There are three basic models of societies who employ mass media: liberal democratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian. In the liberal democratic model, both the politics and the mass media of a country are free of government control. At their optimum, politicians and journalists operate within a framework of responsibility and accountability. Because of Founders like George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, the leading national example of the liberal democratic model is the United States, whose media industry is rooted in free speech and a free press. In the authoritarian model, the government regulates politics and mass media, while the economy and culture are usually unregulated. National examples of the authoritarian model are Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Chile under Pinochet.
In the totalitarian model, politics and mass media are controlled absolutely by the government. All institutions operate within a utopian framework calculated to shape the entire society in the image of the ruling party. National examples of the totalitarian model are Iraq and North Korea.
Unlike traditional elements of national power like economic resources and military strength, the mass media are a recent development in political history. There were no true "mass" media until the American and French Revolutions of the eighteenth century. In the pre-Revolutionary period, government had essentially controlled the media. An example to illustrate this point is evident in the pre-Revolution French newspapers. Despite being among the most sophisticated in the world, they were also among the most controlled. Licensed by the King, they were forbidden on penalty of death to attack religion, infringe on the authority of the government, or disturb public order and tranquillity. World War One was the dividing line between the old age of print media and the new age of electronic media. Before the guns of August 1914 began, national leaders essentially depended upon personal couriers. Shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, diplomats and politicians began to realize that it was possible to communicate directly with the people through radio.
Television broadcasting took a little longer, emerging after the Second World War. The coronation of the Queen initiated thousands of television set purchases in Britain; it was at this time that it too became part of the mass media. It has evolved to become the most powerful tool, for many viewers, television reality is the only reality. If television is not there to record and transmit, the demonstration did not happen, the candidate did not speak, the election did not occur. Due to its sheer power Governments have attempted to control television by various methods, some countries, like Israel and South Africa, have even attempted to do without television at all. Even traditional socialist countries such as Scandinavia, initially followed a policy of controlled television programming, believing that they knew best what people should watch. Even here in Britain television is still in some regards controlled. Part of the BBC’s funding arrives from the government so one can assume that the government does have some influence in the industry.
The media possesses a natural vitality in consolidated democracies, where freedom of expression is legally protected. In nearly all established democracies, television has become the pre-eminent mass medium. Television is a visual, credible and easily-digested format which reaches nearly every household, providing the main source of political information. In election campaigns, for instance, the television studio has become the main field of battle. The party candidates appear through interviews, debates and talk shows; we watch and vote. Local party activists, once the assault troops of the campaign, are now mere skirmishers. Television has ceased to cover the campaign; it has become the campaign. The political significance goes far beyond elections. The vast majority watch the evening newscasts. Television producers exert their influence through deciding what to cover and what to leave out. Through their assumptions about newsworthiness, editors resolve their daily dilemma of reducing a day’s worth of news to an hour (or less) on the evening news. Because the news programmes focus on the exceptional, their content is invariably an unrepresentative sample of events: for example, policy fiascos receive more attention than policy successes. Similarly, corruption is a story but integrity is not. Necessarily, television is a distorting mirror on the world- and the more compressed news coverage becomes, the less accurate its lens must be.
Despite the primacy of television, it would be wrong to discount the political significance of the second mass medium, newspapers. The print media remain important in politics, not least because they are free of the tight regulation still applied to national broadcasters. In nearly all democracies newspapers are freer with comment than is television; indeed, in an age when news provision has become dominated by television, interpretation and evaluation have become prime functions of the press. Television tells us what happened; at their best, newspapers can place events in context. A television programme can only cover one story at a time whereas newspapers can be scanned for items of interest and can be read at the user’s convenience. For such reasons, quality newspapers are the trade press of politics. Further, newspaper circulation’s remain extensive in many democracies. In Japan, Britain and Scandinavia, most adults still read a daily newspaper. In Japan, unusually, the public still relies more on the national press than on television for its information and some studies indicate that Japanese newspapers exert more influence over the electorate’s agenda. In Britain and Scandinavia, newspapers retain at least some loyalties to the parties from which they originally emerged. When a national British paper switches party support, as the best selling Sun did to Labour in 1997, the shift commands attention elsewhere in the media, illustrating how newspapers remain significant political players in their own right.
The way in which the media influences people’s votes in elections remains controversial. In the 1950’s, before television became pre-eminent, the argument was that party loyalties were passed down through the family. Once developed, such identities acted as a political sunscreen protecting people from the harmful effects of propaganda. People saw what they wanted to see and remembered what they wanted to recall. In Britain, for example, it was argued that party identification determined choice of newspaper more than papers influenced how people voted. This theory called the ‘reinforcement theory’ therefore contended that exposure to the media tended to strengthen existing attitudes rather than convert people from one viewpoint to another. Although this theory proved in value half a century ago, it is an inadequate guide to the role of the media today. Party loyalties are now weaker, and television more persuasive, than in the 1950’s. For this reason the agenda setting view of the media has gained ground. In an election campaign, media coverage directs our attention to the candidates and the issues, even if it does not add greatly to our knowledge or determine our reactions. More generally, the media help to shape political culture through their influence on day-to-day discussion.
Recognising the influence of the media, governments and parties make enormous efforts to influence both the amount and the tone of their coverage by the media. Governing parties, in particular, devote considerable attention to informing, cultivating and seeking to influence journalists whose reports achieve national coverage. The humble government press office, now populated by highly paid spin-doctors, has never been more important. With such an important role in today’s society should they be more closely monitored to prevent unscrupulous stories or political coverage? Is there a need for more ethics in the mass media? Or does the mass media confront the truth and demand answers?
Lincoln understood how essential the press is to politics and government commenting: ‘with public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.’
Given this power to affect success or failure, the standards and decisions of journalists warrant as much attention as those of lawyers physicians, business leaders, union leaders or academics. It will not suffice for journalists to promise fairness, balance and accountability. One must ask the question what philosophy is going to guide their fairness and sustain that accountability, not just to readers, viewers, peers and employers, but to society.
Bibliograpy:
Comparative Government & Politics Rod Hague & Martin Harrop.
Mediapolitik Lee Edwards.
Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln vol.3 Rutgers University Press.
How The Press Affects Federal Policy Making Martin Linsky.
