Bret's Agenda-Setting Theory Analysis

In Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw’s Agenda-Setting Theory, their initial claim is that the news media does not tell the public what to think, but tells them what to think about. The mass media has the ability to transfer the importance of items on their news agendas to the public agenda. According to McCombs & Shaw, “we judge as important, what the media judge as important” (Griffin, 359). They know that people have their own minds and ideas of what each thinks are important. On the other hand, the people that are the most influenced by the media agenda are those with a high need for orientation or a high “index of curiosity.” McCombs & Shaw later concluded that the media does not only tell the public what to think about, but they also may tell the public how to think about it, what to think about it, and possibly what to do about it (Griffin, 366).



This is a CNN news clip about Michael Phelps being caught in a photograph, smoking marijuana out of a bong. This portrays the Agenda-Setting Theory, because it is a clip of news media that is telling the public that this is important. This clip extends to almost nine-minutes in length, so CNN must find it to be an important news topic. The news reporter starts off this segment mentioning that Michael Phelps is a “role model” and is asking for people’s opinion on what they think about his actions. Not only is the reporter helping to show the public how they should view Phelps’ actions, but he is asking other people for their opinions as well. This will help mold those watchers, which have a high “index of curiosity,” as to what they should think about the issue.

I agree with McCombs & Shaw in that the news media does shape what the public finds to be important. All news media outlets picked up the Michael Phelps smoking marijuana story and within a week, it seemed that a large amount of people were talking about it.

--Bret Schlein

Agenda-Setting Theory.

The Agenda-Setting Theory was established by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. They believed that the, '"mass media [has] the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news agendas to make them public agendas"' (Griffin 359). In other words they believed that the media had the ability to form the publics opinion but that's not what their intention was. According to McCombs and Shaw, the media's agenda is to tell the public what they should be thinking about opposed to what they should be thinking and the ideas and opinions they should inevitably be conceiving.

The chapter on agenda-setting by Griffin goes into more detail about all aspects of the theory and how it's been tested and countered. One part of the chapter that most grabbed attention was not a quote but an actual section title within the chapter entitled, "Who Sets The Agenda For The Agenda Setters?" And within that section Griffin talks about an experiment that three gentleman by the names of Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder attempted to conduct that increased awareness to the global issues of economic inflation, national defense, and environmental pollution. The three men found that they were limited to choose what stories to do their experiment on from only stories that had been aired. Only three quarters of the stories that come across a news desk are actually aired on television. There is a lot of blame and fingerprinting to who is actually to blame but what I think it all boils down to is that we all want to make ourselves look good. I don't believe there is a conspiracy that all the news editors in the universe prevent all news from circulating and I don't agree that the subjects themselves that are being reported on all for the media to make themselves look good. Everyone is to blame because even if we don't make ourselves look good at one point in time you're either going to help someone else look good or buy into whatever agenda-setting techniques they've used to help form your opinions on what they want you to think about. Do you agree?

I'll leave you with this clip from an episode of West Wing. The entire time I read the section on agenda-setting I couldn't get this episode out of my head and I was so glad I was able to find a great clip on it.

In the following clip the White House's Press Secretary C.J. Cregg acts as the agenda setter for the media who acts as the agenda setter for the rest of the government and the American people.