Page 40 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

RETHINKING THE MEDIA AS A PUBLIC SPHERE 29

attempt to define a third route, which avoids the shortcomings and builds
on the strengths of both liberalism and marxism.

LIBERAL AND RADICAL APPROACHES

According to classical liberal theory, the public sphere (or, in more
traditional terminology, ‘public forum’) is the space between
government and society in which private individuals exercise formal
and informal control over the state: formal control through the election
of governments and informal control through the pressure of public
opinion. The media are central to this process. They distribute the
information necessary for citizens to make an informed choice at
election time; they facilitate the formation of public opinion by
providing an independent forum of debate; and they enable the people
to shape the conduct of government by articulating their views. The
media are thus the principal institutions of the public sphere or, in the
rhetoric of nineteenth-century liberalism, ‘the fourth estate of the
realm’.
Underlying the traditionalist version of this theory is a simplistic view
of society as an aggregation of individuals, and of government as ‘the
seat of power’. The key social relationship that needs to be policed by
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an ever-vigilant media is therefore the nexus between individuals and the
state. Indeed, in some presentations of liberal theory, the media are on
permanent guard duty patrolling against the abuse of executive power
and safeguarding individual liberty.
However, one problem with this approach is that it fails to take
adequate account of the way in which power is exercised through
capitalist and patriarchal structures, and consequently does not consider
how the media relate to wider social cleavages in society. It also ignores
the way in which interests have become organized and collectivized,
and so does not address the question of how the media function in
relation to modern systems of representation in liberal democracies.
Consequently, it has nothing useful to say about the way in which the
media can invigorate the structures of liberal democracy.
The starting-point of the radical democratic approach is that the role
of the media goes beyond that defined by classic liberalism. The media
are a battleground between contending forces. How they respond to and
mediate this conflict affects the balance of social forces and, ultimately,
the distribution of rewards in society.
A basic requirement of a democratic media system should be,
therefore, that it represents all significant interests in society. It should