Hegemony Post

Using hegemony, I have been able to better understand this interview between Bill O'Reilly and Laura Berman in the following way. In this interview, Bill O'Reilly is using agenda setting in order to give his audience what they want. Fox News is known to be a conservative news station, and it has been shaped that way by the people who own the company. In being a conservative, biased station, Fox News is once again putting a story up that they feel viewers should see. It is not necessarily an important story, but since the story covers something that conservatives despise, Fox News felt the need to put it on The O'Reilly Factor. And therefore, agenda setting has taken place to put a certain kind of content of the media on this program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g8VNUkIemw

Bill O'Reilly is putting this segment on his show, because he knows that his audience are conservatives. And since this segment is over a teen lesbian couple, he knows that he will be able to further enforce the conservatives negative feelings toward gays people and gay supporters. And in this way, Bill O'Reilly is instead telling his viewers how they should interpret and feel about this issue instead of thinking for themselves. In this way, agenda setting is clearly seen, which I would have not noticed without learning the meaning of hegemony. And after seeing this, I feel as though we need to have a moderate news channel, so that viewers may get the information that they need, and be simply told what to believe because the news companies don't want the viewers to have different views on matters than the news stations.