Navigating the News

A Political Media User's Guide

Michael K. Baranowski

• Publisher: Praeger
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9798216122029
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This is the book for anyone who aspires to the title "informed citizen." It clearly explains how political news works, how the media influences readers—and how to sort through it all to be a better, smarter consumer of political news. In a perfect world, political news would be objective and fact-based. Instead, it is biased and unreliable. This engaging book was written to help readers master the media. Combining insight and humor, it exposes the bias, irrationality, bad arguments, and misleading numbers that abound in political media. It shows readers how to take advantage of available news sources, and it guides them in developing the skills needed to sort through the flood of hype and misinformation. Specifically, the book examines types of political media and why it matters whether one gets political news from television, radio, newspapers, or the Internet, including social media. It discusses the latest developments in political behavior, economics, media studies, and neuroscience to explain why the political media does what it does to systematically distort consumers' view of politics—and it looks at ways consumers tend to be irrational in choosing and interpreting news. Finally, it offers concrete suggestions that will enable readers to become more critical of what they read, see, and hear.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• One: Introduction to the News
• Two: Types of Media
• Three: The Medium Matters
• Four: Bias
• Five: Irrationality
• Six: Bad Arguments
• Seven: Misleading Numbers
• Eight: “Survey Says…”: Problems with Polls
• Nine: What’s in Your Cognitive Toolkit?
• Ten: Navigating the News
• Appendix: Political Media Resources
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author