Governments Practice Public Communication

Public communication faces the constraints such as decision-making power over the public communication, which directly connects with the ownership. Ownership may be public ownership combined with public control i. e. not of government but of civil society or public ownership combined with government control or private ownership with decision making at owners discretion or private ownership with decision making in the legal framework and a strong cultural tradition concerning professional rights, quality standards etc. In the above types of ownerships governments put a constraint on the all except the last one. So framing legal framework with strong traditions, professional ethics can regulate the constraint.

Secondly, institutional freedom of public communication is not sufficient condition for its appropriate democratic performance. Even formally free media can create a particular type of representative public sphere, which is not more than a stage on which personal power parades its glory. Thirdly public communications are intrinsically asymmetrical. The access to their functions is very unequal. Some social and political actors do have direct and preferential access over others. Fourthly the agenda structuring function also lies with governmental agencies and their political masters.

It is up to their discretion whether certain issues rank high or low, is dealt with extensively or in a volatile manner. Fifthly public communication does have the power to set agenda but they are completely been dependent on political and bureaucratic masters. So political communication become tools at the hands of powerful politicians in the government and they use this platform to portray their views only. Apart from above constraints public communication generally faces some other constraints such as anonymity, overconfidence, equal treatment of multiple senders, commercialization of media, the interlocking of interest between media, politicians and business sector.