Negative LD Case
RESOLVED: The influence of the media is detrimental to the American political process.
Observation I: Definitions
Influence- the power to change or affect someone or something: the power to cause changes
without directly forcing them to happen
Media- a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or expression; especially: medium
Detrimental- causing damage or injury
American- of or relating to the U.S. or its citizens
Political Process- the process of the formulation and administration of public policy usu. by
interaction between social groups and political institutions or between political leadership and
public opinion
All of these definitions are provided by the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Observation II: Value and Criterion
The value for this debate will be that of rational expectations. When citizens are provided with
adequate information pertaining to their government, they can be expected to make rational
decisions as to how that government should operate. This concept is indisputably nondetrimental to American politics. The criterion to measure this value will be that of distributing
accurate information. With the distribution of accurate information, the theory of rational
expectations is assured.
Contention I: Media is the cornerstone of a functional democracy.
Democracy, whether it is representative or direct, is based on the decisions of a country’s
citizens. In order to maintain an educated populace knowledgeable of current affairs and
domestic issues, information must be able to be distributed. Therefore media, defined as a
medium for information, is critical to any functional democracy. Given this certainty, the
influence of the media is not only non-detrimental to a true democracy, but is also an intrinsic
part of the American political process.
Contention II: An informed populace is an integral part of the American political process.
Information, and therefore media, is essential to perpetuating an informed citizenry. It is of no
consequence whether the aforementioned information appears as an opinionated blog
concerning the president’s irresponsibility or an article from the New York Times, all information
is vital to the education of the American people. Cold statistics can show that lack of datarelated information can harm the way citizens perceive and therefore direct our country. A
recent study conducted by the Indiana University shows that people often attribute defense,
foreign aid, and government subsidies as taking up the majority of government funds, when in
actuality the only of these factors that comes close to consuming the majority of federal funding
is defense, which only takes up 17% of funds. This is detrimental to American politics because
due to this misconception, a citizen might cast his vote towards a candidate who pledges to cut
something like foreign aid spending, whose funding actually does not constitute much of the
federal budget. These sorts of issues are caused by a lack of media, and prove that when the
American populace is not provided with adequate media, our country suffers as a result.