Mapping the Media in the Americas

Media and Democracy

Today all of the countries of the Americas, with the exception of Cuba, are democratic.  However, despite the establishment of the basics of democracy, including competitive elections, the separation of powers and broad adult citizenship, countries continue to face second-generation reforms related to democratic consolidation and the strengthening of democratic culture, institutions, norms and practices.  These challenges are shared by countries across the hemisphere.  The role and impact of the media is an issue that touches many of these second-generation reforms – political finance, freedom of expression, access to information, and effective and appropriate government regulation.

This is due to the fact that in the Western Hemisphere the media play an increasingly important – and expensive – role in transmitting information that citizens in a democratic society require to make informed decisions.  Citizens receive information about candidates and election logistics, are informed of public services and government policy, and learn about current events in their community, country and the world, all from the media.  The media determine what information is and is not available and when and how it is conveyed; the media ultimately shape how people interpret and understand what is going on around them.  What is more, people trust the media.  The 2006 Latinobarómetro poll indicates that 64% of people placed trust in television, second only to the church and more than double the confidence registered for congress and political parties, with 27% and 22% respectively.

Ultimately the media serve a public function that is indispensable for democracy.  While this reality poses challenges to developed democracies such as Canada and the United States, it is particularly acute in countries where underdevelopment places limits on the government’s ability to support media from the national budget or to adopt and enforce regulations governing media conduct.  In many cases this leaves private money as the main source of media financing and the market as the regulator of the information that is circulated.  In the end, private mass media outlets maintain a very powerful position in our societies. 

These concerns are compounded by an absence of accurate information about the media in many countries throughout the Americas. Little is publicly known about the ownership structure of the media, the impact of media messaging on the vote, or the effect of media concentration on the democratic process.  Without an increase in transparency and access to reliable data about our information sources, speculation and uninformed decision-making will continue: we will continue to hypothesize about actual levels of media concentration and the threats it poses (or not) to the diversity of ideas, freedom of expression and access to information; to conjecture about the use of government and private advertising money to control media outlets, using threats to pull valuable advertising dollars if coverage is not as frequent or flattering as requested; and to debate the need for stronger regulation to balance the tension between free market logics and the needs of a democratic society.