For democracy to flourish and operate in a transparent manner is it true that it requires the existence of newspapers to do so? The answer is not as straightforward as it may seem, for much depends on two questions: Firstly, what is meant by democracy? Secondly, what type of press would be suitable? Recently Albert R. Hunt discussed the thorny issue concerning the relationship between newspapers and democracy in a Letter From Washington (March 22nd 2009 International Tribune Herald) titled ‘A Vibrant Democracy Requires Newspapers’. Hunt is certainly not the first to ruminate on the decline of the press in the face of opposition from writers on the Internet. The news editor of the UK’s Guardian, David Leigh, equally opined upon the threat to investigative journalism (November 12th 2007) in an article titled ‘Are Reporters Doomed?’ whereby Leigh ruminated on citizen journalism: ‘Citizen Journalism is here to stay. But in the rush to embrace new media we risk destroying the soul of traditional reporting’ Leigh lamented.

Leigh also argued whilst the ‘internet is an incredibly rich information resource, and a great tool for worldwide sharing’ it also ‘degrades principles’. Whilst Leigh argued that citizen journalism has its place, he nevertheless sought to separate citizen journalism from traditional journalism practiced by ‘proper reporters’, which is based on ‘investigative journalism’. Leigh further maintained that good journalism is ‘Slow journalism’ and opposed to the rush of the net presents the ‘… reporter as a patient assembler of facts’.

Hunt makes a similar point and further argues that the decline in newspapers ‘may more profoundly affect the destiny of the United States’ but the telling piece is this: ‘Many industries are reeling these days; the Austrian economist Joseph. A. Schumpeter wrote of the creative destruction in capitalism, in which new innovation generates new industries and companies …’. For Hunt, capitalism is democracy and here Hunt’s view requires short thrift! Capitalism, in its free market form, is the basis for corporate control over media and in this form subverts democracy because the commercial imperative to sell copy over ethics and the eternal requirement of advertising revenue seriously impacts upon standards when free of regulation.

What Hunt fails to grasp is the philosophical distinction between free speech and freedom of the press. The former (free speech) is a broader principle applicable to all whilst the latter (freedom of the press) is limited only to the press. In the case of the latter if, as is mostly the case, the number of major mainstream national newspapers are limited to a few then by definition freedom of the press automatically turns into a privilege of the few, and this is why the Internet offers opportunities to the less privileged and less powerful to exercise their free speech as a principle. One of the core areas of concern with media criticism and media ethics for different reasons is that freedom of press under the liberal principle of individual economic rights (a core constituent of capitalism) is paradoxically the reason for its limitations both for speech and for helping to further any notion of democracy. Capitalism is not, as Hunt would have us believe, the answer, but the cause of a democratic demise. Yes in principle, newspapers are important for democracy, but business, as Marx once argued corrupts good journalism, and the public know that. If newspapers are to survive then the first action any responsible government must take is to base production on the principle of plurality and diversity; how that is achieved is open-ended, but there are models out there which set the framework for production; Sweden (with high subscription rates and high readership) and Norway (subsidies plus the highest readership worldwide) are two worth considering.