1. Dissection 1
As technology continues to develop and advance, we are
exposed to greater impacts on everyday life. This holds true
especially for advances in media technology. The media is a
universal aspect of life on a day to day basis. A time when it
really becomes prevalent is in regards to government and
political information. The Internet has become an important tool
for people around the world to not only gain political
knowledge, but to engage themselves in the political process
itself. Some scholars suggest that this may "revitalize
democratic society, enabling citizens to command the political
and economic resources needed to become effectively self-
governing" (Winner, 2003,p. 167). I use this reference to
express just how times have changed because of this social
networking medium. The idea that the Internet may create a
shift in how certain people view democracy is not a new one.
The revolutions of the newspaper, radio, and television each
raised the same questions. Certain media sites share news from
a conservative perspective while others are more liberal, and
this is an ongoing debate in society, is there such a thing being
able to learn about a situation, without having your views
challenged, or have reassurance that you are right in how you
see our current situation. My point being, it is difficult to find
different issues than those in previous posts have discussed,
because other than a few controversies different media outlets,
report on what they feel is important, making it hard to
establish what really is a problem or important.
Multiple media sites such as; CNN, NY magazine,
Whitehouse.gov, bbc, MSNBC, FOX and CBS to name a few
outlets have covered heightened controversial issues such as the
enforcement on immigration (Travel ban), retracting the
Affordable Care Act, interrogation techniques, border patrol,
building and funding of a wall, to name a few. When we read
the news, it feels like literally the only thing ever being spoken
about are the horrible things happening in this world. But when

2. it comes to politics, why do media outlets pick and choose what
to speak about. Take CNN and ABC, at one point, prior to FOX
news surpassing other media reporters in ratings, had the
biggest audiences, however, according to business insider, they
also were also not the most trusted in America. Conservative
leaning outlets seem to be the least trusted, yet liberal outlets
also, ranked lower than Wall Street journal and NY times. Once
a media outlet establishes who their audience is, they can then
adjust what content they will focus on because that is how you
keep people coming back for more, how you can relate to them.
Pal discusses criteria related to that of implementation and how
certain indicators can be used to determine whether a policy can
actually be successful, depending on administration standards,
and provided that these new policies are free of conflict, no
external constraints, valid theory and any miscommunication
between the parties of interest, to include the developers of said
policy and the citizens. Depending on the majority of which
political party controls the house, policies may lean more in
favor of their best interests, while still benefitting the nation as
a whole, just not as much perhaps. Let us use California as an
example, a blue state, has been at the forefront of refuting a lot
of policies/ executive orders being passed by our current
administration. Here we see a gap between state and federal
governments, not being able to work together, which in turn I
feel questions pal in a way that how can a policy ever be
“successful” if there is such dissonance within the different
levels of government.
Dissection 2
The new presidential administration has been in the news for a
variety of different policies and proposed laws over the past 50
days or so. The news media has focused on two big issues
during the last couple weeks. The first issue that has received
around-the-clock coverage over the last month has
been immigration. The topic of immigration has been a wide-
ranging issue because of the increased number of arrests and

3. deportations of undocumented immigrants as well as the affect
of the president's executive order travel ban. One of the reasons
that this issue has received so much attention is due to the fact
that there seems to be no agreement upon the objectives of this
administration's policies. The is a sharp contrast in what is
being told to the public and what is actually being
implemented. This is why the president's executive order was
stopped by the courts. There was not a clear alignment in the
thinking of the administration and the language of the executive
order. There has also been a lot of discussion about the
increase in military spending and how it will affect other
aspects of the president's first budget. The president stated this
past week that he intends to increase military spending by $54
billion and in the process there will be severe cuts to
"education, the environment, science, and poverty" (Shear &
Steinhauer, 2017). The cuts in federal programs will also look
to benefit retirees as well as defense spending. This has
received a fair amount of media attention as well because of
how large our military budget is compared to many of the other
areas of federal spending. These issues do deserve a there share
of media attention but there are other policy issues that deserve
much more attention. There has been little mention of how
what investments will be made to the nation's
crumbling infrastructure. It also seems that the issue of health
care slips in and out of media coverage as well. I think the
media has focused on military spending and immigration for a
few reasons. The increase in military spending comes at the
expense of many other federal programs that people rely on.
The president has also said that "We have to start winning wars
again" and that when he was young "We never lost a war"
(Cesca, 2017). This has many in the media speculating whether
or not the country is preparing for armed conflict in the near
future. Immigration has received a large amount of media
coverage because it is an issue that touches close to home for
many people. Many people are related to or have friends or
acquaintances that are in the country illegally. Whether people

4. agree on the topic of immigration, nearly everyone is affected
by it in some fashion or another. The coverage of these issues
is definitely covered different based on the network reporting
the story. Fox News will report these issues in a way that is
supportive of the president. MSNBC will largely report the
negative effects of these policies. CNN does a better job of
reporting reporting the facts without bias but they still lean
slightly left in their reporting. Many of the problems that have
arisen from these policies is in how they have been presented to
the public. There is a clear difference in the way policies are
explained by the administration and how they are being
implemented. The policies lack many of the elements for
successful implementation as listed in the Pal text. The policies
lack proper design and there appears to be a lack of
communication in the creation of these policies.