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Abstract

This study examines and discusses the liberal pluralist broadcasting principles in liberal

societies. While discussing these issues, it tries to provide us with some sources that

touches upon new ideas in liberal pluralist principles in both contemporary

democracies as well as in classical democracies.

A liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy in which elected

representatives who hold power are limited by a constitution that emphasizes

protecting individual liberties, equality and the rights of minority groups. Among the

many liberties that might be protected are freedom of speech and assembly, freedom

of religion, the right to private property and privacy as well as equality before the law

and due process under the rule of law.

Such constitutional rights, also called liberal rights, are guaranteed through various

controlled institutions and statutory laws. Additionally, the constitutions of most

contemporary liberal democracies prohibits majoritarianism, a form of democracy in

which decisions are made by a simple majority of some organized group, which is rule

by the will of majority, when it harms those in the minority.

Through the course of this research, it came to the knowing that according to the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion

and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and

impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers". Now with

this in hand, it illustrates to us the basis for which a Liberal Pluralist society is meant to

operate. This declaration not only gives the background for which a Liberal democratic

state is meant to operate, but also admonishes the media organizations in the states,

on which basis they are to take their broadcasting principles.

The function of the press is to protect the people’s liberties and rights, and to inform

the public so they can participate as citizens in democratic self-government. The liberal

theory prefers a privately owned news media that is maximally free to inform citizens

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and criticize public policy, as well as act as a watchdog on authorities. The right to

publish and express oneself freely is not a prerogative of the state or a government. It

is a fundamental right of free individuals. The liberal theory argues that a free

marketplace of ideas, while it may cause harm over the short term, is the best

safeguard in the long run for a free and liberal society.

Introduction

Freedom of the press is what we are talking about when we say a state is liberal to the

diverse broadcasting organizations within its confinement. It doesn’t just end at the

media organizations, but it goes ahead to randomly touch all citizens who are under

such government (Plural approach).

The concept of Pluralism is used, often in different ways, in a wide range of issues. In

politics, pluralism is often considered by supporters of modern democracy to be in the

interests of its citizens, and so political pluralism is one of its most important features.

In democratic politics, pluralism is a guiding principle which permits the peaceful

coexistence of different interests, convictions and lifestyles. Unlike totalitarianism (e.g.

Marxism), pluralism acknowledges the diversity of interests and considers it imperative

that members of society accommodate their differences and express their ideas

without any fear of contradiction whatsoever via the media. (Marxist Media Theory,

Daniel Chandler 2011)

According to the data conducted in the course of this research, one can say that

Pluralists see society as a complex of competing groups and interests, none of them

prevalent all of the time. Media organizations are seen as organizational systems,

enjoying an important degree of autonomy from the state, political parties and

institutionalized pressure groups. (Pluralism and Liberal Democracy, Richard E. Flatham

2005).

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Control of the media is said to be in the hands of an independent managerial elite who

allow a considerable degree of flexibility to media professionals. The audiences are

seen as capable of manipulating the media in an infinite variety of ways according to

their prior needs and dispositions, and as having access to 'the plural values of society'

enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'. (Marxist Media Theory,

Daniel Chandler 2011)

The free media performs an important and essential function in monitoring the

activities of politicians and powerful institutions. Therefore corruption cannot thrive

(e.g. the role of The Washington Post in uncovering The Watergate Scandal in the mid-

1970s; the role of The Daily Telegraph in exposing the scandal of MPs’ expenses in

2010). (Watergate's impact on modern America, Examina.com 2011)

The mass media are free to operate and to express themselves with very few checks

and balances. The mass media ensures that the population is well educated and has a

good understanding of issues when they vote. The relationship is generally entered

into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms.

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Freedom of the Press

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom

of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without

interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of

frontiers". Freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression

through mediums including various electronic media and published materials. While

such freedom mostly implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state,

its preservation may be sought through constitutional or other legal protections. (The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948)

There are some certain ideas that runs through the minds of people when the term

democracy is used in describing the systems used by governments. Many of us will

always relate democracy to a free and fair state rule. A society where the government

is power to the people, by the people and for the people.

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We always assume that every democracy is a form of government in which all eligible

citizens participate equally—either directly or through elected representatives—in the

proposal, development, and creation of laws. We always think it encompasses social,

economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political

self-determination.

The one thing democracy allows of its people to breathe and air out their thoughts

about the development of their society. When we point out the economic benefits, we

see Capitalism as a key to forge ahead in a world of free market. The governments in

democracy are always seen to be holy, because they operate in freedom sense for the

benefits of its citizens who earn a living by working hard and no one disputes their

earnings.

But it is about just being far from that. Today, democracy has been remixed and twisted

about into different factions. It has been renamed and rebranded in different

vocabularies and recreated into different forms and systems that in one way or the

other, it has lost its meaning to these new terms.

With respect to governmental information, any government may distinguish which

materials are public or protected from disclosure to the public based on classification

of information as sensitive, classified or secret and being otherwise protected from

disclosure due to relevance of the information to protecting the national interest. Many

governments are also subject to sunshine laws or freedom of information legislation

that are used to define the ambit of national interest.

This philosophy is usually accompanied by legislation ensuring various degrees the

sense of Freedom of thought and Freedom of the press, publishing, press and printing

the depth to which these laws are entrenched in a country's legal system can go as far

down as its constitution. The concept of freedom of speech is often covered by the

same laws as freedom of the press, thereby giving equal treatment to spoken and

published expression. (Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2013)

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Liberal Democracy

A form of democracy based on the recognition of individual rights and freedoms, in

which decisions from direct or representative processes prevail in many policy areas.

The distinction between a pure class democracy and a liberal democracy can be drawn

from this context. Their various definitions are clear enough to give us a clue about

what the two terms mean. A liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy

in which elected representatives who hold power are limited by a constitution that

emphasizes protecting individual liberties, equality and the rights of minority groups.

(Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, "A Greek-English Lexicon, 1889)

Among the many liberties that might be protected are freedom of speech and

assembly, freedom of religion, the right to private property and privacy as well as

equality before the law and due process under the rule of law. Such constitutional

rights, also called liberal rights, are guaranteed through various controlled institutions

and statutory laws. Additionally, the constitutions of most contemporary liberal

democracies prohibits majoritarianism, which is rule by the will of majority, when it

harms those in the minority.

A liberal democracy may take various constitutional forms: it may be a constitutional

republic, such as France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, or the United States, or a

constitutional monarchy, such as Japan, Spain, the Netherlands or the United Kingdom.

It may have a presidential system (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the United States), a semi-

presidential system (France and Taiwan), or a parliamentary system (Australia, Canada,

India, New Zealand, Poland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom).

To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution,

either formally written or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and

enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th

century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world.

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No matter how free and effective the application of the principles of democracy is, no

matter how the stress of freedom and universal suffrage is, there are various legal

limitations such as copyright and laws against false statements that harms the

reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or the

wellbeing of a nation. Most jurisdictions allow legal action to deter various kinds of

defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism.

Many governments considered to be democratic have restrictions upon expressions

considered anti-democratic, such as Holocaust denial and hate speech. Discriminatory

behaviour may be prohibited, such as refusal by owners of public accommodations to

serve persons on grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. For

example, in Canada, a printer who refused to print materials for the Canadian Lesbian

and Gay Archives was fined $5,000, incurred $100,000 in legal fees, and was ordered

to pay a further $40,000 of his opponents' legal fees by the Human Rights Tribunal.

Liberal Democracy in United Kingdom

The broadcasting principles in the UK has been one practiced based on the advantage

of a Free Press. The United Kingdom has for some time now adhered to the section of

the Universal Suffrage Declaration, which states that everyone has the right to freedom

of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without

interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of

frontiers".

Freedom of expression is a universal human right. It is not the official right of the

politicians. It is not the privilege of the journalist. It should not be the casualty of their

rash disagreements nor regarded as a matter of little importance to anyone else.

Freedom of expression is fundamental to a democratic society, most especially the

societies that claim to be liberal in their democratic systems.

Democracy is government by the people. This should require the participation of all.

Yet it would be meaningless without information to inform, debate, shape policy, or

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found judgment. Proper democracy entails an open society. A free press is an essential

prerequisite to an open society. The media searches out and circulates information,

ideas, comment and opinion. It provides the means for a multiplicity of voices to be

heard. At national, regional and local level, it is expected to be the public’s watchdog,

activist and guardian as well as educator, entertainer and contemporary reporter.

In United Kingdom, journalist exercises only the UK citizen’s free speech. The media

has few special rights. It has traditionally sought to resist new restrictions upon

freedom of expression in general or special controls upon the press. The media has

normally expedited for greater rights of the public: to promote freedom of speech, to

enlarge freedom of information and to safeguard the freedom of the press which

contains those rights.

UK journalists rarely face the same degree of intimidation or censorship as crude as

assassination which is the everyday reality of some of their overseas counterparts. But

they do face a range of legal restrictions which inhibit freedom of expression.

These include the defamation laws, official secrets and anti-terrorism legislation, the

law of contempt and other legal restrictions on court reporting, the law of confidence

and development of privacy actions, intellectual property laws, legislation regulating

public order, trespass, harassment, anti-discrimination and profanity. There is some

special provision for journalism and other literary and artistic activities, predominantly

intended as protection against prior restraint, in the data protection and human rights

legislation. There are some additional, judicial safeguards requiring court orders or

judicial consent before the police can gain access to journalistic material or instigate

surveillance in certain circumstances, but, in practice, the law provides limited

protection to journalistic material and sources.

Moreover, the United Kingdom has a culture of official confidentiality, with only limited

public and press rights to local government information and meetings, which have

worn down over the years as congress and private bodies take over their functions.

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The Society campaigned for improvements of the Local Government Act 2000 and

Freedom of Information Act 2000. Government, public, press and public bodies all have

a role in trying to change the prevailing culture from secrecy to openness.

The Human Rights Act 1998, incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights

into UK law, which includes both rights to privacy and rights to freedom of expression,

open justice and to protection of private life.

Although there are no restrictions on who can launch a newspaper and no state

licensing of the press or journalists, media ownership is regulated. At present

newspaper companies’ mergers and transfers of their assets are governed by special

controls, other than the operation of general competition law. Cross-media ownership

restrictions are prescribed by law. The Communications Act 2003 changed newspaper

and cross-media ownership controls but the government has a wide discretion to

intervene in media mergers on public interest grounds, in addition to general

competition and merger examinations.

The Newspaper Society and the regional press have campaigned on changes to the

media ownership regime. The Society and its members have also campaigned on a

range of issues to safeguard press freedom and promote freedom of expression.

Conflicting Policies in the UK Liberal Democratic System

Many people would argue that a liberal democracy isn't democratic or liberal. They

would argue that a liberal democracy does not respect the will of the people except

when citizens are asked to vote for their representatives, and that liberty is restricted

by the constitution or by precedent. Critics would argue that, by denying citizens the

right to cast votes on all issues especially serious matters such as going to war or

constitutional amendments.

A liberal democracy is a prelude of an oligarchy, or a government that is controlled by

the elite few. One of his cardinal convictions was that Britain was not run as a

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democracy but as an oligarchy; the big cities were notoriously in the hands of the

oligarchy of local businessmen. Others would say that only a liberal democracy can

guarantee the individual liberties of its citizens and prevent the development into a

dictatorship. Unmodulated majority rule could, in their view, lead to the oppression of

various minority groups.

In the recent policies which was formed by the UK parliament, series of restrictions has

been penned down to curtail the freedom the press has been enjoying. There's one

big stumbling block in the deal on newspaper regulation finally agreed by the three

main political parties and that is the involvement of politicians at all. This remains a

charter written by politicians, imposed by politicians and controlled by politicians.( Bob

Satchwell, 2013)

In March 2013, a Leveson Report was released. It’s Royal Charter on Self-Regulation of

the Press which was drafted out by the 3 Main Political Parties in the UK after series of

discussions were help in the Parliament. They claimed it was aimed at making it easier

for the media and creative industries to grow, while protecting the interests of citizens.

(Leveson Report, 2013)

The head of the Society of Editors Bob Satchwell says there is no place for "political

interference" in a free press (Bob Satchwell, 2013). The issues with the charter meant

that there will be no freedom of the press any longer as you cannot have a new system

of press regulations drawn up and imposed by the ruling political class.

The press should have the freedom and ability to speak the truth, expose the absolute

truth by whatever means and safeguard rights of all citizens, including politicians. But

it’s also believed that the press shouldn’t be allowed to insult, lie and hurt innocent

members of the public including politicians. (BBC UK Press Reform, 2013)

The Press organisations has so far been feeling as though their rights to the Freedom

of Press and rights to official confidentiality has been tampered with by the contents

enlisted in this latest policy which was shed more light to on the 11th of October 2013.

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There has been some aired out dismay and expression of frustration by Newspaper

firms and Bloggers as to how they can start cooperating with these policies or not.

(BBC UK Press Reform, 2013)

Out of many, these are a few of the comments made by the Press firms in

the UK.

The Sun

Celebrations are premature. Yes, it is welcome that parliament seems to have stepped

back from the worst case scenario - full-scale control of papers by politicians. And yes,

the Sun is committed to tougher rules that safeguard the public. But much remains to

be studied before the royal charter can be accepted as the foundation stone of new

regulation. (BBC UK Press Reform, 2013)

The Times

This was a deal done without the involvement of the British press, even though the

campaign group Hacked Off was, remarkably, present during the negotiations. The

most rational reaction came from Index on Censorship, which declared the deal "a sad

day for press freedom in the UK". There was a basic principle at stake and it has been

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lost. The role of a free press is to hold the government to account. It should not work

the other way round. Despite Mr Cameron's bland reassurance, there is no such thing

as a "dab" of statute. Regulation of the press is a matter either recognised in law or it

is not. (BBC UK Press Reform, 2013)

The Guardian

The politics, then, have played out, but will the practicalities? There is still no guarantee.

Monday night's non-committal statement by the Newspaper Society suggests that

many powerful players are still calculating whether to play ball. After doing a deal

among themselves, the politicians will breathe a sigh of relief and hope they can move

on. But as the industry alights on grievances, both real and hyperbolic, the political

class as a whole could discover that the brokering has only just begun. (BBC UK Press

Reform, 2013)

The Daily Mail

Over the coming weeks, it will be for the newspaper and magazine industry to decide

whether it can co-operate with a system involving politicians, many of whom will be

here today and gone tomorrow, which overturns 300 years of press freedom. The bitter

irony is this long-drawn out debate comes when the internet - which, being global,

has no regulatory restraints - is driving newspapers out of business. If politicians had

devoted half as much of their energies to keeping a dying industry alive, instead of

hammering another nail into its coffin, democracy would be in a healthier state today.

(BBC UK Press Reform, 2013)

Fleet Street Fox

When journalists talk about press freedom we are accused of defending ourselves but

we are also defending you. There are 62.6 million people in this country, and 20 to 30

million of them read a mass-market newspaper every day. If we successfully defend

the rights of the press, we defend the rights of our readers and our non-readers too.

Objectively speaking, I don't mind what I write being controlled by law, so long as the

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law guarantees that I can otherwise write what I like. We've only got one law for that.

It's the Human Rights Act 1998, Article 10. And the government wants to repeal it. (BBC

UK Press Reform, 2013)

To conclude everything, these points and text highlights discussed above, one can

agree with me that the Liberal democratic policies are not purely democratic. First of

all, for a government to gather up a set of ruling class to delegate on whether or not

the press and the entire citizens should be allowed to enjoy the privilege of information

is a violation of the universal suffrage decree.

Nevertheless, the world still recognises the United Kingdom’s amongst which states

give full privileges to their Citizens to exercise the right to air out their opinions for the

development and wellbeing of the country, as long as it doesn’t violate the law of

defamation. So the question to ponder is that “are all the Press firms in the UK

accountable of violating the Libel law?” If no, then why are all of them put under the

same consideration? Why isn’t the Constitution handling the matter, but a set of

political class?

References

BBC News UK, Press reform: Media reaction to regulation deal, 19th March, 2013.

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BBC News UK, Press regulation: Royal charter risks freedom – editors, 12th

October, 2013.

GOV. UK, Leveson Report: Final draft Royal Charter for proposed body to

recognise press industry self-regulator, 11th October, 2013.

Society of Editors Fighting for Media Freedom. UK, 2013

Henry George Liddell and Scott. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford.

Clarendon Press. 1889.

James Curran and Jean Seaton Power Without Responsibility: the Press and

Broadcasting in Britain, London: Routledge, 1997.

Geoffrey Levy, The man who hated Britain: Red Ed's pledge to bring back

socialism is a homage to his Marxist father. So what did Miliband Snr really

believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country. 27th

September, 2013.

The Local Government Act 2000, as originally enacted, from the Office of Public

Sector Information.

Official text of the Local Government Act 2000 as in force today (including any

amendments) within the United Kingdom, from the UK Statute Law Database.

BBC News UK, Press regulation: Reaction to deal, 18th March, 2013