(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)
It isn’t always obvious who is wielding power through the media and for what purpose. There is no accountability. As discussed later in this chapter (6.8.3.2), free speech is important and it is therefore unwise to limit the freedom of the media, but it is equally unwise to let control of the media become concentrated in too few hands – particularly given that lack of accountability.[1] And if the media were predominantly controlled by the government, as was the case with Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi for example,[2] people could not be sure that they were being given enough accurate information to hold that government to account and the opposition could legitimately claim to be at a disadvantage.
© PatternsofPower.org, 2014
[1] John Keane described the impact on democracy of the concentration of commercial ownership of the media, in an article entitled Journalism And Democracy Across Borders which was available in May 2014 at http://johnkeane.net/22/topics-of-interest/journalism-and-democracy-across-borders.
[2] On 16 February 2011, The Guardian published an article entitled Stop blaming Italians for Berlusconi, which started with this strapline:
“It's not voters' admiration for a Casanova prime minister that keeps Berlusconi in power – it's his control of the media”.
This article was available in May 2014 at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/16/italians-berlusconi-control-media.