For the ‘Sake’ of Others! Self-censorship in the US Press at the Dawn of the 21st Century

This paper deals with the self-contradictory and self-paralyzing tendencies of market-based communication media. Based on Bagdikian’s study on the fast-moving media conglomeration, an ever greater number of media corporations are being placed in fewer and fewer hands. The essential issue here is to demonstrate how the idolatry of market competition can threaten freedom of expression, causing both economic and political censorship. Any form of journalistic negligence in disseminating information, it is argued, represents a grave violation of democracy, since the public has the right to know about issues concerning their own lives. Only well-informed citizens, in fact, can build a fair and just society described as one which is ruled neither by undemocratic states nor by undemocratic market forces.