The dialectics of media’s role in the public sphere

Abstract

There’s an implicit assumption that the mass media, by definition, have something to do with the functioni ng of public in democracy. It is especially the case with the p ublic-service media which would equate serving the public to spea king for the public. The private media are also under pressu re to incorporate citizens as actors in the production of their editorial contents. The logic here is the point that, though private in ownership, these media institutionally benefit from the maximum privilege of the speech- and press-freedoms that most societies stipulate in their constitutions. Also n oted in this logic is the view that the media are arguably a critical agent of information nurturing an informed citizenry, a prer equisite to fostering consolidation of democracy (Diamond, 1999). In the field of mass communication studies, indeed the concept of public sphere has been made a sophisticated terr itory as evidenced in the array of related concepts such as biosphere, geosphere, noosphere, civil society, global public settings, and most importantly citizens’ empowerment (McChesney, 1999). All these concepts and more have already been thoroughly articulated twice at the beginning of this new mill ennium in a grand staging of the U.N.-sponsored WSIS (World Summit on Information Society), but nothing substantive to th e conduct of the world’s news media came out of it yet (Hamelink, 2006). As the constituent concepts of public sphere are st retched thus far, as in the case of citizens’ empowerment, one h as to wonder if the articulation of public sphere would have any impact at all to the media institutions while the management of t he media is effectively ignored or downplayed, especially about its primary reason for existence, namely money-making. The proponents of public sphere of this direction may function as a watchdog of the watchdog media—an invaluable service in an era of shrinking media plurality--but watchdogging is not same as