Midterm 2

Question 1

How has news reporting changed?

Answer 1

• This new digital age in news is described as one in which there is virtually unlimited access to information, news, and analysis; and a decline in the presence and importance of the mainstream media.
• In recent years, people have turned increasingly to the internet as a source of news, while decreasing their reliance on tv, newspapers, and radio.

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Question 2

Favorited source of political news?-

Answer 2

• The mainstream news media retain their central role in the gathering and reporting of serious political and governmental news. They are a collection of nationally prominent newspapers, tv networks, usually with the help of wire services.
• Serious national news comes from Washington D.C., the seat of the federal government, and New York City; the center of publishing and finance in the United States.
• The vast majority of all news stories, were drawn from situations over which the newsmakers had substantial control: press conferences, interviews, press releases, and official proceedings.

Question 3

How is the media a watchdog?

Answer 3

Watchdog-the role of the media in scrutinizing the actions of government officials.

• The founders subscribed to the idea that a free press was essential for keeping an eye on government and checking its excesses .
• The idea that the press should dig up facts and warn the public when officials are doing something wrong.
• The First amendment helps ensure that the news media will be able to expose officials misbehavior without fear of censorship or prosecution.

Question 4

What is the political reality presented on the media?

Answer 4

• Tends to present a narrow, stereotypical reality.
• Tends to be fragmented and superficial
• Anything complex that deals with larger social political issues doesn’t get covered or is presented in terms of some specfic individualized story.

Question 5

The problems of media mergers

Answer 5

• A few see efficiency gains and an increase in the output and availability of information. But some critics maintain that the concentrated corporate control of our media adds dangerously to the already strong business presence in American policies. Those who use the term media monopoly worry that media corporations are so large, powerful, and interconnected , that alternative voices to the economically and politically powerful cannot have their views aired.
• Others worry that news organizations may pull their punches when reporting about the activities of their corporate parents.

Question 6

How foreign news is covered by the news media?

Answer 6

• Foreign news, tends to be episodic.
• A story comes as a surprise to most Americans because they have not been prepared by background reports. For a few days or weeks, the story dominates the news, with intensive coverage through pictures, interviews, and commentaries. Then, if nothing new happens, the story grows stale and disappears fro the media. Most viewers are left with little more understanding of the country than they began with. Thus, they find it difficult to form judgments about foreign policy.

Question 7

How is the media an instrument of democracy?

Answer 7

The news media should fulfill several roles in this democracy.

• -Watchdog over government
• -Clarifying electoral choices
• ——–what the political parties stand for and how the candidates shape up.
• -Providing policy information
• ——-citizens need to know about emerging problems that will need attention and how well current policies are working.

-In a democracy, government should respond to public opinion, but that opinion should be reasonable well informed

Question 8

What is a public interest group?

Answer 8

Private organizations and voluntary associations that try to influence what government does

Question 9

How lobbyists try to influence members of congress?

Answer 9

Build relationships with important legilative and committee staff members.

Question 10

Critiques of pluralism

Answer 10

Pluralism is a political scientist who views American democracy as best understood in terms of the interaction, conflict, and bargaining of groups.

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Question 11

What is hard/soft money?

Answer 11

regulated money for candidates/not regulated

Question 12

How political parties contribute to democracy?

Answer 12

They facilitate majoritarian rule

Question 13

Parites at War

Answer 13

a

Question 14

How do third parties affect American politics?

Answer 14

• articulate new ideas that are eventually taken overby one or both major parties
• change the outcome of prsidential contest by changing the outcome of the electoral vote contest

Question 15

Barriers to success for minor parties in the US

Answer 15

5 percent of the vote in the genral election to get public funding

Question 16

Advocacy groups and their affects on the political parites

Answer 16

a

Question 17

How to decide whether to be involved in a social movement

Answer 17

a

Question 18

what is disturbance theory?

Answer 18

A theory positing that interest groups originate with changes in the conomic, social, or political enviorment that htreaten the well being of some segment of the population.

Question 19

Common methods of organization used by social movements

Answer 19

a

Question 20

causes of social movements

Answer 20

social distress

• resources for mobilization
• supportive enviorment
• sense of efficacy amongg the participants
• catalyst

Question 21

tactics of social movements

Answer 21

• typically unoncentional and dramatic
• often disruptive
• mass demonstrations
• hungre strikes
• labor movement
• sit down strick
• nonviolent civil disobdience

Question 22

what is suffrage

Answer 22

the right of something
amend the constituion.
for rights

Question 23

incumbent advantages

Answer 23

the electoral edge afforded to those alrady in office.
achieved through:
high visibility
-experience
-organization
-fund raising ability

Question 24

what are primarys

Answer 24

presidential elections

-every four years

Question 25

What is retrospective voting?

Answer 25

a form of election in which voters look back at the performance of a party in power and cast ballots on the basis of how well it did in office

Question 26

what is realignment

Answer 26

the process by which one party supplants another as the dominant party in a political system

Question 27

what is prospective voting

Answer 27

voter decides what government will do in the near future by choosing one or another responsible party.
-must provide a real choice to voters

Question 28

what is dealignment

Answer 28

a gradual reduction in the dominance of one political party without another party supplanting it.

Question 29

electoral reward/punishment

Answer 29

The tendency to vote for the incumbents when times are good and against them when times are bad

Question 30

what is the process of apportionment

Answer 30

The reallocation of house seats among the states, done after each natinoal census, to ensure that seats are held by the states in proportion to the size of their populations.

Question 31

what are congressional committees and what do they allow congressmen to do?

Answer 31

Committees are where many of the details of legislation are hammered out.
Where much of the oversight of the executive branch takes place.
-and allow enhancment of chances for reelectoin

Question 32

What is the delegate model of representation?

Answer 32

The representative mirror perfectly the views of their constituents.
-act in perfect accord with the wishes of their constituents.

Question 33

What is first-past-the-post?

Answer 33

electoral reform

Question 34

Senate service in states(elected when, for how long?)

Answer 34

6 years, eleceted every two

Question 35

What is the NEcessary and proper clause?

Answer 35

gives congress authority to make whatever laws are necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated powers.

Question 36

What is the elastic clause

Answer 36

Article 1, Section 8.

• also called the necessary and proper .
• gives congress the authority to make what ever laws are necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated powers/

Question 37

How is bicameralism a check on power

Answer 37

it check the executive