Page 38 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

Chapter 1
Rethinking the media as a public sphere
James Curran

Classic liberal theories of the media have been advanced so often that
their central arguments seem almost wearisomely familiar. The
traditional communist and marxist approaches are also well-established
reference points in terms of contemporary debate. The same is not true,
however, of radical democratic perspectives of the media, at least in
1
Britain. These surface in critiques of the capitalist media and advocacy
of public-service broadcasting, in the working assumptions of radical
journalists and, in a fragmentary form, in speeches, articles and
academic commentary. When collated, these represent nevertheless a
coherent and fruitful way of looking at the role of the media, which
should take its place alongside the better-known liberal and marxist
perspectives.
This chapter seeks therefore to pull together the eclectic elements of
the radical democratic tradition, and present it as a formal ‘theory’. It
does this by setting out in a schematic way the differences between the
radical approach and its principal rivals. (See Table 1 for a summary.)
This schema cuts across the best-known modern representation of the
media and the public sphere—the historical analysis advanced by
Jürgen Habermas. His study has rightly triggered widespread debate,
and this essay follows a detour by evaluating his arguments in the light
of subsequent historical research. This digression is hopefully justified
in that it casts light on a seminal study; and it also brings out the way in
which historical research—the neglected grandparent of media studies—
can contribute to the debate about the role of the media in liberal
democracies.
Implicit in rival theories and historical accounts of the media are
alternative prescriptions for organizing the media. Both liberal and
marxist approaches have major pitfalls. The essay concludes with an