Provide a 9 pages analysis while answering the following question: Media and Political Affairs. Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide. An abstract is required.

One of the primary roles played by media is communication (Louw, 2010). Communication encompasses the sending and receiving information for variant purposes, commonly from the sender to the recipient. For this to happen, communication channels are needed, for which media serves as an aiding tool. This process covers more than just political affairs, but politics constitute the central focus of this paper. To determine, assess, and evaluate trends in the media-political affairs relationship, it is vital to account for the underlying effects that political affairs have on the media.

Ekstrom and Patrona (2011) contend that political affairs positively influence the media’s effectiveness and efficiency. This is due to the power that politics holds relative to media rights and freedoms. Political affairs inform the overall legal structuring of any given society. In so doing, political affairs can essentially enhance or cripple media operations. In other words, political undertakings can, in one way or another, affect media freedom through the legal structure. The integration of politics into systems of governance provides for this realization.

A streamlined political system is aligned with the needs, concerns, and preferences of the political system’s people. This implies that such a political system will uphold the people’s rights and freedoms relative to information access. In this case, the media is a fundamental driver of information access to the people. Political affairs can virtually foster media growth and development or ground media operations altogether (Harfoush, 2009). This situation varies within and across democratic, dictatorial, and totalitarian societies.

Reporting of progressive political affairs is an activity that media platforms continuously undertake. This is done by observing what is happening on the ground and relaying the observed phenomena to the people. In so doing, political affairs enhance the role, duty, and responsibility of media platforms. The people are the ultimate recipients of all the activities undertaken by the media. When the press reports political affairs to the people, it essentially informs the people.