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Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 15

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POLITICS, DEMOCRACY AND
THE MEDIA

This chapter:

• Outlines the ideal type of society and polity postulated by liberal
democratic theory
• Discusses how the media contribute to the smooth functioning of
such societies
• Presents some of the main criticisms of the media’s role in modern
democracies.

THE THEORY OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

The principles of liberal democracy as we understand them today grew out
of the bourgeois critique of autocracy in early modern Europe, beginning in
the sixteenth century and culminating in the French Revolution of 1789,
with its slogan of ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. In the political structures of
autocratic societies, such as those typical of the absolutist monarchies of
European feudalism, power resided in the king or queen, whose right to rule
was divinely ordained by God. Subordinate classes – the peasantry and
artisans – were subject to divine order, lacking political rights of any kind.
Even the aristocracy, ‘lording’ it over the lower classes in society, owed
unquestioning allegiance to the monarch. The institutions of state were
directed primarily to the maintenance of this hierarchical system, and to the
suppression of dissent, from wherever it came.
The emergence of the bourgeoisie (or capitalist class) as the dominant
economic force in Europe and America required the overthrow of autocracy and
its monopolisation of political power. For capitalism to develop freely there had
to be freedom of thought and action for those with entrepreneurial skills and the
wealth to use them. There had, therefore, to be freedom from the arbitrariness
of absolute power, an end to the ideology of divine right, and recognition of

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