Author:

Keywords:

Governance, Social Sciences, Communication, Corporate governance, good governance, corporate social responsibility, media regulation, 1902 Film, Television and Digital Media, 2001 Communication and Media Studies, Communication & Media Studies, 4701 Communication and media studies

Abstract:

This contribution develops a media ethic around three notions, borrowed from the world of business ethics: corporate governance, good governance and corporate social responsibility. Corporate governance focuses on the internal and external mechanisms that help solve the agency problem that exists between owners and controllers of the firm. Here, it is argued that internal mechanisms for corporate governance are useful and important in the world of the media and have so far been relatively neglected by media regulators. Good governance is a much looser term. We propose to reserve this concept for the political side of media regulation (media as the fourth power in a democracy). The basic ideas about what good governance entails for the media can be found in the report written by the Hutchins Commission. Looking for the best possible governance structures that help us implement the basic principles laid out by the Hutchins Commission forms the bulk of media regulation in modern democracies. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an even looser and broader concept than good governance. This contribution goes beyond the political side of the media and focuses on the impact of the media on identity and group formation. I will argue that the impact of the media in a post-modern society is potentially very large and that this justifies a different type of media regulation in which content regulation has a much bigger part to play1. © Walter de Gruyter.