Quotations:

• “A public space between the private domain and the state in which public opinion was formed and ‘popular’ supervision of government was established“

• The primary democratic role of the media is to act as a public watchdog overseeing the state

• The public sphere and role of media in relation to it has to be “conceptualized and reincarnated into a new form”

• The media facilitates this process by providing an arena of public debate, and by reconstituting private citizens as a public body in the form of a public opinion.

• Habermas’ study can extrapolate a model of the public sphere as a neutral zone, where access to relevant information affecting the public good is widely available

• The watchdog role is said to override in importance of other functions of media and to dictate the form in which media should be organised.

• Anchoring mass media to the free market ensures that it is possible to ensure the media’s complete independence from the government.

Regulation, state or free market