Page 48 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

RETHINKING THE MEDIA AS A PUBLIC SPHERE 37

as a consequence, dominant interests have been forced to make political
concessions, build cross-class alliances and modify their legitimating
rhetoric in order to shore up their position.
In many liberal democracies, an equivalent process of coalition
building has occurred in ‘opposition’ to the dominant alliance.
Subordinate interests have sought alternative ways of making sense of
society; found common ground with other interests in a similar
predicament; combined forces and formulated a programme of reform
as a basis for seeking wider support; and, very exceptionally, projected
a vision of an alternative society that challenged the legitimacy of the
social order and provided the basis for mobilizing a broad-based
constituency of opposition.
This perspective has the effect of ‘repositioning’ the place of the
media in society. The media are assumed to be caught in an ideological
crossfire rather than acting as a fully conscripted servant of the social
order. By implication, the media have a greater potential to affect the
outcome of social contests since these are no longer viewed as
inevitably unequal and one-sided. Underlying this reorientation is the
belief that certain reforms such as a progressive tax system and a strong
welfare programme, a more egalitarian education system, co-
determination at work, legal guarantees of women’s and union rights—
which are dismissed from one perspective as minor concessions leaving
the social system fundamentally unaltered—are important gains in their
own right.
This is not to adopt uncritically liberal pluralist arguments. The media
systems in most liberal democracies are not representative. On the
contrary, most under-represent subordinate interests and are canted
more towards the right than their publics. This reflects the prevalence of
capitalist media ownership, and consequent influence on personnel
recruitment and promotion, market distortions limiting real choice,
media dependence on powerful groups and institutions as news sources
and the unequal distribution of resources within society for the
articulation and generalization of social interests. But the radical
democratic approach believes that the media can be reorganized in a
way that will make them more representative or progressive. One way
in which this can be done is to secure democratic consent for their
reform through the state.