressive media analysis and criticism.

• Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Research on the performance of the press, including an annual report on the State of the Media.

• Democracy Now. An independent news organization that claims to be the largest public media collaboration in the U.S.

• WikiLeaks. The influential site which provides information from anonymous sources.