Berry, D. and Kamau, C. (2016). Public Policy and Media Organizations. [2nd edition]. Routledge (original) (raw)
Seminar, 2002
MODERN politics is largely a mediated politics, experienced by most citizens through their broadcast and print media of choice. Any study of democracy in contemporary conditions is, therefore, also a study of how the media report and interpret political events and issues, and how media itself influences the political processes and shapes public opinion. Thus, media has become central to politics and public life in contemporary democracy. Access to media is one of the key measures of power and equality. Media can shape power and participation in society in negative ways, by obscuring the motives and interests behind political decisions, or in positive ways, by promoting the involvement of people in those decisions. In this respect the media and governance equation becomes important. Media occupies a space that is constantly contested, which is subject to organizational and technological restructuring, to economic, cultural and political constraints, to commercial pressures and to changing professional practices. The changing contours of this space can lead to different patterns of domination and agenda-setting and to different degrees of openness and closure in terms of access, patterns of ownership, available genres, types of disclosure and range of opinions represented. Although it is intrinsically difficult to theorize about the complexities implied in this formulation, the implications of the empirical outcomes of the struggle over this terrain are crucial for the ways in which they help or hinder democratic governance. For this reason journalists and their audiences, when they first read, hear or see news, should always ask the irreverent question: 'Says who?' This may be bad news for the official managers of society, but it will be good news for democracy. In a democratic society, therefore, the role of the media assumes seminal importance. Democracy implies participative governance, and it is the media that informs people about various problems of society, which makes those wielding power on their behalf answerable to them. That the actions of the government and the state, and the efforts of competing parties and interests to exercise political power should be underpinned and legitimized by critical scrutiny and informed debate facilitated by the institutions of the media is a normative assumption uniting the political spectrum. It has been further remarked by Davis Merritt, in his work Public Journalism and Public Life that what journalists should bring to the arena of public life is knowledge of the rules – how the public has decided a democracy should work – and the ability and willingness to provide relevant information and a place for that information to be discussed and turned into