The media helps people have a more accurate representation of the political, economic, social and diplomatic stakes in our world. Recently, they have gained more and more power. Often called the “fourth power” or “fourth estate”, to what extent is the media a balancing power in democracies?
IPolitical affiliation
1 Media, vehicle of ideas?
Contrary to the US, Canada or Ireland, the UK media landscape has always maintained a strong political partisanship. The concept of “political parallelism” reflects the alignment of the British press with political parties and ideologies.
People’s assessment of the accuracy of news has dropped dramatically. A majority of Americans for instance believe that news stories are often inaccurate and that news organisations display political bias. To that effect, some research have shown that exposure to Fox News may increase Republican vote shares significantly.
Since the 1990s, powerful TV programmes and newspaper headlines have had the ability to influence public opinion and to weigh in the results of elections. The media has thus become a tool for political propaganda.
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“It’s The Sun Wot Won It”: this catchphrase was the headline of the tabloid on election day in 1992 in the UK. This is often cited in debates over the influence of the media in politics.
2 Spin doctors
Spin doctors are counsellors or strategists who focus on the public relations of political figures. For instance, they organise press conferences, TV appearances, deal with the media image of politicians and manage crises.
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The TV show Scandal starring Kerry Washington focuses on Olivia Pope, a spin doctor who manages different crises and secrets of politicians and toys with the way a story is told.
While some tactics are obvious, spin doctors are also deploying more cynical tactics in order to control and influence the way the media share the information. Those tactics include leaking information, freezing some journalists out, disclosing damaging information on opponents, etc.
IICounter-power
1 Investigative journalism
The anglo-saxon tradition of investigative journalism has revealed many scandals over the years concerning corruption, crimes or fraud. The McCarthy witch hunt (1950s), the Pentagon Papers (1971), the Watergate (1972-1974) were all revealed thanks to investigative journalists.
In 2013 The Guardian and The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize after publishing their story on NSA surveillance activity thanks to Edward Snowden. Seen by some as a whistleblower, Snowden shared inside secret intel to journalists.
key word
A whistleblower is a person who publicly shares intel on governments’ or companies’ activities in order to shed light on their wrongdoings.
2 Data journalism and new Internet opportunities
Founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, Wikileaks has already published more than ten million documents and functions as a watchdog against frauds, corruption or scandals done by politicians and important public figures. Julian Assange is being prosecuted in the US for sharing confidential documents about the US army operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Data journalism is based on collecting data to uncover stories and functions as a watchdog as it aims at scrutinising the world and the news with a new lens, based on information that would be very difficult to get otherwise. Thanks to data-driven journalists, many fiscal frauds were uncovered at the international level.