Instead of serving the public and speaking truth to power, many media may act as mouthpieces of the powerful, repeat rumors without verification, discriminate against minorities, and feed the polarization of societies. Such media actions have a harmful influence that reaches far beyond the media sector itself. In this paper, we describe different phenomena of what we call the dark side of the media, and we look at how the dark side interacts in a dynamic way with other features of the governance environment. New and broader strategies in media development are needed to tackle this problem.

Authors: Jan Lublinski, Sacha Meuter, Mark Nelson