2. Fall 2014
Media and Society
International Islamic University, Islamabad

3. “Thomas Jefferson once said that if
He had to choose between a
government without newspapers
or newspapers without a
government, he would pick the latter”

4.  New times call for new thinking
 Countries in eastern Europe have redesigned media systems,
looking for new ideas and models
 Combined commercial and political onslaught has weaken the
domination of public service broadcasting
 Expansion of TV channels and technologies has changed the
landscape of media, requiring intellectual adjustments

5.  Much liberal commentary derives from a period when the
media consisted principally of small circulations, Pol.
Publications and small landed elites who dominated the state
 As a result of this, media does not bear the relation with
contemporary reality and it continues to be repeated
uncritically. It now should be given a decent funeral

6.  Traditional liberal conception were framed partly in order to
‘legitimate the deregulation of the press’ and ‘its market free
lines’
 Traditional thought intended to legitimate free market
programmers thus calling questions on the prior, casts doubts
on the later
 “But” going back to first principles and reappraising the
democratic role of media raises questions about the quality of
conventional public service alternatives to the market

7.  Conclusion of this affirmation reappraisal comes with a
revised conception of the democratic role of media and by
designing Proposal for new way of organizing the media
 Alternatives may replace the current style of media but one
thing is for sure, the literature on democracy and media need
to get rid of lumber(used for unwanted objects)
 What is to be removed? What should take its place? It needs to
be addressed critically

8.  Habermas argues, the arena of public debate was brought by
capitalism, economic independence, critical discussion,
independent market based media created a new public engaged
in political discussion
 This reason based consensus shaped the direction of the state
 From 17th to the mid of 19th century, public sphere made
public opinion and supervised state

9.  New corporatist patterns excluded the public and organized
interests were bargained
 Media was no more agency of empowerment and rationality
public was sidelined
 Media manipulated mass opinion rather than producing
rational critical debate
 Media conditioned the public in the role of passive consumer

10.  More conventional accounts of the democratic role of the
media focusing on three key points in the liberal canon
1. The Media as Public Watchdog
2. Public Representative(‘fourth estate’)
3. Source of Public Information

11.  According to classical liberal thoughts, the primary democratic
role of the media is to act as a public watchdog overseeing the
state
 It basically reveals abuses in the exercise of state authority
 This watchdog role overrides all the other functions of the
media in importance
 Media can only be independent from the government if it is
anchored in free market

12.  It legitimates free market reforms
 Capitalist organization of the press
 Critical surveillance of government

13.  The public watchdog perspective is essentially negative and
defensive
 It usually defines the role of media in terms of monitoring the
government, protecting the public, preventing those with
power from overstepping the mark
 It thus stops short of the more positive, Hurbermas conception
of the media

14.  However, there is one strand within traditional liberal thought
with affinities to Harbermas’s approach which defines the role
of media as ‘fourth estate’
 As Thomas Carlyle argued, the press should be deemed ‘a
power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in
law-making’ derived from the will of people (Carlyle, 1907:
164)

15.  This argument was reformulated in 20th century
 The core premise is that ‘the broad shape and nature of the
press is ultimately determined by no one but its readers’
(Whale, 1977: 85)
 Media-owners is a market-based system must give people
what they want if they are to stay in business, and this ensures
that media act as a public mouthpiece

16.  This is usually in terms of facilitating self-expression and
promoting public rationality
 These functions of the media can only be fulfilled adequately,
it is argued through the processes of free market
 Free market allows anyone to publish an opinion who wishes
to
 Promotes good judgment and wise government
 Holmas’s says that the ultimate good desired is better reached
by free trade in ideas that the best test of truth is the power of
thought to get itself accepted in the competition of market
(Barron, 1975)

17.  Democratic function of the media system is to act as an
agency of representation. It should be organized in a way that
enables diverse social groups and organizations to express
alternative viewpoint
 The public dialogue staged by the media should give the
public access to a diversity of values and perspectives
 Media should enable individuals to reinterpret their social
experience
 Media have to compromise between opposed groups
 Media should also facilitate the exercise of continuing public
pressure on government

18.  There is great need to establish an alternative communication
system, a conscious commitment to achieving some kind of
equilibrium between conflict and conciliation and unity
 Groups need to be brought in to an arena of common discourse
where reciprocal debate can take place in order to facilitate a
peaceful compromise

19.  Media is not democratic
 Need to design Proposal for new way of organizing
the media
 All the system to be rebuild
 What is to be removed? What should take its place? It
needs to be addressed critically
 Requiring intellectual adjustments