Dimocratia kai mesa mazikis epikininias', [Democracy and the mass media]

This article is mainly concerned with how the media should serve democracy – with the way it ought to be rather than the way it is. Its account comes out of a mounting sense of dissatisfaction with the limitations of traditional understandings of the democratic role of the media. These mostly derive from the distant past. They downplay the role of social groups, political parties, civil society, ideology and globalisation, and therefore seem disconnected from how contemporary democracy works. They are also narrowly preoccupied with political journalism, and have little to say about the democratic significance of media fiction and entertainment – the content that accounts for most of what people consume in the media most of the time. This essay does not discuss in any detail how the requirements of the market and the requirements of democracy conflict. It considers that market pressures create pressure for public affairs journalism to contract, for international affairs to be covered less extensively (unless it involves military action), for economies to be made in investigative journalism, and for audiences to be entertained through being made indignant, and consequently for the weak and marginal to be bullied and denigrated.