Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and D

by Fred S. Siebert, Wilbur L. Schramm, Theodore Peterson, et al.

Book Overview

Presented here are four major theories behind the functioning of the world's presses: (1) the Authoritarian theory, which developed in the late Renaissance and was based on the idea that truth is the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252724216
• ISBN13: 9780252724213
• Release Date: October 1963
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A timepiece reinvented in the Web era

"Four Theories of the Press" has, for years, been required reading for senior journalism students in most American universities. For many students, it is the only time journalism "ethics" was presented in the classroom even though the book is not about ethics. It is about four classic theories of the way mass media presents information to consumers. To summarize the four theories Siebert says: -- The authoritarian system is owned by the state, which controls mass media. This is practiced around the globe in places like North Korea and Iraq. -- The libertarian theory is essentially to journalism what laissez faire is to economics -- complete freedom of expression and ideas with no controls. This is essentially the World Wide Web. -- The Soviet system is, like the authoritarian system, state-owned. The difference is the Soviet system regulates its own content. With the death of the USSR and its satellites two decades ago, the remaining users include Cuba and some African countries. -- The social responsibility model was the American press beginning in the postwar period where muckraking and media investigation of wrongdoing was practiced to make the population wiser and to help improve society. This model existed in major media outlets up until about the time of the Internet. Now, with newspapers dying everywhere and electronic media competing not only with entertainment, cable outlets and the Internet, this theory is dust. Today, the mainstream American press doesn't adhere to any of these theories. The social responsibility model requires resources most American media outlets no longer can afford including the resource that it can alienate its few remaining advertisers that pay the bills. Instead, this has been replaced by a more highly-defined model where local outlets don't cover much national or international news and national models work to capture a fragment of the audience by appealing to their politics, prurient interest, or other market faction. Wise media outlets are beginning to understand that free is not a good business model and they are restricting their Web access to subscribers of their hardcopy or finite products. This is likely a wave of the future and may help the American media move back to the social responsibility model. Meanwhile, the libertarian press thrives but it is every man or woman for himself or herself on the Internet, which is increasingly the dominant communications media for everyone. From Vonage and other companies selling cheap phone service through an Internet connection to the likes of AOL and other major Internet access networks providing their own news, the world has become Wikipedia-ized. Today, the news media is far more individualized than its ever been and public content entities like Wikipedia allow anyone to become a scholar or journalist. Government and private enterprise have capitalized on this trend by turning their communications entities into news-providing resources that can caputre ev