One key tenet of most modern democratic societies is the separation of government powers into independent branches. In the United States, there are three such branches: a legislature that makes the laws (the legislative branch is further divided into two Congressional bodies, the House of Representatives and the Senate); a judiciary that interprets and applies the law; and an executive that carries out the administration and operations of governing (centered around a Chief Executive – the president – who is surrounded by a group of agencies that support him in the implementation and oversight of public policies).

In the United States, the operation of democracy is also affected by powerful businesses through political donations and lobbying. In 2010, the Supreme Court’s (5-4) Citizens United v. FEC ruling removed constraints on corporate political spending, further amplifying the voice of business in democratic debate. And according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the communication and electronics corporate sector, comprised of internet and telecom service providers, printing and publishing firms, and media content producers, spent over $110 million dollars in 2020 hiring advocates to urge elected officials to support or reject specific legislation.

As the populations of the global democratic powers grew larger, participation in democracy required the dissemination of knowledge to a more diverse and geographically vast citizenry. Mass media developed to meet this requirement, first in the form of print newspapers, followed by radio and television, and the Internet. Ideally, media should act as citizen resources, “provid[ing] citizens with what they need to be active participants in social and political life” (Croteau & Hoynes, 2005, p. 29). To achieve this ideal, two things should be expected of news media: distribute reliable information to as much of the population as possible, and serve as a watchdog to help root out corruption among those in power.

To meet the first expectation, the media should play a basic role as a provider of information that is necessary for rational democratic debate. This idea is so important to the character of our democracy that the people’s right to free press, unencumbered by government censorship, is protected in the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. A healthy representative democracy is predicated on the electorate (all eligible voters) making informed choices; this in turn rests on the quality and veracity of information that they receive.

The second expectation – that the press should act as a “watchdog,” alerting the public to abuses of power – rests primarily on news media and journalists who monitor the functioning of democracy by exposing excesses and corruption, and holding those in power accountable. Because of this role, the news media have historically been regarded as the fourth estate, supplementing the three branches of government by providing additional checks and balances.

The media, as an American institution, once served as a primary credible source of news and information for U.S. citizens, but many factors (aggressive criticism from the Trump administration, the proliferation of unreliable online news outlets, a tendency to lean on sensationalism to attract audiences in difficult economic times) have recently undercut the trust and respect afforded to them by the American public. Furthermore, as the corporate sector’s power in the democratic process has grown, the watchdog function of the media has been complicated by their own corporate structure.

References

Center for Responsive Politics. (2020). Ranked Sectors. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/ranked-sectors

Fraser, Nancy (1990), “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy”, Social Text, 25 (26): 56–80, doi:10.2307/466240,

Habermas, J., Lennox, S., & Lennox, F. (1974). The public sphere: An encyclopedia article (1964). New German Critique, 3, 49-55. DOI: 10.2307/487737

Habermas, J.(1991): “The public sphere” In Mukerji, C.; Schudson, M.(Ed.): Rethinking popular culture. Contemporary perspectives in cultural studies. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp.398-404.

Pezzullo, P., & Cox, R. (2018). Environmental communication and the public sphere (5th edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.