Deck 11: Media,Politics,and Government: Talking Heads Are Better Than None

Question 1

Faith-based religions are often based on ______.

A)agreement reality
B)experiential reality
C)mediated reality
D)alternative reality

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Which of the following political philosophers once wrote,"The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed"?

A)Thomas Hobbes
B)Thomas Jefferson
C)Thomas Paine
D)Thomas Aquinas

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Which one of the "thinkers in boxes" highlighted in this chapter is known for his defense of freedom of the press?

A)John Stuart Mill
B)Jon Stewart
C)Rod Stewart
D)John Milton

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Realities you have personally experienced are known as experiential.

Question 5

The seeming collusion between the news media and elites is best explained by ______.

A)a vast conspiracy
B)the alien abduction model
C)the mutual exploitation model
D)the mutual assured destruction model

Question 6

The use of a speech to provide a cognitive framework for understanding an issue,policy,or candidate to predispose people to interpret a myriad of facts and snippets in one way rather than another is referred to as ______.

A)spin
B)framing
C)both A and B
D)neither A nor B

Question 7

Which of the following best describes the cockroach theory of politics?

A)Politicians enjoy staying in groups with other politicians.
B)Elites almost never engage in poor behavior.
C)Politicians avoid wrongdoing out of fear of media exposure.
D)Politicians must build up an extra thick skin or exoskeleton.

Question 8

In order to understand the way the news media operate,it is essential to understand which of the following about the news?

A)The news has a left-wing bias.
B)The news is made by those who do not take their jobs all that seriously.
C)The news is created by those who wish to support the elite.
D)The news is a business.

Question 9

Which of the following statements about protests is false?

A)Even the biggest protests involve only a tiny portion of the public.
B)Media coverage of protests provides further evidence of a conspiracy between the media and elites.
C)Media coverage of protests can create the perception that the protesters represent a significant portion of the population.
D)For a protest to be effective,the organizers must insert the protest into the political reality of the majority of the population.

Question 10

Which of the following journalistic norms can actually increase the distortions caused by the dramatic imperative?

A)objectivity and thoroughness
B)objectivity and fairness
C)professionalism and fairness
D)professionalism and objectivity

Question 11

The realities that someone has personally,directly experienced constitute that person's ______.

A)experiential reality
B)agreement reality
C)mediated reality
D)constructed reality

Question 12

Which of the following is not one of the four primary elements that guide the selection of news stories?

A)conflict
B)complexity
C)deviation from the norm
D)sex

Question 13

What product do news outlets sell?

A)news
B)entertainment
C)drama
D)people's attention

Question 14

Which of the following statements is false?

A)Name recognition is perhaps the biggest factor in democratic elections.
B)In democratic nations,the ability to gain coverage in the news media is tremendously valuable.
C)Members of the elite actively discourage the news media from covering their activities.
D)The presumption among journalists is that elites are newsworthy.

Question 15

According to A Novel Approach to Politics textbook,virtually all of political reality is which of the following?

A)a mediated reality
B)a censored reality
C)an unmediated reality
D)an illusory perception

Question 16

Which of the following is a part of your experiential reality rather than your agreement reality?

A)the war in Afghanistan
B)Sarah Palin's 2012 presidential campaign
C)your interaction with your highly gifted political science instructor
D)the Jewish Holocaust during World War II

Question 17

Which of the following points about the news is false?

A)There is an emphasis on conflict.
B)There is a focus on sex.
C)There is an emphasis on what is normal.
D)There is a focus on tragedy.

Question 18

Framing occurs when politicians do which of the following?

A)blame others in order to escape blame themselves
B)provide only the outlines for a bill and allow the government to fill in the details
C)predispose people to interpret facts by carefully choosing and building a conceptual framework
D)retire from politics to take jobs with the news media

Question 19

What is the term for the set of instinctual and learned filters our minds use in sorting and processing the mass of incoming information?

A)mediated reality
B)cognitive frameworks
C)constructed frameworks
D)framing dimensions

Question 20

The mutual exploitation model concerns the relationship between which of the following two groups?

A)the news media and elites
B)the news media and protest groups
C)the news media and public interest groups
D)the news media and the attentive public

Question 21

Describe the mutual exploitation model and explain how elites and the media benefit from their relationship with each other.

Question 22

The way the news media filters can favor certain cognitive frameworks over others.

Question 23

Most news media products are available free of charge (such as through TV news and websites)or very inexpensively (such as through newspapers).How do the media make money,and what are they really selling? How does this affect the way news is framed?

Question 24

A small proportion of the political information in your head comes to you through the news.

Question 25

News is not a business.

Question 26

Thomas Jefferson viewed the freedom of the press as more functional than ideological.

Question 27

The very premise of the dramatic story structure is action and change driven by unity.

Question 28

Elites do not have the motivation and the resources to actively try to gain beneficial news coverage.

Question 29

According to the author,the news sells your attention.

Question 30

Describe the concept of mediated reality and explain the impact of mediated reality on one's understanding of the political environment.

Question 31

The key to understanding the role of the news media in politics is understanding the consistent distortions created by the media.

Question 32

The unhindered press is meant to serve certain social and political functions.

Question 33

The image of politics presented to us by the media is distorted.

Question 34

Your mind uses a set of instinctual and learned filters for sorting the mass of incoming information and selecting which bits it will recognize and pass on to the thinking parts of your brain.

Question 35

How can a journalist's efforts to provide both sides of a story work to distort reality?

Question 36

Define and explain the difference between experiential and agreement reality.

Question 37

The news media provides an accessible,inexpensive,communal,and reliable source of information to form experiential reality about politics and government.

Question 38

Reporters write news items using the dramatic structure of stories,whether or not the news actually fits that structure.

Question 39

Identify and explain the various ways that the dramatic imperative affects how journalists report the news.

Question 40

Not all conflicts are made up of two reasonably equal sides.