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Accountability of Media to Society: Principles and Means 99

conditions of monopoly. In the present context, perhaps the most serious charge
against the market is that its very workings seem intrinsically flawed. The
perceived low ‘quality’ of communication content is often directly blamed on
market forces – the extraction of profit and extreme competition for a mass
market, the subordination of the interest of audiences to those of advertisers.
Profitable and popular content is not necessarily ‘good’ content and serving the
needs of consumers is not the same as serving citizens’ needs.
Markets lead to concentrations of media power, a reduced professional
autonomy for employees, an imbalanced relationship between suppliers and
consumers and an attenuation of the direct relationship between communicator
and audience. This relationship becomes distant, calculative and manipulative.
The more successful media become, the more powerful they are and the less
inclined to listen to complaints from society or their own audiences, especially
where these imply lower profits. The market cannot really police itself
effectively, since the media are mostly directly accountable to the same interests
they are supposed to keep an eye on, according to ‘watchdog’ concepts of media
functions.
The third frame described appears to be the most suitable for expressing and
implementing the public interest and holding free media to account in a free
society. It meets criteria of voluntariness, normative richness, wide range and
participative value. On the debit side, however, the frame is very fragmentary,
variable in its coverage of issues and circumstances and often weak in the means
of implementation. As already noted, large multinational corporations are not
usually very public spirited in distant markets.
It works on a voluntary basis where media organizations choose to comply (or
where they have to), but only selectively. Media promises are often not kept and
professional associations are not always strong enough to enforce codes of
norms and ethics. Claims to social responsibility can often be self-serving and
more for self-protection against effective regulation than genuinely intended.
Service to the ‘public good’ may often involve support for dominant values and
powerful interest groups. In the end, the effectiveness of the public trust model
depends very much on the traditions of the particular media system and on
there being an active participatory democracy already in place.

Conclusions to be drawn

Against this background and with the materials presented one can draw a
number of general conclusions about what should be done to protect and
advance the public interest in broadcasting under changed conditions. [...] My
aim is not to propose new means of control, but rather to suggest broad principles
of policy and practice for achieving social accountability. Accountability
arrangements have to meet three general aims which are not easy to reconcile.
A most general requirement is that accountability itself should actually protect
and promote media freedom. A second aim is to prevent or limit harm which
the media might cause. Third, accountability should promote positive benefits