Mass Media in the Public Interest: Toward a Framework of Norms for Media Performance
by Today, Filipinos are drowned in the overflow of noontime and prime time telenovelas that are discussed everywhere – from the nooks of the buzzing cities to the crannies of dormant barrios.
This is where the concept of public interest sets foot. What sparks mass media consumer’s interest is under mass media proprietors’s shadow. Mass media affects person’s beliefs and ideologies, while remaining accountable for the responsible or irresponsible convergence of opinion and information. The fundamental obligation of mass media is to serve the public and while it is true that mass media are not the same with any business or industry; it must play its significant roles for the cultural and political lives of denizens.
How mass media system must be arranged is suggested by the formulation of theories of the press or normative mass media analyses that chart out roles for the mass media to perform and that serve as yardsticks in evaluating mass media performance. Formulated by Denis McQuail, mass media theories project clear statements on values, conditions, and aspirations of developing countries and calls for normative orientations. Libertarian theory, authoritarian theory, developmental theory, and the democratic-participant theory have general applicability on matter with the third world communication.
These theoretical formulations demonstrate the importance of the public sphere to mass media in the name of national unity. We find the applicability of these normative mass media theories in different contexts from socio-political to socio-economic conditions. Critical normative mass media analyses emphasize freedom of the press and public interests. Likewise, these orientations suggest that mass media resources must be directed and be harnessed towards national development.
Mass media performances have produced numerous codes of journalistic practices and principles (Nordenstreng and Topuz: 1989) and have introduced gradual regulations and normative discourses internationally. Mass media frameworks were formulated from primitive ideologies that mass media mainly provide political information. With the changing time and technology, there too, is a corresponding rise in mass media in terms of internal diversity.
However, some aspects have not changed fundamentally. In the political front, there are existing conflict between the mass media and those who exercise economic or political acumen. There are variations in the quality of what the mass media do, and still, there are first, second, and third class mass media consumers, both nationally and internationally.
Telenovelas, for instance, are rising to atmospheric heights for viewers of the middle class and the second class brackets. Most households are attuned to episodes daily and never get tired of lengthy commercials and frustrating plots. Their empowerment, however, has not appealed to the higher crowd. Elites would go for more “Westernized” models, often departing from local drama. Nevertheless, despite differences in personal interests, mass media’s function as educator, mobilizer, and propagator of virtues are still apparent and are not disregarded.
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