Las presiones del poder sobre los medios de comunicación social

Abstract

Those societies currently referred to as democratic claim to enjoy division of powers and the participation of citizens. The powers referred to include those exercised by the fourth estate the mass social communication media that are not dependent on or managed by any other power. In the present paper, however, we present evidence that this freedom of action is in many cases just a matter of appearance: political and party forces cannot gain or hold on to power without making use of the mass media. Such media are often managed and subjected to interventions in order to silence criticism and create a certain image of those in power. The objective data we refer to corresponds to various geographical areas and different political models.