Chapter 4

Question 1

What is the statement about the case for supporting media as a critical component of development by James Wolfhensohn?

Answer 1

A free press is not a luxury. A free press is at the absolute core of equitable development, because if you cannot enfranchise poor people, if they do not have a right to expression, if there is no searchlight on corruption and inequitable practices, you cannot build the public consensus needed to bring about change.

Question 2

What is the most revealing about that statement?

Answer 2

The fact that it fails to pin down the direct causal role of media development for development. Wolfhensohn’s statement is so well cited, because the case for media development is being made by such prominent figure in mainstream development.

Question 3

What is the point of view of Pippa Norris?

Answer 3

The ideal roles of new media are as watchdog over the powerful; as agenda setters, calling attention to natural and human-caused disasters and humanitarian crises; and as gatekeepers, incorporating a diverse and balanced range of political perspectives and social sectors.

Question 4

What is the primary function of the media in traditional liberal arguments about the democratic role of the press?

Answer 4

Act as a public watchdog – scrutinizing the activities of the state and other sources of power. According to this well-known ideal, the media should guard the public interest, protecting it from incompetence, corruption and misinformation by promoting transparency and accountability among the powerful.

Question 5

Why is media described as the fourth state?

Answer 5

In this context, where media are providing a check and balance on the powerful in society – counterbalancing the power of the executive, legislative and judiciary. This is the primary logic behind the need for the media to be independent from the government – because once the media will become subject to regulation the assumption is that they will also lose their ability to be critical of those with power.

Question 6

How this watchdog role can be fulfilled?

Answer 6

Through the work of investigative journalism, which can expose maladministration by public officials, corruption in the judiciary or scandals in the corporate sector.

Question 7

How can the media fulfill their role as a watchdog in a more neutral way?

Answer 7

By providing routine, timely and accurate information about public affairs. This can help citizens to monitor the performance of governments in delivering basic services, for example.

Question 8

What are the limitations to media to fulfill such a watchdog function?

Answer 8

There are real limitations to claims which unproblematically link media freedom directly to good governance and democracy in this way. The media’s impact is contingent upon other actors and processes. For investigative journalism to be effective, for example, it is not enough to simply expose wrongdoing. Other mechanisms of accountability, such as the judiciary, parliament and civil society, need to act if the powerful are to be held accountable.

Question 9

Does the media act alone?

Answer 9

The media often do not act alone in exposing wrongdoing. While the watchdog role of the media may help to promote democratic accountability, so the institutional arrangements of democracy provide a hospitable environment for watchdog reporting. Democratic media do not, in and of themselves, create democracy. Democratic media need a democratic polity, and vice versa.

Question 10

What is the Asian Model of media development?

Answer 10

Some degree of state control over the press is seen as necessary for avoiding division and achieving common societal objectives. Levels of citizens’ confidence in their government are significantly higher in societies with restrictive rather than pluralistic media environments.

Question 11

What is the point of view of Singapor on the Asian Model of media development?

Answer 11

According to former Singaporean prime minister, having the media play the role as the fourth estate cannot be the starting point for building a stable, secure, incorrupt, and prosperous Singapore. The starting point is how to put in place a good government to run a clean, just and efficient system.

Question 12

What is the point of view of China on the Asian Model of media development?

Answer 12

Former Chinese president stated that the proper role of media is to use their distinctive assets and advantages to convey the messages of peace, development, cooperation, mutual benefit, and tolerance.

Question 13

What is the media malaises theories?

Answer 13

The ceaseless criticism of politics and politicians erodes the public trust and support for government institutions, making it more difficult to govern effectively. It is often suggested that aggressive and critical reporting of the governments of countries that have only recently become democratic can damage the public’s support for democracy itself. In many transition societies, accusations of corruption played out in the media are part of the arsenal of political contestation, which, even if it does not damage public support for democracy, does serve to focus political discourse on sleaze and scandal rather than other issues of importance.

Question 14

What is the central premise of agenda-setting theory?

Answer 14

The media have the ability to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda. While media cannot tell us what to think they can help to set the agenda of what we think about. Unlike for direct effects theories of media effects, there is much empirical support for this view of the influence of the media. In the context of the media’s role in democracy and good governance, agenda setting refers to the media’s function in highlighting the importance of particular social issues for the public and politicians.

Question 15

What is the point of view of Norris?

Answer 15

During urgent humanitarian crises in particular, independent reporters can act as a vital channel of information for decision-makers, helping to make democratic governments more responsive to the needs of the people.

Question 16

What does the media need to fulfill this agenda-setting function?

Answer 16

Have the capacity and willingness to see out and publish this information. The media must also be free from the influence of those sources of power whose interests may be served by the concealment of these issues. The media must have achieved a certain level of media development.

Question 17

Where are the roots of this agenda-setting role?

Answer 17

In a consumer representation view of the media on traditional liberal theory, whereby, in a free market, the media are understood to represent the needs of the people to those in power. The assumption is that, in a free market, newspaper are subject to the equivalent of an election every time they go on sale. They therefore serve as a daily reflection of public opinion because readers are assumed to buy newspaper that best fit their political opinions. Consequently, the media as a whole reflect the views and values of the buying public and act as a public mouth piece. In this view, the media play a vital role of channelling citizens’ concerns to decision-makers in government by providing information about urgent social problem.

Question 18

What is Amartya Sen’s assertion?

Answer 18

No famine has ever occurred in a country with a free press. The most elementary source of basic information from distant areas about threatening famine are enterprising news media, especially when there are incentives – provided by a democratic system – for bringing out facts that may be embarrassing to the government (facts that an authoritarian government would tend to censor).

Question 19

What is the first nuance of the direct causal link between media development and good governance?

Answer 19

First, it is not always clear who is setting whose agenda. In the consumer representation argument, public demand is the driving force of media content, which subsequently influences elites. By contrast, in a pure agenda-setting version of this argument, the news media are seen as often through them, on politicians. In alternative views, the media are seen as responding to competing elite priorities or as being governed by world events.

Question 20

What is the second nuance of the direct causal link between media development and good governance?

Answer 20

This early-warning function of the media can operate only in a properly functioning electoral system with viable opposition parties. The information provided by the media will not be effective without supporting institutions, such as political competition, so that incumbents can be voted out of office, for example. The point is that the relationship between media development and democracy and good governance is two-way.

Question 21

What is the third nuance of the direct causal link between media development and good governance?

Answer 21

The precise role of the media depends very much on the political and media environment of the country.

Question 22

What is media as civic forum?

Answer 22

The third major role of the media is to serve as a space where journalists and broadcasters bring together a plurality of diverse interests, political parties, viewpoints and social sectors to debate issues of public concern.

Question 23

What is the public sphere?

Answer 23

A normative vision of a public space in which public opinion is formed which supervises government. It is characterized by freely available access to information discussion that is free from interference by the state and by equality and mutual respect among groups and individuals.

Question 24

What is the media role in the public sphere?

Answer 24

To provide an arena for the establishment of a consensus among the public, based on reason and rational deliberation, which can shape the direction of government policy.

Question 25

What is the point of view of Paul Collier?

Answer 25

In terms of good policy, the media is absolutely critical if the government does not happen to get it right – which it probably won’t – then somebody in the broader society has to be articulating, critiquing and proposing alternative views – educating the government.

Question 26

Why has the public sphere been criticized?

Answer 26

For being historically inaccurate and overlooking questions of social exclusion, it frequently serves as model of how the media should function in a democracy

Question 27

What are the links between media’s role in establishing a public sphere and democracy and good governance?

Answer 27

They are reasonably clear (at least in theory). In a liberal democracy, the formation of policy should be a rational and deliberative process that takes into account the concerns and interests of all groups. The establishment of a free space to facilitate this process is vital for achieving this. The provision of inclusive opportunities for the participation and representation of all members of society in the media is a particularly important aspect of free and fair elections. Citizens can make informed choices about whom they vote for only if opposition parties, candidates and groups have fair access to the media.

Question 28

What most differentiate poor people from rich people according to a report from the World Bank?

Answer 28

It is a lack of voice. The inability to be represented. The inability to convey to the people in authority what it is that they think. The inability to have a searchlight put on the conditions of inequality. These people interviewed do not have Ph.D. but they have the knowledge of poverty, and the first thing they talked about is not money. It is lack of voice of the ability to express themselves.

Question 29

What are the problematics about public debate?

Answer 29

There is an assumption in this particular argument that public debate is always rational and that it necessarily produces logical and informed consensus on an issue. Yet in reality, public debate is not always rational and facilitating an open space of discussion is no guarantee of calm debate and consensus, rather than a polarization of views, increased animosity and illogical and emotional decision-making.

Question 30

What is the argument of Norris and Odugbemi?

Answer 30

The role of the media in providing a civic forum is perhaps the most critical in post-conflict states and deeply divided societies, as a way of encouraging dialogue, tolerance and interaction among diverse communities, reducing the underlying causes of conflict, and building the conditions for a lasting peace.

Question 31

What is the argument of Mark Harvey?

Answer 31

Healthy public spheres can host a wide range of views which can dilute intolerance. This assumption in such arguments is that the best way to counter divisive speech is to allow for more speech, so that multiple perspectives are available rather than to impose restrictions. This is based upon the principle of the marketplace of ideas in an open and transparent public sphere is assumed to result in the emergence of truth or, in this context, moderate or balance discourse.

Question 32

What is the point of view of Tim Allen and Nicole Stremlau?

Answer 32

In circumstances such as Rwanda genocide, a degree of censorship may be essential where establishing a political framework is vital to peace building.

Question 33

What does Hames Putzel and Joost van der Zwan argue?

Answer 33

In situations where the state is fragile, and where the political process is unstable and de-legitimated, the primary objective of donor assistance should be supporting the formation of a functioning state. In such scenario, unsophisticated liberalisation of the media can potentially undermine the state building project.

Question 34

Why results of statistical research have real limitations?

Answer 34

Such statistical analysis cannot account for why or how media development is linked to these particular aspects of development. They cannot, for example, establish which function of the press is most important – watch-dog, agenda-setter or civic forum, or indeed, any alternative function. These studies also fails to explain the existence of important exceptions, such as Singapore, which is widely regarded as having relatively low levels of corruption despite restrictions on press freedom. They fail to account for the fact that countries like Colombia, Portugal and Ukraine can all have similar measures of democracy but quite different measures of press freedom.

Question 35

What is the point of view of Norris?

Answer 35

These analyses are not particularly helpful in disentangling some of the reciprocal relationship between the government and the media which may be at work.

Question 36

What is the role media have to play in good governance?

Answer 36

Media development may have a role to play in promoting good governance and democratization have a role to play in enabling media development. Thus, the existence of strong positive correlations between these variables does not explain which causes the other. The ambiguity is revealed in the use of terms such as associated with, tied to and strong association between, which signals a connection, but not the nature of causality.

Question 37

What is the role of empirical evidence?

Answer 37

Existing empirical evidence adds weight to the theoretical case that media development matter, but the issue remains that it cannot be isolated from or held solely responsible for good governance and democratization. What is required to flesh out the role of media development more fully is more detailed, qualitative case-study work in different contexts.

Question 38

What is the point of view of Wolfhensohn summarizing studies at the World Bank?

Answer 38

There is a strong positive correlation between voice and accountability and measures such as per capita income. This evidence of correlation is tied to a range of explanations, following the same basic argument as above, about the possible (and often direct) causal role that free and independent media apparently play in economic development.

Question 39

What is the concern of the most cited claim?

Answer 39

The importance for economic development of the availability of information in individual decision-making. Just as the public requires accurate and reliable information to make informed political decisions, e. g. in deciding whom to vote for, so in economic markets, consumers need accurate and reliable information to compare and evaluate products and services to make the most informed economic decisions.

Question 40

What is the value of the role of media in spreading accurate, timely and accessible economic information?

Answer 40

It is often illustrated with the idea that it can help small producers to participate in markets on more equal terms.

Question 41

What is the role of new technologies in this?

Answer 41

New communication technologies in particular are increasingly being promoted as a means of enabling small farmers to get more accurate market price information, thus putting them in a stronger position for negotiating prices for their goods.

Question 42

What the media can also help the farmers to know?

Answer 42

Beyond providing market price information to make economies run more efficiently and fairly: what and when to plant, where to find agricultural inputs at the best price, how to identify and respond to disease, pest and droughts; where to sell products, what new technology options exist for production, post-harvest and soil fertility control; and what agricultural credit and other government programmes are available.

Question 43

What is the point of view of Christopher Coyne and Peter Leeson?

Answer 43

The role of a free press in serving as a watchdog or civic forum can also be connected to improvements in economic growth. Open and free media fostered – in economic transitions – greater transparency and inclusion in the economic policy-making process, which resulted in more inclusive and effective economic policies.

Question 44

What is the point of view of Arsenault and Powers?

Answer 44

Successful economic development is, at its core, characterized by widespread coordination, and effective coordination between various political and social actors is best facilitated through a free media.

Question 45

How media are central to creative industries?

Answer 45

Media are also central to creative industries, which can be closely tied to economic development through income generation and job creation.

Question 46

What is the point of view of Roumten Islam about the direction of causality that is not necessarily from media to economic growth?

Answer 46

How non-media industries are structured and the government’s overall economic policies have significant effects on the media’s independence and performance. Even privatizing the media industry will not solve the problems of bias if the only advertisers, and thus the financiers, are state-owned enterprises.

Question 47

How was understood the causality between press freedom and economic development in the early quantitative studies?

Answer 47

To operate in the opposite direction. For it long has been apparent, as Schramm suggests, that a particular kind of press can develop inly to the extent that certain variables – socioeconomic, cultural and otherwise – make it possible.

Question 48

What is the point of view of David Weaver?

Answer 48

To support the suggestion that increases in economic productivity lead to less stress in the political system, which leads to increased press freedom.

Question 49

What is the approach of China to press freedom?

Answer 49

Pragmatic approach to press freedom, on the basis that maintaining social stability and building consensus is important for economic growth.

Question 50

What is the argument of Wilbur Schramm?

Answer 50

State control over the media is the most effective means of achieving economic development because it can emphasize collective ends rather than individual freedoms. The task of the mass media is to speed and ease the long, slow social transformation required for economic development, and, in particular, to speed an smooth the task of mobilizing human resources behind the national effort. This mobilizing of human resources requires a great deal of attention to what the population knows and thinks of national development.

Question 51

What is the argument of Nelson and Susman-Pena?

Answer 51

Chinese analysts seem to agree that the country will have to continue progressively opening its media sector for China to maintain its economic growth.

Question 52

What is a more productive approach to understand the value of media giving the difficulties in isolating the causal role of media development in development?

Answer 52

To highlight its intrinsic rather than (or as well) its instrumental, value.

Question 53

What is the suggestion of Sen in Development as Freedom?

Answer 53

Expanding human freedoms is both the means and the goal of development. In this approach, the expansion of freedom of expression through media development can be seen as important, both as a means for achieving development outcomes, such as democratization and economic development, and also as an outcome in itself.

Question 54

What is the argument of Guy Berger?

Answer 54

Certain kinds of media performance are not just a means to democracy, but an essential part of the definition of democracy.

Question 55

What is the argument of Mary Myers?

Answer 55

Contexts may vary, but the case for press freedom is based on the universal right to freedom of expression, and this still stands, irrespective of whether or not the effects of media are positive or negative from a governance perspective.

Question 56

What does state the Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Answer 56

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinion without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.

Question 57

Why the idea that freedom of expression is a human right is not without controversy?

Answer 57

In the 1970s, this idea was at the hearth of highly charged global debates about the role of international communications flows in maintaining unequal power relations. The right to freedom of expression, it was alleged, privileges the powerful because without equal attention to ensuring equality in the means to communicate, those with most power will always be able to shout the loudest. A poor person seeking to highlight injustice in their lives and a powerful media mogul each have, before the law, precisely the same protection for their right to freely express their views.

Question 58

How is the practice of the freedom of expression in practice?

Answer 58

In practice, however, the former lacks a means to have his/her voice heard, while the latter can powerfully amplify her/his message.

Question 59

What does the principle of free flow means applied to the level of international development?

Answer 59

It means that those countries with a more developed media will likely dominate global communication flows and benefit from them. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s up to 90 % of the entire foreign news output of the world’s newspaper was produced by just four different news agencies. Non-aligned countries alleged that because the news content was designed to suit domestic audiences and the entry costs of setting up a competing service were so high, they were forced to rely on news which had minimal coverage of issues relevant to them. When non-aligned countries were covered, they were reported through a Western lens, resulting in the reinforcing of stereotypes, a lack of historical and social context and a focus on either violence and disasters or trivial issues.

Question 60

What is media imperialism?

Answer 60

The more general idea of the media of one country being subject to substantial pressure from the media interests of another country, and that this is implicated in the extension of unequal power relations between states.

Question 61

In recent years, how the flow of communications between countries have changed?

Answer 61

The rise of globalization, multiple centres of production and new technologies have fundamentally transformed the directions and magnitude of the flow of communications between countries. The lack of conceptual precision and inaccurate assumptions about audiences and media effects led to the increasing irrelevance of the concept of media imperialism. The more general idea that the structure of global communications is interwoven with the exercise of power remains important. Debates about media imperialism reminds us that media development can be seen, not just as a means of promoting democracy and good governance within a society, but also as being implicated in the contesting of global relations of power on the international stage.

Question 62

What is the point of view of Manyozo?

Answer 62

He describes dominant media development practices as an instrument of modernisation. A neoliberal market economy model of civil society, which has been successful at consolidating democracy and good governance in the West, is being transplanted uncritically in the global South, partly through media development interventions, with the assumption that it is equally appropriate. Yet this approach disregards the importance of indigenous knowledge communication systems (IKCS) and hybrid or traditional governance systems, which often exist alongside Western models.

Question 63

What is the suggestion of Manyozo?

Answer 63

The action of consolidating market-friendly models of media systems in the global South contributes to an overdependence on external aid, reinforces minority power structures within the country and ultimately serves transnational/corporate interests. While media development may indeed be understood as a defence against media imperialism, dominant media development practices might also be interpreted as actively contributing to a new form of media imperialism.

Question 64

What is Manyozo suggestion in regards to community development approach to media development?

Answer 64

His suggestion is distinct from the dominant – good governance – strand of media development. While the latter is concerned largely with how national news media can promote democracy and good governance, the former prioritizes the role of IKCS in improving local livelihoods and local development.

Question 65

What is the aim of the community development strands?

Answer 65

To strengthen traditional governance systems – based on trust, personal relationship, networks and social capital – rather than promoting governance in terms of national elections and policy-making.

Question 66

How Manyozo describes the community development strand?

Answer 66

As being characterized by a focus on self-management and sustainability rather than dependence on donor and government funding. Thus, by promoting community engagement and empowerment, community media may perform a very different kind of role in media development.

Question 67

What is the most conventional view of community media?

Answer 67

Forms of media designed to serve a community. A community can be defined geographically, but also shared ethnicity, common interest or broader sense of belonging. In this approach, emphasis is placed on the participation of the community in the production and reception of media content and its value lies in the capacity to validate the community and empower those who participate.

Question 68

What is the role of community radio in IDP?

Answer 68

Community radio stations based in internally displaced people cams also rely upon a broad definition of community – and may even play a role in the construction of the community.

Question 69

What is the description of community media according to Nico Carpentier, Rico Lie and Jan Serveas?

Answer 69

Community media can be defined in opposition to mainstream media. Such alternative media might define themselves through being oriented towards specific audiences, rather than a mass market, by being independent from state or corporate control and/or by having a horizontal, rather than a vertical, management structure. Most commonly, though, alternative media are defined through their content – by-focusing on the communication of counter-hegemonic discourses.

Question 70

What is the third perspective on community media?

Answer 70

It emphasizes on their role as part of civil society, or as third voice between state media and private commercial media (rather than an alternative or minority voice). In this context, community media help to expand and deepen democracy by increasing the number and range of voices participating in public debate.

Question 71

How community media can be conceived as rhizomatic (or as non-linear, anarchic and nomadic)?

Answer 71

In this approach, the key defining feature is their elusiveness and contingency. The significance of community media here lies in their potential catalysing role – in their ability to connect different aspects of civil society, such as women’s, peasants’ and students’ movements, with each other or with different segments of the state and the market, without them losing their proper identity.

Question 72

What are the links between the four perspectives on community media?

Answer 72

These four perspectives are not mutually exclusive – they can both coexist and overlap within an organization. There are many different forms of community-based media which have multiple, complex and often overlapping roles in relation to development. While the functions of community-based media may not always fall neatly into the good governance strand of media development which dominates the field, it should also be clear that they cannot be ignored in any effort to fully understand the social, political and economic functions of the media in society.

Question 73

What is the point of view of Thomas Huyghebaert?

Answer 73

Media development is not about building roads. We can’t measure the impact of our projects by measuring the number of roads built. We need to understand the difficulty of determining appropriate indicators.