Title: How can journalistic coverage of political issues underpin democratic values?

Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 3

Relationship between democracy and journalism ................................................................................... 3

Media as Peace and Consensus Builder .................................................................................................. 4

Journalism is “dumbing down” news...................................................................................................... 5

Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 6

References ............................................................................................................................................... 8
Introduction

The role of journalism in the political process has gained a lot of attention in the public domain and has
been a topic of debate since very long time. It has been seen at various times how journalists and their
editors have been executed, deported and imprisoned or subjected to punitive taxation, which was
largely influenced by the prevailing political regime (McNair, 2012). Talking about the more liberal
times of the twentieth century, we have seen more coverage of politics by the journalists and the
relationship between them and the political process has taken quite a new turn. As a result, the debate
about the role of media in politics has actually intensified further and many are forced to acknowledge
that in the present age, media are politics and politics are actually the media (Dahlgren, 2009). But, the
question still remains that whether such extensive coverage of political issues by journalism is actually
nurturing democratic values in the citizens of the country. Sir John Birt, one of the Director General of
the BBC in the 1990s had himself asked this important question whether the modern media is actually
a force for good or for ill in British politics (Chalaby, 1999).

So, it is very much important to understand whether the modern political process should be regarded as
the degraded product of market-driven journalistic practice or on the other hand as a sinister news
management by politicians on the negative side. There is no denying the fact that political journalism
shows political reality, i.e. political life and processes, issues and events, in a manufactured or a
mediated version. On the positive side, should we not accept that journalism of the new millennium has
actually opened up the political events in front of the public in a much more realistic way and over the
old notion of being represented as superficial (Seaton, 2003). Considering all these points, we are going
to understand as to how can journalistic coverage of political issues be able to underpin the democratic
values of the society.

Relationship between democracy and journalism

“Democracy is impossible without freedom of the press”

- German Chancellor Schroeder, 2001

The above quote by the German Chancellor says it all about the important contribution of journalism
towards the existence of democracy in a society and is deeply ingrained in democratic theory and
practice. The famous political theorist Hannah Arendt had provided a much more insightful reasoning
into it by explaining that as soon as free press becomes non-existent, anything can happen in the society.
As there is no free press, people do not get informed and so it becomes very much easy for a totalitarian
or any other dictatorship to rule the people (Benhabib, 2003). So when people are not informed, they
are not able to form opinions about anything and so, get easily trapped in the lies of others. These people
become deprived of not only of their capacity to act, but also lose their capacity to think or judge,
thereby becoming easy targets of dictators who can do on them, whatever they please. Recently, US
Senator John McCain agreed on the importance of media in the political situation and said that dictators
generally get started by suppressing free press. So, if democracy has to be preserved there should be
free and many times adversarial press (Curran, 2005). Even history has shown that the first thing
dictators do to consolidate their power, is to shut down the press.

Now, let us look at the importance of press with the perspective of a government in democracy. It was
in the early 17th century that the French political philosopher Montesquieu proved the importance of
publicity or press in informing government officials about the discontent faced by the public and
enabling governments to rectify their errors for the public’s benefits. Many American and English
thinkers have agreed to this concept and have actually declared press as the “Fourth Estate” which is a
support office for the government which helps in performing checks and balances and without which
governments cannot be effective (Coronel, 2003). That is why, in both the new as well as old
democracies, the notion of press as a watchdog and not merely a passive recorder of events, has been
highly appreciated. So, it is the press which acts as the guardian of public interest and takes the
responsibility of warning the citizens about the people who are doing harm to them.

It is important to note here that the media has another bigger role to play and that is of a conduit between
governors and the governed by presenting itself as an arena for public debate that can facilitate more
intelligent policy and decision-making. Eminent contemporary thinker like Nobel laureate Amartya Sen
also acknowledged the importance of journalism in democracy and stated that free press presents
transparency guarantees which have an instrumental role in preventing corruption, underhanded
dealings and financial irresponsibility in the society (Sen, 2001). So, the expectation in the new
democracies is that media should play the essential role of building a civic culture and a tradition of
discussion and debate, a scenario which was not distinctly possible during the period of authoritarian
rule.

Media as Peace and Consensus Builder

Historical evidences show that when countries are in the grip of violence and strife, democracy does
not find a conducive environment to thrive. Ideally, in a democratic setting, the warring groups get the
mechanism to mediate, represent and settle their differences peacefully. But, if a country is constantly
challenged by violence and dissension, then the fabric of democracy will be completely destroyed
(Collier, 2008). Unfortunately, for the countries who have accepted democracy, this situation is more
pronounced, as there has been removal of state restraints because of democracy and as a result, there is
revival of age-old enmities which were previously held in check by authoritarian governments. In such
cases, it is the role of media and journalistic coverage of relevant events that will actually help in saving
the democracy.

Acknowledging the crucial role of media in times of conflict situations, many NGOs have taken the
social cause of promoting “peace journalism” by training journalists to promote reconciliation by
carefully reporting important events by providing voice to all sides of a conflict and resisting
explanations for violence. Peace journalism has the objective of focusing on the impact of war on
communities on both sides of the battle and putting their efforts on bridging their differences (Lynch,
2005).

A very innovative and famous example of this approach is the efforts made by the Alliance of
Independent Journalists (AJI) in Indonesia in 2001, when a media centre was setup in the strife-torn
city of Ambon in the Moluccas Islands, where dialogues between Muslim and Christian journalists was
facilitated. As a result, the journalists were able to know each other more and the boundary dividing
them was broken. This helped in helping build the trust between journalists on one side and government,
military, police and NGOs on the other side. This trust then led to consolidation of public support for
the peace process (Hafez, 2002). In this way, journalism can play a constructive role in preventing the
decay of democracy due to continuous violence and conflicts in a country.

Journalism is “dumbing down” news

There is no doubt that press has become an important player in the political stage for all the countries
which have undergone a democratic transition. In many new democracies, it is very hard to imagine
how governments will function without press and press is now an integral part of the political process.
However, despite the wide public support and constitutional guarantees provided to media in many
fledgling democracies, still we can see the media to be constrained by stringent laws, monopolistic
ownership and even brute force (Kamalzadeh, 2017). So there have been some state controls which
have constrained the role of media in underpinning the democratic values in the society.

More than the state controls, it is the tendency of the modern media in chasing the shallow and
sensational news that have actually jeopardized the growth of serious journalism towards important
political issues. It has also been observed in Indonesia, Philippines, newly independent states of the
former Soviet Union that there was the growth of “euphoria press”, leading to the birth of many new
newspapers there. So, there has been a media boom. However, this media boom has resulted in intense
competition between the media players and there is now an open race for the headlines, thereby
sacrificing substance and depth (McChesney, 2015).

It is because of this intense competition that the media is now succumbing to the global trend of
“dumbing down” the news . This is more pronounced in the case of television, where journalists report
more on crime and entertainment, than on the more important news of the day (Klijn, 2017). This form
of "junk food news" is very well described by researcher and writer Professor Bob Franklin, where he
states that the current media is more of bitesize McNugget journalism which has a characteristic of
being small, bright coloured, tasty and very easy to digest for the normal public (Biressi, 2007). As a
result of this, the public discourse is dumbed down and we find both the officials and the citizens being
more responsive to “infotainment” type of news they get.

The current media has been a source of huge benefits and wealth for the media owners and they have
not been shy of extracting such benefits out of it. In the new democracies, media magnates are
promoting their business interests, pushing aside their rivals and in many ways, advancing their political
or business agenda. So what we see is that it is the interests of the media owners which often determine
the content of media and making it susceptible to manipulation through vested interests. There have
also been instances when media has actually been used as proxies in the battle between rival political
groups (Downey, 2003). In this process, there is more divisiveness in the society rather than consensus,
more of hate speech propagated in the society rather than sober debate and there is more of suspicion
rather than social trust. In this way, media becomes anti-democratic and it actually contributes to
cynicism about government and leads to democratic decay. Because of this, there is complete loss in
confidence in the media and the democratic institutions and the result of this public apathy and
democratic breakdown.

Conclusion

From the above points discussed, we can clearly say that media has a very important role to play in a
democratic society. Media is now playing a significant role and can be considered as the most powerful
agent of social reality construction. It creates a kind of pressure on the way we perceive and conceive
reality and the way we actually think and react and it is absolutely tremendous. Journalists have the
skills of amplifying, arbitrating and creating their own rhetoric about an event. It is by providing
platform and an effective amplification system that journalists are able to gain audience’s attention and
are able to convey messages about a particular political event. But there are some prerequisites which
can actually help media in making full of their potential to consolidate democracy. The most important
among these is that the rights of media should be protected. Also, journalists should have the requisite
skills to cater to the kind of in-depth and textured reporting which is required by the democracies.

All in all, we can say that journalism is a priceless profession in democratic countries. As a part of
freedom of speech, it is definitely an important key in the success of a democratic nation. It is true that
the job of a journalist is never an easy one and it is more a job which comes with greater responsibility.
So, all those journalists who have actually followed what true journalists have done in the past, have
become one of the major reasons for helping the country to keep an eye on the government. This is
because it is very much important that a democracy remains beneficial for the people and not for the
government itself.
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