Earlier, we talked about the free media model.
And this ideal, originally,
did not allow for censorship, nor prodding,
or nudging through laws committees,
economic sanctions, or other forms of government interference.
The main premise was that society needed the completely free media system.
This model for media governance was quite simple.
There should be none. This will allow the media to
serve as a much needed check for the misuse of power,
for instance, by politicians.
Ever since the rise of the Fourth Estate ideal,
and the idea that the media landscape needed absolute freedom to fulfill this ideal,
which today, we call the free media model of media governance.
There have been many examples of exactly this.
Journalists uncovering corruption scandals and shedding much needed light on
the misuse of power by the political and economical elite.
History knows many examples of media functioning as a proper watchdog in society.
But there was also a darker side to
the free media model and the absolute freedom that media had.
Some leaders in the newspaper, magazine,
and later in the radio,
and movie industry, became extremely powerful.
Powerful media barons who owned,
controlled, and shaped significant parts of the media landscape.
They could influence public opinion in the flow of information in society,
and therefore played an immense part in social economic and political life.
And this led over the years
too many examples of the misuse of power within the media system itself,
where the power and complete freedom they enjoyed was used to gain commercial,
personal, or political advantage.
And one notorious example is when the well-documented rivalry between newspaper owners
Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer led them to
exaggerate an incident between Spain and the United States.
And many historians attribute
the eventual Spanish-American War mainly to this war mongering in their newspapers.
This news coverage reputedly had more to do with selling
more papers than with an objective and balanced news reporting.
The Second World War was according to
many another one of the failures of the free media model.
Critical thinkers asked the question,
shouldn't Hitler's rise have been prevented by the critical media debunking his lies,
exposing the violent tendencies of his followers,
and their misuse of power within the political system?
Was the free media model of media governance,
really the best way to guarantee a good system of checks and balances?
Did society really benefit from the all powerful media,
or were we in need of a better system, a better theory?
Well, these questions grew in importance as public opinion grew
more and more suspicious and wary of the powerful media system.
It was believed by many that media professionals misuse the power and
freedoms they were in many countries constitutionally guaranteed.
Ironically, the whole point of granting media this freedom,
was to prevent this sort of misuse of power,
and stimulate a healthy function of the media and democracy.
So, how could we prevent the whole media system from collapsing to greed and opportunism,
while preserving and stimulating the Fourth Estate function?
It was this question that prompted Henry Luce publisher of
the popular Time-Life magazines to fund the formation of
the so-called commission on freedom of the press in 1943.
A commission that tried to come up with a new model of media governance,
and did so in 1947.
