Page 65 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 44

POLITICS IN THE AGE OF MEDIATION
THE MEDIA ENVIRONMENT

When Edmund Burke described the embryonic media of the late eighteenth
century as the ‘Fourth Estate’ (the first three being the executive, legislative
and judiciary arms of the state), he was acknowledging their importance to
the health of liberal democracy. The media represented an independent
source of knowledge, not only informing the people about politics, but also
protecting them from abuses of power.
To realise this role the media had to be free from the threat of political
interference. As Scannell and Cardiff put it, ‘the struggle to establish an
independent press, both as a source of information about the activities of the
state, and as a forum for the formation and expression of public opinion
was . . . an important aspect of the long battle for a fully representative
system of democratic government’ (1991, p. 10).
For the first media – the press – ‘freedom’ was founded on the principle
of independent economic organisation. The early newspapers were private
commercial institutions, which existed to make profits for their owners.
They were sold as commodities in a marketplace, initially (because of their
high cost) only to wealthy elites. But as literacy advanced throughout the
capitalist world in the nineteenth century, and as the technology of print
production was developed, newspapers fell in price and became available to
wider and wider sections of the population. Print became a genuine ‘mass’
medium. By the beginning of the twentieth century titles like the News of the
World and the Daily Mail were selling millions of copies. As this edition went
to press, in Britain eleven daily and eleven Sunday newspapers were being
published nationally (throughout the United Kingdom of England, Scotland,
Wales, and Northern Ireland). There were in addition several hundred local
newspapers, serving communities varying in size from the countries of
Scotland and Wales to small towns and villages. There had also come into
being by the 1990s a substantial ‘free sheet’ sector of newspapers distributed
without charge to relatively small, precisely drawn communities, such as the
1
Metro chain of free newspapers for commuters. (McNair, 2009c)
As private institutions the British press have traditionally been relatively
free from interference in their activities by either of the other three ‘estates’.
Having emerged from the oppression and censorship of the absolutist feudal
state, the freedom of the press to pursue its operations has always been
viewed as central to the democratic process. Governments, while frequently
falling out with elements of the press, have been constrained from imposing
legal regulation that could be interpreted as ‘political censorship’.
Restrictions on the freedom of the press have been limited to issues of
‘national security’, such as the reportage of official secrets, and certain ethi-
cal infringements, such as libel. The areas of reportage subject to constraints
are a matter of ongoing debate, and as this book went to press, the
introduction of new restrictions designed to protect individual privacy was

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