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Section Three

Policy and Politics

7 Accountability of Media to

Society: Principles and Means

Denis McQuail

A crisis of accountability

The relationship between the media and society is currently problematic on two
main grounds. First of all, the media are widely believed to have gained in their
centrality and potential influence for good or ill in society. Second, they are under-
going rapid change, mainly as a result of new technology with the consequence
that existing frameworks of regulation and social control are becoming obsolete.
The principal dilemma faced is how to reconcile the increasing significance of
media with the declining capacity to control them, on behalf of the general good.
This applies especially to television, which is the dominant medium for public
communication in most countries and which has traditionally been most subject
to regulation. [...]
The very notion of what counts as the general good of society is itself
less clear-cut than it used to be in the days when national elites largely decided
what it was and applied their criteria to media systems within national fron-
tiers. The transnationalization of media – as much as their multiplication and
transformation – is a potent source of uncertainty, since individuals can claim
wider allegiances and flows of public communication are no longer determined
by national governments alone.
The problematic circumstances described are widely experienced and have
featured in criticism of media and concern about their effects, reminiscent of the
early days of television, with persistent demands by public opinion that
‘something should be done’, despite the difficulties. In the United States, where

Source: EJC (1997), vol. 12, no. 4: 511–529.