Watch Crash Course U.S. Government and Politics Season 1 Episode 45 Online

Today we wrap up our discussion of the media by talking about how the government interacts with and influences the content we see. Now it may be easy to assume that because we live in a free-market capitalist society, the only real regulation of the media is determined by the consumers, but this isn’t necessarily true. The government controls a number of factors including the potential for lawsuits, spectrum licensing, FCC fines, and has even tried to pass a bit of legislation. So we’ll talk about how all of these factors influence the media and end with a discussion of a pretty hotly debated topic these days - net neutrality.