In the United Kingdom, we’re surrounded by a plethora of mass media companies who have their own ideologies, this engenders citizens to think for themselves and align themselves with media publications that are compatible with them.
The top leading media companies in the United Kingdom have political identities which often influences the topics that they publish as well as the tone. For instance, The Guardian are liberally centre-left leaning this is evident during the 2019 General Election when almost every mass media organisation was attacking former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for his policies. The Guardian remained unbiased and maintained journalistic neutrality. Whereas the editorial stance of the Daily Mail is a right-wing tabloid who are traditional supporters of the Conservative Party and the Daily Express is also right-wing newspaper who work closely with Conservative MPs.
Furthermore, I believe that The Guardian newspaper are organised to dispel against the hegemonic traditional media by using their centre-left stance, openly support and provide solidarity towards People of Colour and marginalised communities.
Theorist McChesney shares, “the media system is linked ever closely to the capitalist system, both through ownership and through its reliance upon advertising, a function dominated by the largest firms in the economy.”
The media system and industries in the United Kingdom are diverse and pluralistic, although various media organisations within the media industries have different political identities and beliefs, they all share the same agenda which is to educate the masses. In the United Kingdom, there’s an overwhelming amount of support from a majority of media newspaper companies towards the Conservative Party. Even BBC News, Sky News and ITV News who are non-partisan have been questioned over the years on where their political stance truly lies, especially during Brexit and when the Black Lives Matter protests occurred.
The media and democracy go hand in hand, both advocate liberation and freedom for the public. Retrospectively, recent events show that media democracy has “two major concerns: (1) democratisation through the media and (2) democratisation of the media itself.” The main characteristics that media democracy obtain are freedom and independence, which reflects modern day society in the United Kingdom, regardless of whether citizens agree or disagree with the politicians in Parliament or the Monarchy, citizens don’t have to live in fear about our freedom of speech essentially costing our lives, citizens in the United Kingdom have “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
In order for media democratisation to be fair, journalists need to remain unbiased and maintain journalistic neutrality and professionalism. The idea of journalistic neutrality became hypothetical and an option to British journalists when the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, started dating Prince Harry Duke of Sussex. The misogynoir and unfair treatment that Markle received from the British tabloids intensified when she married Prince Harry. Due to media democracy, Markle was able to refute published misrepresentations and redress unfair reporting that was incorrect and invaded personal and family privacy. The media failed to represent Meghan Markle accurately and comfortably invaded her personal privacy too many times to count. Is it such a surprise as to why she left her royal family and its protocol, and defended herself in the most-watched Oprah interview?
The media in the United Kingdom are easily accessible, as many media publications are online and on various social media platforms. “Social media, which are an increasingly salient aspect of the media system and resemble the free press in being unregulated beyond normal legal provisions. The biggest online sites and associated social media are journalistically produced by newspapers, and generally operate on the same lines, although with less political colouration of news priorities.”