Redefining the Role of Media : The Impact of Media Freedom on Ethnic Diversity

This paper explores the role of media in mitigating the adverse effects of ethnic diversity on economic policies using a pooled OLS approach. A freer media helps build a strong public consensus, generates public awareness, creates a transparent government and, thus, fosters development. Consequently, it helps lessen frictions created among ethnic groups by society and also aids better formation of social capital. The results reveal that while a free press can efficiently deal with the retarded impacts of ethnic diversity on public policies, sufficiently higher press freedom levels can completely eliminate them. Further, free media helps to dampen ethnic tensions, corruption and genocides