Understanding media in democratic society

Why do media matter, and why is journalism important? A useful starting point is to
review
existing scholarship on the role of the press in democracies. Cases of investigative
journalism,
like The Sunday Times and thalidomide, are often held up as high points of the
profession.
The literature surrounding normative functions of the press in Western societies sees
journalism as a democratic institution. The basic and rarely questioned duties of
media in a
democracy are to: supply accurate and sufficient information; reflect public opinion;
and act
as a watchdog against the state (Scammell, 2000: xiii). The supply and exchange of
verified
information is regarded as a necessary condition of the public sphere as envisaged by
Habermas (1989). The belief is that an effective system for transmitting and receiving
information must be in place in order for public opinion and political action to be
effective.
Despite variations in models of the public sphere in modern democracies, Ferree et
al.
(2002a) highlight that media are important to each of them. In short, media are the
principal
institutions of the public sphere (Curran, 1997: 29). As McNair (2000: 1) explains,
government and governance must be underpinned and legitimised by media
scrutiny and
intelligent debate. In order for this to occur, journalism should ensure that it acts as
the
publics representative, speaking for all groups in society and not merely the
powerful.
Though there are calls of a crisis in public communication (Blumler and Gurevitch,
1995),
McNair argues that modern media and their audiences are more sophisticated and
effective
than ever (2000: 3). Finally, journalism is expected to act as a watchdog against
powerful
institutions (Scammell, 2000), ensuring accountability in public and private bodies.
Associated with these functions is freedom of speech, which journalism both
embodies and
relies on, as Street (2001) has discussed in his conceptualisations of a free press. In
sum, it is
commonly accepted that in theory a successful democracy needs a media system
that
lives up to the standards of providing information, representation, and government
scrutiny.
MSc Dissertation Stefan B. Hall
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Yet it is also recognised that this type of reporting has a short history. Its origins are
in the
beliefs of Walter Lippmann, who sought a move away from the propaganda of
Western
governments after World War One and towards objective and balanced reporting
instead
(Allan, 2010: 61). Over time, objectivity seen as the best way to counteract political
influence and serve the public interest came to be the defining norm of Western
journalism
(Kaplan, 2010), and is now a ritual of newspapermen (Tuchman, 1972). However,
despite
the existence of the objectivity ethic, there is a significant strand of literature
demonstrating
how journalism has not always lived up to expectations. Herman and Chomsky
(2002) argue
that newspaper support mechanisms including ownership and advertising
actually
reinforce power structures in society, to the detriment of politics and media1.
Similarly, both
Lichtenberg (1990) and ONeill (2002) have implied that concentrations of
ownership in
mass media undermine the freedom of