Can the agenda setting in communication be understood as the media reporting in a biased and distorted way?

The theory of "agenda setting function" reveals the control problem behind the mass communication process. In the traditional media environment, the initiative of mass communication is in the hands of a few ruling classes. They screen out the information that affects their ruling power through the "gatekeeper" of journalists, and then realize the guidance and control of public opinion by setting the order of information. Although the public has the ability of self-judgment, most of the information presented to the broad audience is spread through the media (media organizations under the control of the ruling power), and the information available to the public is limited.

But this is completely different from the media's generalization and distortion of the facts. In the traditional media environment, the mass media only grasped the information sources more and earlier than the general audience, and then selected some information that they thought was the most important according to the media's own news evaluation criteria. After all, the amount of information that the media can broadcast every day is limited, and factors such as timeliness should also be considered. After selecting important information, the media arranges the information according to their own weight judgment standards. What the mass media do is to attract attention and catch the audience at the first time, but besides the mass media, there is also interpersonal communication, especially the emergence of online media, which makes the traditional media have a new development in agenda setting. For example, the hot spots in the past may be presented to the audience by mass media, but many of the hot spots now are spontaneously formed by the audience, and some network hot spots are good examples.

All these indicate that the agenda will change with the change of communication environment.

The emergence of this theory is to better serve the dissemination of information, not to expose anything.