• There is a continuing tension between the public vision of the media contained within the idea of democracy and the market vision of communication: Particularly as long as citizens and media authors remember that democracy and the market are not the same thing.

• Media messages must address at least some real needs of the audience or the audience will no longer be interested: Consequently media is constantly filled with half-truths. But which part?

• Commercial media has a voracious appetite for creative content, even though it works to tame that content before it is distributed.

• In the social constructivist model of communication, communication is an ongoing, poetic process of meaning creation: It is fundamentally uncontrollable.

Next: How these tensions have played themselves out in media history.