RESOLVED: The influence of the media is detrimental to the american political process.

Before I begin, I would like to announce that the definition for "The Media" as stated in the resolution that I will be using in this case is: The means of mass communication.(especially TV, radio, newspaper, and internet) regarded collectively. I negate the resolution of resolved "The influence of the media is detrimental to the American political process." Value:Knowledge:As defined as an awareness or understanding of a fact or circumstance."Black"s Law Dictionary Third Pocket Edition." Criterion: Ideological diffusion: Defined as "The spread of ideas through different cultures by contact." Knowledge is the most basic value for this debate, and the best criterion to uphold this value is ideological diffusion. Without ideological diffusion knowledge couldn"t spread from person to person, this would halt the development of the governmental process. With this being said the governmental process would not even exist. I. Knowledge is the basis of life as we know it. I would like to begin this contention with a quote, "Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to agree freely according to conscience, above all liberties." ~John Milton. Without knowledge the human race would have never evolved into what we are today. The progress we have made as humans is extremely substantial. We have come from a mindless brute band of neanderthals into a civilized intelligent society. This evolution wouldn"t have been possible without knowledge, nor could it have been possible without ideological diffusion. Because without knowledge of how we were or how we are, we can"t possibly know where we are going. As famous Jamaican publisher Marcus Garvey once said, "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots." II. Without knowledge or ideological diffusion the American political process wouldn"t be possible. As we have previously discussed, knowledge is everything we know and do today. Without this knowledge that was received by ideological diffusion, our government today wouldn"t function how it is now, let alone exist. Through media we have been able to grasp certain ideas that have molded how our government is today. Just one example, in the colonial era of our newly settled colonies we began to realize that we did not enjoy having our rights suppressed by King George the II. As a result of ideological diffusion, when we declared independence from England, we altered the idea of the accepted governmental process and molded it into a non tyrannical and democratic process, and this is still the process we function under today. Without knowledge or theological diffusion this could never have happened. III. Media is the most efficient form of ideological diffusion. The amount of people that can be affected by media is quite substantial. To provide a visual for how this works, I will use a hypothetical example. Let"s say that you watched CNN last night, and you heard something you thought was interesting. The next day you share this information with a friend (a prime example of theological diffusion) and he shares this with two of his other friends. One of his friends is an author, and the other is a newspaper editor. The author writes a book about the topic and the editor writes a newspaper article about the topic. This is a great example of how through ideological diffusion, we can spread a single idea to a very large amount of people. Through news, TV, books, radio, newspapers, etc. We are able to convey all this information to the entire United States. A recent study from a journalist team consisting of KENNETH OLMSTEAD, MARK JURKOWITZ, AMY MITCHELL AND JODI ENDA. Shows that 71% of people watch local news, 65% view network TV news, and 38% watch cable TV news. Through these calculations we can see that ideological diffusion is efficiently reaching a mass number of people through only one of many types of media. This study also shows that 82% of local news viewers also view network TV, and 44% of them also watch cable TV. Other percentages of Americans who view more than one TV source are available upon request.