Global mass media

Mass media reflects many nations’ political systems around the world by how they are allowed to report on issues and controversies that arise in these different types of governments. The authoritarian political system created monarchies and dictatorships in their nation’s government where the media’s role is controlled by their decisions and is censored. This censorship denies its nation and therefore the mass media of freedom of speech which is crucial to mass audience’s being able to make educated decisions in their lives. On the other side, is the libertarian political system, a democracy, which welcomes the “marketplace of ideas, where an unbridled forum for free inquiry and free expression” exists (Vivan). Freedom of speech and free expression are supported in mass media in these democratic governments and people have “natural rights” and can make their own decisions. Globally, libertarianism thrives and mass media is able to communicate openly and without governmental restraints in Western and East-central Europe, in North and South America, and somewhat in the Asia-Pacific nations. In other parts of the world, as with most of the Islamic nations, their political system is mainly authoritarian but some are a variation of this. Mass media in these nations are bordering on some limited level of open communications to the mass audiences. Around the world, authoritarian and libertarian political systems set the tone for how much freedom their mass media has to communicate with the people in their nation.