Essay On Mass Media

The freedom of expression is an established right in democratic societies. The freedom includes the right to disseminate one’s thoughts or opinions through any form and using any media. Attached to this freedom is the right to receive information disseminated by others. This may be for the purposes of participating in democratic processes or for self-fulfillment. Thus in order for freedom of expression to be effective, one also has to promote the exchange of information. The press forms one of the most valuable institutions in the exchange of information at both national and international levels especially where the information has to be disseminated to a mass of people. Given the role the press plays in disseminating information to meet the needs of the public, the media are thus obligated to seek out the information that the public wants to hear.
The press is often used as a trusted checking mechanism against the excesses of the government and fellow private citizens alike. An established news corporation has greater bargaining power than the average citizen and is thus capable of seeking out information from sources that may not be available to a private citizen. However, in order to meet its moral obligation to members of the public who rely upon it for news and the validation of events, the press has to be free from any governmental or private control. ‘You can’t have a free press without the press being free. This means uninhibited inquiry’. Essentially the freedom of the media should be construed to mean that the press is independent of any influence over the kind of news they will pursue and publicize. This freedom should not be interpreted to mean that the press is free from any legal obligations imposed upon other actors in the legal sphere such as the duty not to infringe upon the privacy of others.
It is no doubt that the freedom of expression forms a double edged sword that can be abused depending on the intent of the wielder. The freedom of the press is capable of abuse when, in the process of making inquiries into a particular matter, the press infringes on other rights held by the subjects of the investigation. This abuse was evident in the phone-hacking scandal associated with the British tabloid, ‘News of the World’ where the private communications of a number of citizens were infringed. The freedom of the press is not absolute and is capable of limitation in order to protect the reputation of innocent parties, in the interests of public order or national security and in respect of some moral obligation. ‘Decency should trump news-gathering that invades privacy, interferes with criminal investigations, and nothing to do with serving a public good’. The limitation of the freedom of the press should not be conditional upon its intended infringement of the law serving a public good or not. If that were the case then many private and public laws would be violated by the media in the name of serving some public interest or the other.
The freedom of the press should be subject to the various national laws that protect private and public actors from unwanted scrutiny. True, on the flipside, this may place barriers upon effective analysis and reporting of key events by the press. It is, however, more practical to campaign for the removal or watering down of laws that limit access to information that may be classified as public interest than to abuse the privacy of communications between citizens and consequently damage the integrity of the media.