| The Jamaican media industry has undergone profound changes in the past decade with significant growth in radio, television and print. Additionally, the gamut of American television programs became available to subscribers of cable television. The arrival of the Internet ensured a quick and ready link to the rest of the world.; With an often fractious socio-political climate and traditions framed by a history of slavery, colonialism and poverty, there is ongoing debate among interest groups over how the society is being impacted by the developments in the media. While many welcome the variety of information and entertainment now available, others are concerned about the possible effects of alien values transmitted along with them. Notions of a free press and their role in national development are central to the discussions on the possible impact of the mass media.; While the government supports the philosophy of a free press, it has refrained from using such explicit terminology in the constitution. Additionally, legislation introduced by the government seems to be more in keeping with the view that greater restraints on the press are necessary. Within the media industry itself, the meaning of press freedom seemed equally contentious. Discussions among practitioners are often framed in terms of some regulatory commission to oversee the functions of the media, and whether freedom should be protected by the constitution. Some academics, meanwhile, have called for a comprehensive policy delineating the relationship between the mass media and other societal institutions. Media owners, on the contrary, seem generally of the view that the laws of libel, slander, defamation and other similar statutes overly constrain the press—that the media need more freedom, not less.; To the extent that policy-makers, the industry and the citizenry are actively seeking to define what freedom of the press should mean and what are their commensurate responsibilities to the society, this study is an effort to determine how these terms are conceptualized in the society. Consequently, a qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles as well as select government documents was done to ascertain the views of government and media practitioners, and by extension, determine the nature of the normative model at work in the society.; Traditionally, normative models have been classified as authoritarian, libertarian, social responsibility and Soviet Communist. These for the most part describe models of media government in more developed societies with vastly different characteristics than Jamaica. More recently, the development media, democratic participant and democratic socialist models have sought to provide alternative frameworks for societies like Jamaica.; The central finding of this study is that none of these models accurately reflect the Jamaican situation. Rather, the Jamaican model is one in transition and one that combines elements of two traditional theories: authoritarianism and libertarianism, hence the model is being described as Transitional Liberal-Autboritarian (TLA). |
