LIST OF REASONS

INTRO : The influence of the media on the perception of the people on public issues is empirically verifiable, and well-documented. As far back as 1922, Walter Lippman, a  newspaper columnist was concerned that the media had the power to present images to the public. Little wonder why  Bernard Cohen in 1963 observed that the press "may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.” The empirical confirmation of the truism of the Lippman’s 1922 position came only in 1968 when during the Chapel Hill Study, published in  Public Opinion Quarterly ,  Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw studied the 1968 American presidential election and demonstrated a strong correlation coefficient (r > .9) between what 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina thought was the most important election issue and what the local and national news media reported was the most important issue. That study pro