Page 39 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

• Finally, the media in democratic societies serve as a channel for
the advocacy of political viewpoints. Parties, as noted in Chapter
1, require an outlet for the articulation of their policies and
programmes to a mass audience, and thus the media must be
open to them. Furthermore, some media, mainly in the print
sector, will actively endorse one or other of the parties at sensitive
times such as elections. In this latter sense, the media’s advocacy
function may also be viewed as one of persuasion.

For these functions to be performed adequately, and thus for a
real ‘public sphere’ to exist (and, by extension, ‘real’ democracy), a
number of conditions have to be met. For Habermas, the political
discourse circulated by the media must be comprehensible to citizens.
It must also be truthful, in so far as it reflects the genuine and sincere
intentions of speakers (one may, for example, have disagreed with
the politics of Margaret Thatcher, while acknowledging that she
genuinely believed in the positive effects of an unrestrained free
market). Hauser summarises Habermas’s views thus:

first, the [public sphere] must be accessible to all citizens…
Second, there must be access to information… Third,
specific means for transmitting information must be
accessible to those who can be influenced by it…[and]
there must be institutionalised guarantees for [the public
sphere] to exist.
(Quoted in Cooper, 1991, p.32)

In short, democracy presumes ‘an open state in which people
are allowed to participate in decision-making, and are given access
to the media, and other information networks through which
advocacy occurs’ (Ibid., p.42). It also presumes, as we have stated,
an audience sufficiently educated and knowledgeable to make
rational and effective use of the information circulating in the public
sphere.

DEMOCRACY AND THE MEDIA: A CRITIQUE

Since the eighteenth century the media, and the functions listed above,
have grown ever-more important to the smooth workings of the
democratic political process. As we noted at the beginning of Chapter
1, the achievement of universal suffrage in most advanced capitalist

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