Media in Politics

Many historians and pundits remember John F. Kennedy as "the first media president," meaning that his 1960 campaign was the first in which television became a major determining factor in who won the election. Since the advent of media as a major player in elections, things have never been the same in U.S. politics. In the days of large metropolitan dailies and monthly magazines, electors were forced by the nature of the medium to form their opinions based on reasoned arguments and substance. Obviously, there was still journalistic slant and political spin, but arguments put forth in print require more thought than is needed to respond to a TV sound bite on the evening news. Before Kennedy, such things as presence, appearance and charisma meant much less than logic, structure, consistency and cohesion. Indeed, the vague-sounding words have become the new lexicon of electronic politics. The...