The media-as-a-constitutional-component concept: a new theoretical foundation for media freedom

Abstract

This chapter introduces the conceptual ‘key’ to address the problem identified in Chapter 4: how should media and non-media entities be distinguished for the purposes of media freedom. This key is a functional rather than institutional definition of media, deriving from the media-as-a-constitutional-component concept. The chapter begins by making the claim that libertarianism is the de facto normative paradigm, which forms the foundation for my contention, based on analysis of the argument from truth and the marketplace of ideas, that libertarianism should be rejected as a normative framework for online speech and the media-as-a-constitutional-component concept. This leads on to my advancement of the proposition that social responsibility theory should be embraced as the dominant normative paradigm. In making this argument I discuss the relationship between the media-as-a-constitutional-component concept and other participatory theories of free speech. Finally, the chapter asks how the new normative framework, in offering an alternative means of interpreting free speech that recognises twenty-first century methods of communication, could better deal with some of the legal challenges that arise from the media operating within the current libertarian paradigm.