Assessing Media Democracy

There was a time when democracy was directly linked to one's possibility of influencing political decision making. One person was equal to one vote or one voice. Although the spirit of this initial understanding still lingers, democracy is now regarded as a more complex concept, and represents a variety of elements such as a system, a state, a mechanism of control, as well as a series of principles and practices, as is made evident through any modem dictionary's definition of the word. Oxford Dictionaries, for example, defines democracy as "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives," "a state governed under a system of democracy," or the "control of an organization or group by the majority of its members," or "the practice or principles of social equality" (www.oxforddictionaries.com). Some of [Robert McChesney]'s ideas are echoed in Media, Structures, and Power: The Robert E. Babe Collection ([Edward A. Comor], 2011), which provides several arguments that aspire to free "information" from being understood and priced as a commodity. Babe also alludes to [Harold Innis]'s work quite frequently in making a case for "scholars like [Robert] McChesney, [Noam] Chomsky, and [Edward] Herman" to include "a nuanced historical interleaving of technological/media change, shifts in political economic power, changes in culture, media messages, and monopolies of knowledge" (Comor, 2011, p. 227) to their critiques of the press. This comment was made in more recent Babe work, which focuses on Canadian communication thought. It would seem, however, that because McChesney may not have used Innis' vocabulary, particularly the expression "monopolies of knowl- edge," that he has omitted these ideas. Whether or not he formally acknowledges Innis' terminology (he does cite him, by the way), his new book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy (2013), is definitely an attempt at consciously or unconsciously reconciling many of these issues. For example, he discusses how various important centres such as the military and corporate entities as well as political pressures have made the Internet what it is today. As part of McChesney's argument, he also makes reference to the importance of free and independent journalism as a factor for ensuring democratic practices. He even suggests that "true free-market capitalism would even benefit from a strong press system"