Thoughts from London

Instruments of democracy or demagoguery
Medieval rhetoric. Rubbish said fellow columnist Rajpal Abeynayake last Sunday, summarily dismissing the phrase as a kind of pseudo-intellectual attempt to belittle the characterisation of the press as the Fourth Estate of the realm.

Abeynayake rightly traces the original weighty description of the press to Thomas Babinton Lord Macaulay, an English liberal, who attributed to the press a vital position alongside what would today be called the executive, the legislature and the judiciary.

While the latter were three arms of the state, the press as an institution that was outside them, was granted the status of a watchdog, an institution that watched the functioning of the state organs.

The beginning
If by "medieval rhetoric" it was intended to be a historical comment, a remark about the period when the phrase "fourth estate" was first used, then, of course, it is sadly out of context and is indeed rubbish.

The printing press, as it was first known, was hardly in existence in medieval times. The press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in 1430 and it was not till the second half of the 15th century that it revolutionised Europe and gave birth to mass communication in the real sense.

Certainly people communicated with each other from the beginning of man. First it was with signs and later by means of verbal communication. Ballad singers carried stories -- some true, some not -- from village to village and later from town to town.

It might be recalled that in the days of the Sinhala kings and later even under British colonial administration, Royal or government announcements were carried to the people by what were called "unda bera karayas" or drummers who disseminated the message from village gathering to village gathering.

If, however, the contentious phrase "medieval rhetoric" had a philosophical content, meaning that the description of the press as the "fourth estate" was wholly misplaced or was no longer apposite, then we are entering into a different argument altogether.

If the argument is that the press should never have been elevated to the level of the other three arms of state, then I submit that this stems from a different media culture where the press had -- or was assigned -- a different role.

If, on the other hand, the argument is that the phrase is no longer applicable or apposite because the media had progressed -- or rather changed -- from being the fourth estate, then there is reason to examine this more closely on the basis of empirical evidence.

Macaulay's aphorism presupposed the existence of a free press. A fettered press, however loose those fetters were, could not perform the responsibilities that Macaulay hoped it would accept.

Throughout the 17th century the press was under authoritarian control. Content was restricted and the newssheets were subject to rigorous censorship by the rulers of the times such as the Tudors of England, the Hapsburgs of Spain and the Bourbons of France.

But the 18th century was different. It was the age of revolution and witnessed the blossoming of new ideas about freedoms and individual liberties, of political rights and free expression.

It was a time when objective information and unadorned facts were appreciated, a situation that was improved on in the next century as newly formed news agencies competing for clients were forced to be factual and objective in the presentation of their news content.

But here we are talking of societies that had freed themselves from feudalism and authoritarianism and accepted democratic values. A free press was an intrinsic part of that political value system.

News is ideology
The value system in countries that had undergone revolutionary change such as the Soviet Union and later the Soviet bloc, was of course entirely different.

There the press was an integral part of the state and its purpose was to further the ideological beliefs of the then rulers. In fact Vladimir Lenin's much quoted theory of news values says: " The press should be not only a collective propagandist and collective organiser but a collective agitator."

In short, news is ideology and what goes into a newspaper in a state whose rulers believe that this is the role of the media, will be determined by that consideration.

Some years ago the Soviet newspaper Pravda wrote on the front page: "Ideological commitment and skill -- these are the two wings that lift journalism to the level of the demands made on it by our complicated time."

If the Marxist-Leninist ideology is not being pursued with the same vigour in today's Russia, certainly in China the media are expected to serve the higher purpose of the Chinese Communist Party which remains the supreme organ of the state.

Again, the role of the media in the developing world has been viewed as being different from the western concept of a free press and that of the ideological weapon in the former Communist world.

The developing countries, emerging from decades and even centuries of colonialism with their societies divided and their economies shattered, saw the need to use the media as an instrument for social integration and economic advancement and build nationhood. In the 20th century, the period of widespread decolonisation, developing countries came together under the banner of "development" and tried to use their collective power for positive change.

In that process the media were to play a vital role and did so up to a point.

But over the years, agitation saw the emergence of political pluralism and democratic polities with the media assuming a much larger role than that of a mere purveyor of factual and objective news.

Informing people by conveying news was not enough. There is a big difference between the "informational" citizen, the one who is bombarded with bits of news and the "informed" citizen who has not only information but also the ability and a point of view with which to make sense of it.

Today the media in general face several problems, not the least of which is a question of credibility. This is very true of the western media. Regular surveys have shown that the public in the US, Britain and continental Europe, have a very poor opinion of the performance of their respective media though they perform in free societies.

This is largely because in today's globalised and highly competitive world the media have debased themselves by invading the privacy of people, engaging in cheque book journalism and often descending to the no-holds-barred levels of the crudest tabloid journalism.

Ownership
That is not all. One of the questions that increasingly confront the media today is whether the ever-increasing concentration of ownership, even cross-media ownership, permits the media to function as freely as democratic society requires.

A case in point is the ownership of Italy's key television stations, newspapers, magazines and other media by the country's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and the stranglehold he has on opinion making.

Ironically governments, which advocates a free media culture, are forced to intervene to halt growing media monopolies that act as a break on free expression in order to maximise profits.

Don't be alarmed if one is asked this question: what is worse, corporate control of the media or their control by megalomaniacal ideologues.

It is just part of the running discourse of intellectual alarm at the disturbing trends in the media industry and professional journalism that should concern our own journalists, the industry and politicians.

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