Normative controversies in the literature

Jürgen Habermas has always been strongly interested in the media, and as a public intellectual he often intervenes in the media. For him, the media play a crucial role in the deliberative model. He summarizes his position once again in a recent paper entitled “Political Communication in Media Society.” For him, “mediated political communication in the public sphere can facilitate deliberative legitimation processes in complex societies only if self-regarding media systems gain independence from their social environment, and if anonymous audiences grant feedback between an informed elite discourse and a responsive civil society.” Habermas acknowledges the great influence of the media when he writes that “the dynamics of mass communication are driven by the power of the media to select and shape the presentation of messages and by the strategic use of political and social power to influence the agendas as well as the triggering and framing of public issues.” Given this great influence of the media, it is all the more important for Habermas that

In linking an active citizenship in civil society with the political authorities and doing this in an independent way and in both directions, the media play a great role in the Habermasian deliberative model. “To put it in a nutshell, the deliberative model expects the political public sphere to ensure the formation of a plurality of considered public opinions.” In contrast to most other aspects of the deliberative model, with regard to the media there is hardly any controversy among deliberative theorists. Virtually all stress the importance of the independence of the media and their role in opening mutual channels of communication between the political center and citizens. The concern of deliberative theorists is that the media reality deviates too much from the ideal articulated by Habermas.