Page 42 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

In the meantime, words (and images) were packaged to promote
specific ideological positions, while knowledge and interest in the
social and political practices of a democratic society – together with
a need for distraction in an increasingly industrialized environment
– were the principal forces behind the rise of mass communication
markets.
The accessibility of a range of ideas not only reinforced the
natural curiosity of individuals and promoted a societal discourse,
but also strengthened the myth of social and cultural empowerment,
which was perpetuated by the idea of a free press, in particular, as
a spontaneous response to censorship and control of the flow of
knowledge, or to the proprietary uses of public information. The
latter frequently made political interests unaccountable to the public
and contributed to the decreasing credibility of mass communica-
tion. Thus, banning books was the most direct and public form of
censorship; it suggested authoritatively what people should not read,
but, even more importantly, what they should not think. Modern
forms of mass communication, in the guise of press or broadcasting
practices, contain a far more hidden form of censorship with roots
in the ideological preferences of owners and in a professional culture
of compliance among journalists and creative workers, which pro-
duces self-censorship.
Nevertheless, universal access to knowledge is a prerequisite for
conceptualizing an active public whose opinions become the basis
for participation in the social or political life of society. Hence, the
idea of public opinion emerged from the potential of mass com-
munication in the process of democratization.

V

Cultural conservatives may have regretted the newly acquired access
of the masses to the printed word (and therefore to knowledge),
immediately followed by the arrival of new types of entertainment
and information that catered not only to curiosity, but also to a fas-
cination with living in a much larger and more complicated world
than people could have imagined without the help of literature or
journalism. Others called it progress and a confirmation of demo-

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