Page 243 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

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Alongside the rise of the democratic nation-state, of course, came the idea of
citizenship as a form of belonging to the nation. The German sociologist Jürgen
Habermas saw print media as providing unprecedented opportunities for citizens
within particular nations to hold governments accountable for their actions, and
for enabling debate about important issues. The rise of democratic nation-states,
starting in the late eighteenth century, brought with it a newly complex set of re-
lationships between governments, citizens, and media. In democratic societies,
governments cannot simply rule with the absolute power of emperors and kings.
Instead, democratic governments depend upon public approval for their legiti-
macy. And while ancient Greek city-states were small enough to be governed
through face-to-face discussion, our large and complex societies require mass
media to facilitate the process of communicating government decisions and ex-
pressing public opinion. Under such circumstances, the media have a complex
set of responsibilities. As Jefferson famously quipped, “If I had to choose be-
tween government without newspapers, and newspapers without government,
I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter.” Democratic thinkers often describe the
media as a “fourth estate,” or as a crucial check on the power of government.
By scrutinizing the actions of government and other concentrations of power
in society, media ensure the accountability of these organizations. Further, the
media are responsible for undertaking surveillance of the environment and in-
forming citizens of what is happening around them, providing them with the
knowledge to understand the meaning and significance of ongoing events. Fi-
nally, the media are expected to provide a platform for public political discourse,
serving as a channel for the advocacy of diverse political viewpoints and thereby
facilitating the formation of public opinion.
For their part, citizens are expected to take an active part in democracy. At a
minimum, they must stay informed about ongoing events in society, and about
how their governments are reacting to them, in order to be able to make rational
decisions in elections (see “Why Citizens Need the News” sidebar). Some schol-
ars, however, believe that such a level of participation is inadequate. The idea that
citizens need to be more intimately involved in politics is not new; the eighteenth-
century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that “the English people be-
lieves itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of
Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, the people is en-
slaved; it is nothing.” Today, a growing chorus of scholarly, political, and journal-
istic voices expresses concern about the limits to citizen participation within the
framework of representative democracy, suggesting that citizens ought to be ac-
tively engaged in making the decisions that shape the futures of their countries by
participating in direct discussion of political matters through the mass media.

why Citizens need the news

Providing information to citizens is seen as one of the most important roles of the media.
The reason why this role is so central is that in today’s mass societies, where political deci-
sions often are made in locations and contexts distant from the citizens affected by them,
most of us have little chance of finding out about these decisions without drawing in some