Abstract
Since its beginning, about five decades ago, the mass media have been intertwined with political processes of every type, ranging from coverage of major political events and institutions to effects on campaigns and elections. In our liberal democracies, the media are central for the public: people have come to treat television, radio, newspapers, magazines and Internet as the basis on which to think and act in the world. We will devote special attention to television. Indeed, from its early position as a new medium for political coverage in the 1950s, it quickly supplanted radio and eventually newspapers to become by the early 1960s the major source of public information about politics. First, we will explore the power of the media over the political process. The media create the rules and set the agendas for coverage of politics.
