Agenda Setting and its affects on the NFL

Summary:

On September 8, 2014 The NFL announced a new set of rules concerning domestic violence in the NFL after a video of professional running back Ray Rice assaulting his then-fiance in an elevator went viral. In the past we had newspapers, the original source of the “Agenda Setting Theory” in mass media. Agenda setting means informing the public about an issue and bringing it to the top on the public agenda. The effect of Rice’s act caused the mass media to respond; even president Barack Obama made comments about the case stating all of the wrongs about domestic violence.

People did not have to be sports fans to hear about the incident or hear about the new policy set by the NFL. New media has allowed for more people to be more vocal with their opinions by doing things such as posting on twitter or other social media sites.  New media is what has forced the NFL to have to respond and take action on the case.

I believe that the incident was handled the way it had to be. If the media didn’t have such a huge influence on society, then the NFL would have probably kept the incident between them and Ray Rice. The NFL didn’t have any other option but to suspend Ray Rice because everyone had an opinion and the NFL was getting nothing but criticism.

Discussion:

In class we discussed if the video hadn't gone viral, would the NFL have taken action like they had? People were saying that the action of banning Ray Rice probably wouldn’t have occurred if the video wasn’t leaked, but because the media released it to the masses and heard their voices, their opinions on the crime forced the NFL to respond.

Most of the class didn’t realize the amount of time that the actual incident with Ray Rice had occurred since they were only hearing about it now. We agreed that major networks probably always tried to hide situations such as this one to keep it from the media so they could handle it the way they pleased, but new media today doesn’t allow for many things to be kept hidden. The video of Ray Rice and his wife in the elevator was sold to TMZ for a large amount of money, and therefore causing the NFL to do their research and start new laws such as the “Domestic Violence Policy.”

Sources:

Brody, Rachel. US News. U.S.News & World Report, 08 Sept. 2014. Web. 08 Sept. 2014.            <http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/09/08/should-the-nfl-ban-ravens-ray          rice-after-the-domestic-violence-video>.

<http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000391538/article/ray-rice-released-by-ravens    indefinitely-suspended>.