Politics, Democracy and the

Media
 Emergence of Liberal Democracy
– Evolution during the Renaissance, end of divine
power by the monarch.
– The French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
– Citizen’s Rights, Vote and Constituent Assemblies,
and Restraints on political abuse of power.
Norberto Bobbio says
“liberal democracy assumes that citizens, ‘once they are
entrusted with the right to choose who governs
them’, are sufficiently well-informed ‘to vote for the
wisest, the most honest, the most enlightened of
their fellow citizens”.
 Four Pillars of Democracy
• Constitutionality
– Pre-defined Rules & Regulations to conduct the
government affairs
• Participation
– Electorate & the percentage of its members participating
in voting process
• Rational Choice
– How much choice is available to the voters
• Rationality of the Voters
– How much informed and educated electorate is present
 Public Opinion and Public Sphere
• What made the mass media betroth to the
democracy?
– The need to evolve knowledgeable, informed and
educated electorate.
– The formation of public opinion
– Collective action of citizens is demanded in liberal
democracy to continue the process in the shape of
voting/elections. The political outcome of the
voting is a form of public opinion.
 The Public Sphere
• Jurgen Habermas termed it, the functioning of mass media
in democracy as an informing, educating and opinion sharing
agent by providing platform to the public and the societal
institution for public political discourse, as the public sphere.
• Grispund: “A set of institutions representing a sort of buffer
zone between the state and private sphere to protect them
from arbitrary decision”
• Public sphere comprises in essence of communicative
institutions of a society through which facts and opinions
circulates and a common stock of knowledge is built through
society’s shared experience for collective political actions
 How does a real public sphere exist?
Habermas conditions the existence of public
sphere:
 The public sphere must be accessible to all citizen.
 Means of transmitting information must be accessible to
those who can be influenced by it.
 The political discourse disseminated through the mass
media is understandable to the citizens.
 The political discourse must be truthful, reflects the
genuine intentions of the speaker (no hidden framing).
 There must institutionalized guarantees for public
sphere to exist (Accountability institutions must be intact
with the process)
 What the Media ought to do in the
Democratic Process?
 Inform by surveillance and monitoring.
 Educate through highlighting significance of the facts
and protecting objectivity.
 Provide a platform for public political discourse
facilitating the formation of public opinion and
expression of disagreements.
 Play the role of watchdog through investigative
journalism and held the acts of whoever holds
supreme power accountable for public scrutiny.
 Persuade by advocating the agenda of different
political parties abhorring itself from manipulation.
 Other side of the picture
• Arguments of the critiques
– How liberal democracy and mass media fail to
fulfill promises?
• Did they educate?
– Norberto Bobbio says “one of the great broken
promises of liberal democracy is the failure of
education system to produce rational voters.”
• Lower Voter Turnout
– Baudrillard sees voters apathy as a defense a
mode of retaliation against bourgeois powers.
 Are they all the same?
• Democracy Lacks in providing genuine choices
in election.
• Democratic procedures contain anomalies and
biases making them undemocratic.
• Voters do not feel any difference in their
quality of life whether they vote for A party or
B to form the government.
Is Capitalism and Democracy synonymous ?

• Socialist and Marxist scholars blame non-elected

institutions to be the real loci of power in liberal
democracies.
– People never voted for the real power centers.
– Any anti capitalists change effort met with
systemized opposition.
– Citizens exposed to mediated political
information rather the real one.
 Consents are manufactured
• Lippmann(1922) says that consent can be
manufactured.
• Chomsky (1984) concludes that media
manufacture the consent and its own consent
is manufactured by outer societal institutions.
• Artificial information rather objective truth
destroys the very essence of public sphere.
• Boorstin(1962) blames mass media for creating
pseudo-events for filling their space and time.
 Objective or not?
• McNair (2009) himself propounded that
journalistic ethic of objectivity is
fundamentally unattainable rather political
reporting is subjective, biased and partisan.