A Free and Responsible Press (Contemporary World Academic Masterpieces - Translation Series of Journalism and Communication Studies · Master Classics Series): Contemporary World Academic Masterpieces

Author: Zhan Jiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-08-01
Features: In the 1940s, the concentration and monopoly trend of American mass media was intensifying. Out of concern over the decreasing number of media owners, Henry Luce, founder of Time magazine, invited Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, to lead a group of professors in 1942 to explore the growing problems in the field of mass communication as outsiders and scholars. This research team, later known as the Commission on Freedom of the Press (also called the Hutchins Commission), consisted of over a dozen top scholars, including communication scholar Harold Lasswell, each having published an average of 12 books. The committee revised its report nine times and published its final report, A Free and Responsible Press, in 1947, which later became the foundation of the "social responsibility theory" of the media.
Around major issues concerning American-style democracy, such as freedom of the press and preventing the abuse of media power, the U.S. Commission on Freedom of the Press proposed the following recommendations for the role of the press, which have grown increasingly recognized to this day:
A truthful, comprehensive, and wise report on current events in their contextual meaning.
A forum for exchanging commentary and criticism.
A tool for social groups to communicate opinions and attitudes.
A method for presenting and clarifying social goals and values.
A channel to deliver the flow of confidence, ideas, and emotions provided by the media to every member of society.