ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on broader and traces ways in which problems are identified within different theories of media and power. Media organisations are seen as bounded organisational systems, enjoying an important degree of autonomy from the state, political parties and institutionalised pressure groups. Liberal pluralism describes a political system that is relatively open to influences across society and this openness in turn legitimates its core principles of democratic accountability and fairness. Baker describes elite, republican, pluralist democracy and his own complex, compound perspective. Media convey, circulate and enable the exchange of information, ideas and opinions across society. Curran reviews the various liberal and radical traditions in media sociology and puts forward a revising model identifying key forces that serve to sustain relations of power and countervailing forces. Postmodernism is a reaction against the notion that there are underlying rationalities that order social relationships and which can be identified and regarded as truths.
