CITIZEN DISCOVER THE FACTS How can a free media strengthen democracy?
1. A free media can hold those in power accountable for their actions When the media is free to ask hard questions of those in power and demand answers, the government is less likely to abuse its power or lie to the public.
The famous US newspaper owner Randolph William Hearst once said ‘News is what people don’t want you to print. Everything thing else is ads’. He meant that good journalists go after stories in the public interest, even if they are embarrassing to those in power. Modern journalists uphold this tradition by digging for the truth, rather than just accepting what they are told by the powerful.
In Ireland, the Freedom of Information Act is a law that allows any citizen to request information kept by any State-funded organisation. This law strengthens the freedom of the media and is useful to journalists looking to uncover stories the State might prefer to keep quiet.
2. A free media can fact-check for the public
In the first half of the twentieth century, much of Europe was dominated by dictatorships. In each case, one of the first acts by those regimes was to seize control of the media. Non-democratic countries such as North Korea and China continue to control much of their media today.
Non-democratic governments like to control all media so they can use it to broadcast their version of the truth to the public. This is called propaganda. Propaganda is most powerful when people lack independent sources of information that they can compare to the ‘official truth’. These days, fact-checking websites such as and
