ABSTRACT
Opinions relating to the role of the news media in a democracy vary between two extremes. At one end there is what may be called the pragmatic, market view which claims to give the people the news that they want, in forms that are constantly changing, and which go hand-in-hand with commercial viability. This is the dominant ‘market’ model and it represents in effect the rationalisation of the status quo in the advanced liberal democracies.
