Theories of the Mass Media
Mass media are channels of communication through which messages flow, produced by a few for consumption by many people. Further, it is the main ways of mass communication. Of all the existing means of mass communication, it is only the press that has spawned a set of theories to explain and to justify its actions and its purposes. ( 1994)
Moreover, the press has gone through many significant changes since ideas about press freedom were first discussed. New forms of journalism have developed. There have been changes in printing techniques, changes in ownership, and even changes in perceptions of the role of the newspaper within society. Radio and television have also usurped some of its duties. ( 1994)
Despite the enormity of these changes and the social, economic and political transformation of the societies within which these changes have taken place, the concepts most often used to justify the existence and role of the press and the media still retain significance today. ( 1994)
Discussion of the roles and duties of the media in the contemporary scene must inevitably go beyond earlier and rather limited comments on the press. Nevertheless, one must not underestimate the importance of earlier ideas about press freedom, nor must one underestimate the extent to which these ideas still reside within more complex statements about the mass media. ( 1994)
Freedom of the Press
The press acquired an educational role and the role of watchdog. It was the fourth estate taking governments to task and protecting the public interest as well as representing public opinion. It could also help create a politically literate society. In all these intricate ways, the press became the channel par excellence through which political debate was to be conducted and political society came into existence and survived. The nature of political representation and the meaning of public opinion would all change as a consequence of the existence of the press. ( 1994)
However, in practice, few of the conceptual embellishments of the idea of the freedom of the press proved to be any more than occasional glimpses of what an ideal press ought to be like. It could no more act as a watchdog than a critical examiner of the actions of politicians or government because it was closely and inextricably tied to both. The newspaper was anything but an independent, responsible, oppositional/adversarial force in society. ( 1994)
Hence, it was a politically committed and attached organ. Newspapers were thus failing to represent fully public opinion. Therefore, the concept of the freedom of the press must be examined in the first instance with reference to the structural and organizational independence of the press from the state. ( 1994)
Today’s press is structurally and organizationally outside the control of the state. It daily confronts pressures and constraints which limit its freedom. Like all other institutions, it cannot enjoy absolute freedom. The limits on the freedom of the press are often overlooked yet their consequences may be just as severe as those which the state can impose. ( 1994)
Since press freedom is never absolute, there can be no real way of guaranteeing that the mass media will represent a wide range of views. For as soon as a news organization is established within a competitive economic system, it has to exercise choices about what sort of medium it is, what it does and for whom it does it. These choices inevitably narrow its vision and place it in a certain niche in the media market. ( 1994)
THE PRESS IN THE AGE OF THE MEDIA
Despite the changing circumstances within which the press now operates and much evidence with which to discredit its own claims to legitimacy as the fourth estate, there has been no serious attempt to reconsider the theories of the press and the media generally as they relate to the remaining years of this century. The press today lives alongside the power of television and competes with it for allegiance and influence. Yet the ideas used to justify the existence and work of the media, such as the freedom of the press are ideas whose true meanings are in the memories of past struggles in very different circumstances. ( 1994)
One finds the libertarian and social responsibility models of the press in those states where freedom to publish and the freedom of the press are established. On the other hand, where there are no such freedoms, one finds the authoritarian and Soviet models of the press. ( 1994)
The libertarian model is identified with the struggle for a free press. As this model had some rather obvious shortcomings in that it identified the freedom to publish with individual property rights of purchase and sale of newspaper titles, it was necessary to overlay the libertarian position with an element of social conscience. As a result, the social responsibility theory was born. Newspapers remained the property of their owners. They could still be bought and sold in the marketplace but owners and newspapers were now credited with obligations to society-obligations to provide information, to allow a diversity of views to be printed, to encourage the best and most professional of journalistic activity so as to pursue truth and knowledge. ( 1994)
Severe criticism of these ideas did little to detract from the belief that even a sickly press was preferable to the Soviet and authoritarian theories. These contrasted the Western models with the sorts of restrictions that could be and were applied to the media in other political systems: the media were not free to publish, the expression of opinion was controlled, the party/government could dictate the content of the media, and the essential freedoms associated with the Western models were obviously absent. ( 1994)
These four theories of the press have featured in numerous discussions about the role of the press. Although these theories could not easily be deployed in the real world, they did serve a valuable purpose as condensations of patterns of thought about the media. On the one hand, they proposed the creation of a press/media where no regulations restrained freedoms and, on the other hand, they pointed to the undesirable nature of regulations. ( 1994)
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