Cultural Diversity in the News Media: A Democratic or a Commercial Need?

Abstract

The paper distinguishes between laissez-faire and interventionist models used to justify and implement cultural diversity initiatives in the news media. The laissez-faire model is characteristic of U.S journalism. However, due to the convergence of media systems and the widespread adoption of diversity management, the laissez-faire model may also become the prevalent model throughout other Western democracies, in Europe and elsewhere. The paper argues that the problem with the laissez-faire approach to cultural diversity in the media is that it relies on commercial instead of normative justifications. As a result, cultural diversity is mostly reduced to an ornament. Equated with accuracy and treated as a business asset, diversity serves, rather than challenges, the existing media system. By failing to open sufficient spaces for alternative social voices, business-driven media policies do not respond to the democratic needs of a multicultural society.