The media

When Lina wakes up in the morning she grabs her phone and checks the news, to find out what has happened during the night. Her mother normally reads the morning newspaper. While her father prefers to listen to the radio. Lina’s younger brother, Leon isn’t interested in the news. He’d rather watch sport.

Newspapers, radio, and television are all examples of mass media. We spend a large part of our waking time with media of different kinds. What we read, hear, and see all affect how we view the world and the decisions we make. Way back in time, before mass media, all communication was from person to person. The person who had news to tell, talked directly to the one listening.

Information from other places didn’t arrive very often and when it did it was almost always relayed through someone who had a lot of influence in society. That’s why people only knew quite little about what was going on in the world. And they could only know stuff that those in power wanted them to know. Direct communication between people is of course still important today. We talk to other people to tell them how we feel and what is going on in our daily lives.

But in order to inform us about what’s going on in the world and in politics, we often turn to media, to read and listen to those who work there - journalists. Journalists aren’t just passing on what the politicians are saying. They also scrutinise what the politicians say and do and try to figure out if the politicians are telling the truth and if they’re doing what they promised. Without media it would be hard to know how well our publicly elected officials are doing their jobs. So, the media are necessary for democracy to function.

In order for the media to be able to scrutinise the politicians it’s necessary that the politicians should not decide what the media can report. The media must be free and independent. Countries ruled by dictatorships often lack free and independent media. In countries like that it’s common that the governments prohibit, silence, or conceal certain information or messages from being published - they censor the media. And if the government is able to censor the media it often results that the media are only allowed report things that make the regime appear good and powerful.

In situations like that, it doesn’t matter if the information is true or false. If journalists violate the rules of censorship in a dictatorship, they often risk imprisonment. Or, their TV channel or newspaper risks being shut down. The media aren’t only telling us what has happened in the world and in politics. They are also commenting on things.

Then it’s not only about facts anymore, but also opinions and interpretations. When the media do that they take part in a discussion on important issues contributing with new arguments, comparisons, and analysis. When a large section of the population in a society read, listen to, and watch the same media channels, it creates a shared understanding of society. Not everyone will agree with everyone else on all issues, but they will know about the same issues and recognise the central arguments on those issues. When the media function like that, we have a public discourse, a common idea of what our society is, including all of its conflicts, and disagreements.

So, we could say that the media have a duty in society, something like this: To spread information. To scrutinise power. To comment, analyse and discuss. And to contribute to the public discourse, to our shared understanding of what society is, and where it’s heading.