ABSTRACT
This chapter considers market-driven claims of media freedom that might have negative impacts on media accountability. It suggests that the two aspects of media accountability should be addressed together so that accountability is recognised as being deeply connected with media freedom and not as a threat to it. The chapter argues the democratic rationale for free speech means that the media should be a diverse forum for debate and, through that diversity as well as the relative absence of censorship, the media should be a mechanism for scrutinising the exercise of power. Although social media has made public speech more accessible in many ways, it has also drawn public speech into an overwhelmingly market-driven realm of transnational data capture and marketisation. Susanne Fengler and colleagues undertook a lengthy study of media accountability, focusing ultimately on what journalists could do to assist media’s accountability to its stakeholders as a prerequisite to media freedom.
