The 'watchdog' role of news media
Reading: Gurevitch, Michael (1995) ‘The Crisis of Communication for Citizenship: In And Out of the Ashes’ in Blumler and Gurevitch (eds) The Crisis of Public Communication . London: Routledge This week we will examine the watchdog or ‘fourth estate’ role of journalism in more detail, exploring the ways in which political elites have tried to secure favourable media reporting without direct control of the media, and journalists’ responses. The key question is whether this tussle between journalists and politicians ends up serving the public interest (e.g. by informing voters) or not, and therefore whether it is democratically functional. Does this even matter in the contemporary digital media environment? In this week’s reading, Michael Gurevitch notes problems with this model of the press that became apparent when he was writing in the mid-nineties: “This is not to allege that occasions when people, politicians and the press have engaged in ...