Social Responsibility Theory

Mass media is a two sided sword which, if comes to good can uplift a whole nation and form a strong support for its development and pride abd if, it comes to deterioration, has the capacity to cause chaos and disorder in the socio-economic era of today.

According to historian, media has certain obligations to the society. The social responsibility theory of media entails the same concept into existence. This theory was initiated and promulgated in the american set up and the initiative was taken in the late forties. Also, the Hutchison commission on freedom of the press, formed during the world war II, provided a model in which the media has to perform some specific obligations towards society like truth, accuracy, objectivity and balance.

Social responsibility theory allows free press without any censorship but at the same time the content of the press should be discussed in public panel and media should accept any obligation from public interference or professional self regulations or both. The theory lies between both authoritarian theory and libertarian theory because it gives total media freedom in one hand but the external controls in other hand. Here, the press ownership is private.  The social responsibility theory moves beyond the simple “Objective” reporting (facts reporting) to “Interpretative” reporting (investigative reporting).  The total news is complete facts and truthful but the commission of the freedom press stated that “No longer giving facts truthfully rather than give a necessary analyzed or interpretative report on facts with clear explanations”.

The theory helped in creating professionalism in media by setting up a high level of accuracy, truth, and information. The commission of press council also included some tasks based on social responsibility of media, which are as follows:

Formulate the code of conduct for the press.

Improve the standards of journalism.

Safeguarding the interests of journalism and journalist.

Criticize and make some penalty for violating the code of conduct.

Happy Learning!

Anamika Gupta

IAAN