Power, Democracy, and the Independent Press in the UK

This essay delves into the intricate relationship between democracy and power within the United Kingdom, with a specific focus on the influence exerted by the independent press. The analysis begins by highlighting the historical context of UK democracy and then proceeds to examine the powers granted to various authorities and systems within the UK framework. The essay explores the impact of media bias, political lobbying, and the role of the press in shaping public perception, particularly in relation to events such as Brexit. The author argues that the press, often influenced by business interests and political agendas, has failed to maintain impartiality, leading to a skewed dissemination of information and influencing democratic processes like voting and referendums. The essay concludes that the lack of an impartial press poses a significant threat to the integrity of UK democracy, potentially leading to political instability, the erosion of public trust, and the manipulation of public opinion. It emphasizes the need for a more balanced and unbiased media landscape to safeguard the principles of democracy and ensure informed decision-making.

SOCIAL POLICY

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To what extent is democracy linked to power in the UK
UK is one of the oldest democracies in the world. There are different authorities and systems
in UK and the democracy has given them powers to do what is needful. Independent press
has been under the question mark about their approach towards exercising their powers
(Drumwright, 2013). This essay will address power of the independent press in UK. It will
also suggest about the press becoming impartial and its impact on the democracy and the
decision making.
In the Era of too much information, independent press have failed to ensure its freedom. Even
after too much freedom has been provided to the press, their fairness is under the question
mark. World Press Freedom Index has ranked UK on 33rd among the 180 nations. This might
look good on numbers but actually the media and press houses have become the puppets of
the business houses. This has not only reduced the powers of the press in democracy but has
also increased the influence of politics in the nation. The impact is highest on the print media
as they are the ones that have been supressed majorly. Nobody wants negative publicity
hence the main news has been sent to the pages where people do not read much. A distraction
is created in terms of the news that should be in priority. Government do not want to go and
hence they are either bribing the journalists or are using their business partners to purchase
the press houses. Since there are many press houses that are in some other business as well
hence they have to ensure that they have made good relations with the government (Hazell,
Bourke and Worthy, 2012). Due to this they are not giving priority to the news that is going
against the company.
There is a significant link between the democratic process within the UK and the powerful
others. Democratic processes such as voting and referendums have also been influenced by
the press in the nation (Waterson, 2018). This can be easily seen in terms of the Brexit policy
where from previous few years there had been negative imaging about the impact of Brexit
on UK and there was support of all the political players that are against the Brexit. This was
genuinely done due to the monetary aids by the companies. This has literally swayed the
people’s perception and the democratic processes like referendum as people gets carried
away by the perception being created by the press (Iancu, 2010). It has also impacted upon
the thinking process of the people. It is due to the powerful role of the press that in UK there
have been changes in political heads which has resulted in the political instability in the
nation.

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Yes in UK there is lack of impartial system where press is full of biases and prejudices. This
is the major reason that people have started to say that this newspaper is associated with this
political party and hence the perception about the press has also changed. There are
allegations about every press that they are either against the government or pro-government.
Due to lack of impartiality among the press it is seen that in the last two years left wing blogs
have been given more space in the press (Nord and Krogh, 2015). Instead of impartiality they
have become highly sophisticated and are doing aggressive form of political lobbying and
campaigning. Press has been playing a critical role in supporting the political consensus given
by Thatcherism namely privatisation, weak trade unions, deregulation and lower taxes on the
rich. In spite of challenging the power centres in UK, they have been promoting the
disseminating myths and outright lying in the process. These myths have impact on the
polling results. Investigative journalism has been side lined as they are expensive, full of risk
and costly and in the time revenue of the press has come down hence no press are investing
money on the investigative reporting. Pundits have greater influence on the democracy
especially in terms of building the views of the people. There was a time when the press in
UK was impartial as it was writing about everything going on in the nation. This was
basically a time when the digital media was not so powerful and the revenues of the press
were on the higher side (Muterera and Madzima, 2012). It was seen that the front page stories
was comprised of the voices of the once that are less powerful.
This kind of system in UK has impact on the way people are thinking but it has impacted the
democracy. Many have started saying that democracy in UK is coming to an end. Since
democracy was about the different views of people hence the influence of press on the
opinions is not good. This is because if they will want they could change the perception in
anyway (Jones, 2017). Democracy does not exist without difference of opinion. Suppose
there is a need of presenting the view about the plight of the people and the government is not
willing to do so. If the press will not show their view then there is a greater chance that
anything will change for them. If the press also shows the other side of the story then they
will be understood as the culprits while they are actually the once who are facing. If the
majority’s perception is in the favour of the government, they will never think about the
issues. This can be easily seen in the case of immigrants where it is seen that people who
have come as an immigrants are understood as a threat for the nation but their flights is not
understood (Cobley, 2019). This is the major reason that the minds of the people in UK have
been changed about the immigrants coming to UK.

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There have been changes in the democracy type in UK which is not very good for the people
that are living in there. This kind of weak democracy is raising many kinds of evils that
support different kinds of bad things in the nation such as corruption and lobbying. This also
has impact on the sovereignty of the nation as the external influencers are changing the minds
of the people through the press (Jones, 2019). This kind of democracy is also not good as it is
influencing the decisions of the people. In the areas like voting if such things arise then there
is quite a bigger chance that there will be no change of government even when the
government is not performing. This is because the support of the people will be with the
government and in the next elections also people will select them only. Due to this it can be
seen that one party’s government lasts long or in other words the parties or the ideologies that
are pro-industrialists comes into power. This has a significant impact on the decisions being
made by the government and hence the policies are also converting against the policies of the
people that are actually in need. This type of democracy has empowered the left wings whose
actual aim is divide the society into the smaller fragments on the basis of dissimilarities. They
try to impress more numbers of fragments through their ideology that drives them. For
instance Islamophobia has been built in the society hence the people that are against the Islam
irrespective of their own problems will support the party that supports the left wing (Smith,
2017). This will help the parties to win irrespective of the problems that their performance.
The power of press has influence on the decisions being made. This can be understood
through the examples such as on the immigrants. The stories that is published in the press has
a direct influence on the people as they start thinking in that direction only and hence
pressurises governments to make decisions that might be against many people (Selva, 2019).
This kind of democracy will result in making of particular kinds of strategies only or say the
strategies that will only benefit few set of people. Decisions are also made in terms of the fact
that whether it is supporting the democracy or is not supporting them. The ideologies are also
developed by the press as they transplant any idea into the people and they choose decision
makers that support their ideas (Huck, 2019). The power of press has also resulted in making
of the decisions that were not taken in the past and is against the nature of the UK’s ideology.
In conclusion it can be said that press had been playing a major role in the democracy
however in the past few years they have wrongly utilised their powers to influence others.
This also had impact on the decisions being made by the government as they had to work as
per the feelings of the masses. Press had become highly impartial especially in terms of
supporting the left wings in the UK. Being one of the major pillars of democracy press had

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the role of strengthening others but it is seen that they have become full of biases. Instead of
supporting the powerless by becoming their voice they have become the voice of the
powerful especially the law makers. Democratic processes such as referendums and voting
have been influenced by the press especially in terms of changing their mind-set about
anything.

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Selva, M., 2019. Democracy needs journalists to be transparent about their political sources.
[Online] Available at: https://ukandeu.ac.uk/democracy-needs-journalists-to-be-transparent-
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