Shantesh Kumar Singh, Shilpi Chaturvedi
Research Scholar, SIS/JNU,
New Delhi
Those who view man as a
predominantly cognitive being as truly Homo sapiens- the masscommunication
media are seen as the great liberators. Prior to print and electronic means of
communications, it has been averred; the common man was shackled by his own
ignorance and by the unavailability of the kinds of information that could
serve to liberate him. Without pertinent information man could neither
recognize his own plight nor, if he were aware of it, do something about it. It
is only the informed person who can take advantage of whatever opportunities
are available, Media, by bringing what is distant near and making what is
strange understandable can contribute substantially to the amount and kinds of
information available to the people, which can help them widen horizons and
thus help to build empathy. How man unltimately behaves is always a consequence
of how both individual stimuli and his total environment impinge upon him in
any given circumstances.
The mass media are,
without question, persuasive instruments in the social aspect of men’s struggle
for self-liberation. They select and bring to waiting multitudes a constant
flow of detail related to those fruitful dialogues of differences and
concordances upon which free society thrive. It inevitably follows that ‘What’
information is transmitted, and the nature of transmission will dectate the
direction and intensity of change in all other institutions within society.
Each of the public media, in varying degrees, in different ways, and distinct
presentational methods, brings us to congratulation, which ourselves as social beings. By doing so they shape our
collective as social beings. By doing so they shape our collective hopes,
aspirations and futures.
Politics being an
important part of human life. It is hardly more than a platitude to say that
media can play a crucial role in the political process. Media fulfil vital
function in any democratic political system. Above all else the media, in their
various guises, provide channels of information and means by which that
information can be interpreted and placed in context. If the people are to
govern them in any meaningful sense, they must be reasonably well-informed.
They need help in identifying problems, in agenda setting and in weighing
policy alternatives they require guidance and assistance in the evaluation of
programmes and in assessing the credentials of candidates for office. The
media, moreover performs an essential role in a democratic policy in ensuring
that public official are held to account for their actions. Citizens, in other
words, look to the media to assist the in the process of public deliberations.
Traditionally, the media
has been conceived as an observer- ideally a neutral observer- of the political
scene. But events of last few decades have demonstrated the inadequacy of this
view. The media today is one of the primary actor on the political scene,
capable of making or breaking political careers and issues. Media is powerful
enough to condition people’s beliefs, attitudes, opinions, values and world
view. If we do not believe the press was a potent force in the world, we would
not think curbing its freedom worth the price [the same time, ironically, if we
did not believe the press was potent, we would not think protecting its freedom
worth price]. It has been widely assumed that the structure and level of
development of mass media can have an important influence on political systems.
It has been argued that “changes in mass communications help being about
corresponding changes in political organization”. Hence, we have the belief
that the development of the printing press and later the newspaper were driving
forces in the growth of liberal democratic states. Rulers, who may use coercion
only exceptionally, must rely on persuasion for cultivating the public support
they need. Citizens, who know that their rulers are fallible, must depend on
mass media for independent comment about the affairs of state.
Democracy has been used to
denote the form of government in which ruling power of the state is legally
vested, not in any particular class or classes, but in the members of the
community as a whole. Central to the argument of democracy and its gradual
acceptance are the basic ideas of equality and liberty. Equality is most often
to mean that all are the same in some important respect. Given this understanding
of equality as treating people in the same way, each person views deserve equal
respect and all must have the chance to participate in the process. Dunn
describes the enduring idea of democracy as, each person being able to speak
for themselves and taking part in collective decisions. But the change in scale
from city-state to nation is very important in shaping modern practice of
democracy. The use of elected representatives instead of heaving all people
meeting together is largely a reaction to the reality of large populations. The
decisions are taken on behalf of everyone by a sub-group of the whole but the
results are seen as democratic because the people have some influence over
these decisions. This influence is generated by the availability and flow of
information within the system. Indeed, this large-scale human Endeavour
involving a sizable number of people requires substantial of communication for
success. For the vast majority of general public, with their attention focused
primarily on personal concerns, there is a great physical and psychological
distance from political affairs. This distance between political actors and the
public is bridged by the communication of mass media. As Walter Lippman
memorably put it, people respond to political matters on the basis of “the
pictures in heads of what the world is like- pictures largely selected and
arranged by the media”. The variety of expressions supplied by the media
enables the individuals to nourish their own point of view by finding support for
them in the stream of communication. It makes it possible for those with
similar attitudes to learn & get in touch with each other and thus
facilatating the growth of public – opinion. This opinion serves as the compass
to the representatives in decision making. Chanels of communication from the
citizenry to the government make it possible for those outside the government
structure to influence official actions and policies.
Alongwith other democratic
and civil rights, informed and unregimented formation of our values requires
openness of communication and argumants, and the role of media could be crucial
in this process. Indeed, value formation is an interactive process, and the
media has a role in making these interactions possible. As new standards emerge
(for example, the norm of smaller families and less frequent child bearing), it
is public discussions well as proximate emulation that spread the new norms
across a region and ultimately between regions.
Even the very concept of
what is to count as a “basic nees” tends to be dependent on public discussion
on what is important, and no less importantly, on what is feasible. Human
beings suffer from miseries and deprivations of various kinds- some more
amenable to alleviation than others. The totality of the human predicament
would be an impossible basis for a practical discussion of our “basic needs”.
Indeed, there are many things that we might have good reason to value if they
were feasible. But we don not- indeed connot- see them as needs, precisely because
we believe them to be infeasible. Our conception of needs relates not only to
the comprehension of the nature and extent of deprivations, but also to our
appreciation of what can or cannot be done about them. These evaluations and
understandings can be strongly influenced by the freedom and vigour of public
discussion. A free media can be a great ally of the process of development
through, among other connections, its constructive role in value formation.
Media of communication
makes possible a free flow of information from the society to the polity and,
in the polity, from political structure to political structure. One may liken
the communication function to the circulation of blood. This serves as a medium
through which other functions are performed in a political system. The role of
media here becomes crucial as the input into the system in the form of demands
& aspirations and also the output from the system in the form of policies
is communicated between government and people by media channels. David Easton
treats all political systems open and adaptive embedded in an environment of
other system and open to influences constantly received from thus shaping the
condition under which its members must act. This interaction between the system
and its environment highly depends upon the extent to which media is efficient.
The political system
receives challenges as well as support from the society. and is expected to
deal with the challenge in such a way as to maintain itself with the help of
support it receives or can manipulate. Media works with the in receiving
demands and support from the environment. But the out puts are not in
proportion to the inputs which initiate the process of feed-back. It is a
dynamic process through which information about the performance of the system
is to communicate back to the system in such a way as to affect the subsequent
behaviour of the system. Since a system is primarily interested in persistence,
this information is essential to the authorities who take decisions for the
system. Media plays an important role in this process of communication as it
serves as a link between the system and the society, capable of articulating
people’s aspirations and demands and thus communicating it to the system.
[Likewise], A Democratic
society has an enormous source of strength in its commitment to the civil
liberty. Where man cannot freely convey their thoughts to one another, no
freedom is secure. Where the freedom of expression exists, the beginning of a
free society and a means for every extension of liberty are already present.
Free expression is therefore unique among liberties: it promotes and protects
all the rest.
There are two fundamental
conditions that must be met if individuals are to retain their respect for
democratic principles. The first is that they shall not be required to
sacrifice what they cannot sacrifice and keep their self-respect. The second is
that they shall believe that there are avenues legitimate actions available to
them through which they can register their complaints and struggle to improve
their condition. The liberty of thought and expression in democracy provides
those avenues. A defence of freedom of speech frequently focusses on two types of values or aims that it claims
are best protected and promoted in an atmosphere of unconstrained speech. First
is the individual’s self-fulfillment and second is the attainment of truth.
Any civilized society is a
working system of ideas. It lives and changes by the consumption of ideas.
Therefore it must make sure that as many possible of the ideas which its
members have are available for its examination. It must guarantee freedom of
expression, to the end that all adventitious hindrances to the flow of ideas
shall be removed. The freedom of speech is necessary for people to come
together, discuss problems and issues, formulate opinions & polices and
criticize those in authority and power. Democracy grows and develops through
free discussions, through exchange of ideas and spread of information, through
open public discussion, so that what finally emerges is not made to order by
the ruler but is formed ad grows. Mill argues that “the best way for us to
arrive at truth is for the community to be jammed with as many ideas as
possible, and for all these ideas to challenge and confront each other.”
Only if all possible views
get articulated can we be reasonably sure that we haven’t eliminated any ‘true’
one. But all this idea to grasp and confront in hugely populous contries is
sham without an efficient media. Media by bringing what is distant near and
making what is strange understandable can contribute substantially tothe amount
and kinds of information available to the people which can help them widen
horizons and thus help to build empathy; they can focus attention on problems
and aspirations of the people amounting to create an information ‘climate’.’
The media provides not only information but also the conceptual framework
within which information and opinions are ordered. As Bernard Cohen puts it,
the press “may be successful much of time in telling people what to think, but
it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think ‘about”. The
flow of ideas, the capacity to make, the ability to criticize, all are the
assumptions on which political democracy rests, depends largely on
communication. The faith in popular government rested upon the old dictum “let
the people have the truth and freedom to discuss it, and all will go well’. In
general information and full access to it is a cardinal principle of democratic
system.
Indeed, as Carl J.
Friedrich pointed out that “actually the emergence of constitutional government
and in particular the crystallization of the system of popular representation
as we know them, are inextricably interwoven with the growth of modern press.
Without it constitutional government is unimaginable’. In a system in which the
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people ostensible prevails and when the
right of every citizen to cooperate in
the government is acknowledged, every citizen must be presumed to posses the
‘power of discriminating between the different opinions of the contemporaries,
and of appreciating the different facts from which inference may be drawn. The
sovereignty of people and role of media may therefore be looked upon as
correlative institutions.
The centerpiece of a
representative government is the process of selection of representatives by the
public through election. Here the role of media is perhaps most striking.
Elections enable the people to give basic direction to the government through
their electoral choices. But how do the voters make decisions on which they
select a candidate to elect? The representative government could be mischievous
with a passive citizenry that merely chooses leaders and then forgets entirely
about politics. Such a citizenry would not know what it wanted its public
officials to do or what they were actually doing. An ignorant public would have
no way to hold its officials to account. In order that the public can actively
control what the government does, the public collectively must be well
informed. Some kind of effective public deliberation is required that involves
the citizenry as whole. The public assesses past operations of the government
and chooses its future directions.
The important point is
that most people cannot make monitoring government and various candidates in
election, a full time job. So, there is a dramatically increased public’s
dependence on the mass media for infor mation and impression on candidates,
issues and institutional performance. Even when the decisions are based partly
on conversation with family and acquaintance, the media are most often the
indirect source of information for most people. It proves to be outstandingly
successful in the preconditioning process, media has demonstrated that it is
far more effective in shaping environments, creating needs and expectations,
demonstrating the rewards to be experienced from suggested behaviors and
structuring predispositions in general than they are in “making scales” per Se.
But in democracy people’s role is not confined just to vote, it is the active
participation by common man that makes democracy fruitful. It is meaningless if
political participation is confined to the few and the rest merely follow their
leaders like a pack of sheeps. Communication helps people to know their own
significant role in governance & government. Their own sense of power is
thereby brought known to them. People discover ways to think about themselves
and to participate in governance that would have perhaps been unthinkable a
generation back. Further, “rise of political consultants”, has provided expert
“hired guns” to enable the candidates to make most effective use of the media
in general, and the powerful medium of television in specific.
The prime product of the
efforts of the officials in government is public policy and media have an
important impact on policy process. Importantly, substantial news coverage
places an issue actively in the public arena and creates larger pressure on
officials to do something sooner rather than later, least they be perceived as
incompetent and uncaring or both. On another side of media impact, an
administration that has sought to sweep a problem under the rug or that has
dragged in fact on an issue can finally be forced to deal with. Also, if it is
negative coverage of administrative action, then it tends to push
decision-making up the bureaucracy to higher levels of officials, especially to
the minister.
In democracy it is also
important to expose the abuse of power by corrupt members of the legislature or
public officials and make them responsible to the people whom they serve.
Ultimately good in a free society can be attained only by knowing the truth
which can be attained by free dissemination of information and idea. In a most
outstanding decision the Indians supreme court has pronounced (m/s Bennett
Coleman V/s union of India, 1973) that public criticism is essential for the
working of democracy. Generally this criticism is done verbally. But the
verbally spoken words can reach only a limited number of audiences. Newspaper
and audio-visual media can reach millions of people simultaneously.
Now, the mass media role
of providing adequate information to enable people to realize the intent of
democratic process is even more important today. In the economies increasingly
dominated by national and transnational corporations, and the multitude of job
transfers and national job searches that go with it, a far higher percentage of
public does not have the experience of long-term, stable social networks which
help share information on political matters and assist in its interpretation.
As Vance Packard has written, we have increasingly become “a nation of
stangers’. This encourages more dependence on the mass media for information.
Media can also function efficiently in a process of becoming modern in
technology and economy without goving through the horrors of early and middle
industrial revolution, which afflict the older developed world. It can make significant
contribution in encouraging the necessary literacy and numeracy for the latter
day “industrial revolution”.
Media also have an
important part to play with national integration and the promotion of social
justice in the culturally diverse and democratic countries like India. Media
coverage can promote national integration not only by focusing on the
activities of rulers in the capital but also by making group and regional
leaderships visible in ways which give them a genuine attachment to the larger
“state”. It can further the social justice by drawing attention to the
interests and ambitions of various groups of society, for example, women and
youth.
The era of globalization
has increased information flow among the countries; information cost has been
reduced leading to increase in contacts between the democracies enabling the
established ones to export their values. Rising information flows imply,
arguably, cultural convergence across the countries. With the development of
internet, the World Wide Web enhances the public sphere or disperses public
discourse.
The new technologies are
empowering citizens to participate in new democratic forums not only between
governments and governed but also among citizens themselves. “The internet is
creating new ‘virtual’, as opposed to physical and social formations thereby
providing a basis for a new politics and greater political particiaption by the
citizens’. New citizenship linkages and virtual communities are emerging in
which participation, whether aroung political affiliation, social issues or
local community interests creates their own deloberative democratic forums.
People have become participants, not just consumers.
But with all such
capabilities the question is – How should be the control of media with their
great powers to produce ad disseminate information, opinion and propaganda.
Free press has been largely responsible for the development and growth of
democracy all down the ages. Once this medium is suppressed, once a healthy,
unfettered growth of press is prevented in any form whatsoever, the people
remain ignorant. The spread of new ideas and growth of knowledge is limited,
and the development of free institutions becomes extremely difficult if not
impossible. Without a free press it becomes impossible to control or make the
rulers conscious of the problems faced by the people, their difficulties and
their needs. Jeremy Benthan argued strongly for press freedom in his letters
‘On the Liberty of the press and public Discussion (1 820-21)’, in which he
argued that state censorship of public opinion was a license for authoritarian
rule, because governments are ruled by self-interest and ‘such is the nature of
man when clothes with power that ... whatever mischief has not yet been
actually done by him today, he is sure to be mediating today, and unless
restrained by the tile fear of what the Public may think and do, it may
actually be done by him tomorrow.
However, at the same time,
the democratic control of these institutions is vital as their influence is
bound to increase with the growth of society. Agencies reaching the mass could
be left alone as long as their power is dispersed. But their increasing radius
of influence and central management from key position for attention on their
public responsibility and requent failure to live up to it. To this extent the
growth and use of their power cannot remain outside public control. The
function of the press is to provide information and to help clarify opinion by
free discussion. The first is not fulfilled unless reliable news presentation
is guaranteed and the second is unwarranted if big business owns the paper and
monopolize opinion or by indirect advertising influence, allocates undue space
for propagation of selected interests. The balance of society cannot be
maintained if privileged groups can use the most powerful aparatus for
dissemination of their ideas while the lesser privileged are deprived of
similar means of expression. Moreover, today with globalization; media has
become a business concern, an undertaking conducted for profit making like
other. Media companies are now huge conglomerations with the trend towards
corporate marriages set to continue.
The growth of the
entertainment economy is forcing the mergers of broadcasting, music, publishing
and telecommunication companies into mega corporations in a struggle to
maintain dominance in the market. In that horrible phrase that media executives
and consultants often use, “the battle of eyeballs” is now upon us. Such a
single pursuit of production for profit may lead to skip the questions of
public concern & importance. it can be shaped to a significant extent by
the concerns of advertising industry with its relentless drive to increase
consumption. The effect then is “false consciousness” i.e. the state of
awareness in which people no longer consider or know what is in their interest.
So, the accountability of public representatives towards people makes it
obligaory to put checks on the misdirected freedom of press in the interest of
the society. But at the same time the representatives cannot be allowed to
isuse the control in the name of national interest for their own benefit.
Therefore media should be granted autonomy along with the accountability
towards the people. A healthy relationship thus should be maintained with the
power of media and need of people.
References:
1.
Democratization
and the media edited by Randall Vicky; Published by Frank Cass. London.
Portland, 1998, p.6.
2.
Democracy in
Practice”; by Catt. Helena; pub by Rutledge. New York. 1999.
3.
The Media & Politics”;
Alger, Dean E.; pub by Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1989;.p-6
4.
Article- “Press
Freedom & Development” Sen, Amartya; Mainstream. Feb 10. 2001.
5.
International
Communication; by
6.
“It is not the
bold but what it contains that nourishes the system. The blood is the neutral
medium carrying claims, protest and demand through the veins to the heavy; and
from the heart through the antries flow the outputs of rules, regulations and
adjudications in response to the claims & demands”. Gabrial Almond in “the
politics of the developing areas”. ed by- Almond, Gabrid A Princetion
University Press, 1970.
7.
Political system
is “that systems of interactions in any society through which binding or
authoritative allocations are made & implemented”- David Easta a quated in
“Modern Pd. Theory” by S.P.Verma, vikas publishing House.
8.
“A free &
responsible press (A General report on Mass Communication Newspapers Radio, Motion
Pictures, magazines & books)”; the Univ of Chicago Press.
9.
“The Power of
Democratic Idea (Fourth Report of the Rockefeller brother’s fund special study
project)”; Bombay Popular Prakashan.
10.
“The ethics of
Liberal Democracy (Morality & Democracy in Theory and Practice)”; Edited by
Churchill Robert Paul; Berg Publishers Ltd. Oxford, USA 1994. P-116.
11.
“Mass Media&
national Development, (The role of information in developing countries)” by Scramm,
Wilbur; Stanford Univ Press, California. 1964; p-129
12.
“Democracy and
the Mass Media”; Edited by Lichtenberg. Judith; Cambridge University press 1990
(Introduction).
13.
“Modern
Democracies” by- Bryce. James: Macmillan & Company: p-105
14.
The Media &
Politics”; by- Alger. Dean E.: Prentice Hall, New Jersey. 1989; p-8.
15.
Democratization
and Media”; Edited by- Randali Vicky; published by Frank Cuss. London. Portland,
1998, p-7.
16.
“The Media and
Politics” by- Alger. Dean E; Prentice Hall New Jersey 1989: p-188.
17.
“Mass Media and
Laws in India” by Manna.B., Naya Prokash Calcutt. 1998. p-12
18.
“The Media &
Politics” by- Alger. Dean E; Prentice hall. New Jersey, 1989: p-9
19.
“Reader in Public
Opinion and Mass Communication (IIIEdition)” Edited by- Janowitz, Morris &
Paul M. Hsch The Free Press 1981.
20.
Article-
“Democracy in Information age (The role of Fourth Estate in Cyber Space)”, By-
Tumber, Howard; In “Cultural Politics in Information Age (A New Politics?)”; Edted
by- Webster, Frank; p.-22
21.
Ibid: p-17
