 Dear students, now we are going to talk about the influences on government regulation of the media. It is important to note that even when countries have the same approaches to government regulation of the media, whether the approach is authoritarian, communist, social responsibility or even libertarian, the actual laws that they pass may be quite different. The approach of government, the specific will, but the laws that it passes, there are different factors involved and different motivations involved. And those factors can be categorized into the political, economic and cultural factors. And these factors may help to explain the differences in the ways countries translate the same approach into actual regulation. So these factors guide and influence the governments that they interpret the same approach in different ways. What is political influence? Political influence refers to the types of power that officials can exert. The leaders of some countries have more power to impose their will over the nation's institution than do the leaders of other countries. As we see, in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, different political regimes have come. Democratic regimes have also come. And your dictatorship regimes have also come. And in different regimes, what everyone has said is that the media should be independent and the media should be free. And this is their policy, that they are proponent of the libertarian approach and believe in it. But their own interpretations are not there. Every regime has interpreted the libertarian approach in their own way. And according to the will of their leader, they have imposed the media regulations. Economic influences is the second factor that is important to understand the influences on government regulation. Economic influences revolve around the cost of carrying out certain types of regulations. Some governments are able to generate such funds that they can make certain kinds of policies and allocate budgets for them. And some governments are very weak economically and they cannot afford such things. A country that adopts the social responsibility approach may use tax, money to maintain an active educational TV broadcasting system whereas another country may reinforce privately owned TV stations to devote a certain number of hours a day to education. As we see here in Pakistan, every household has to pay electricity bills in order to run the Pakistan television. And every household pays a certain amount of money to run their businesses and operations. Similarly, you may get some other examples in the world where tax is imposed and private media has been told to emphasize on the social causes. Cultural influences center on the historical circumstances that lead society to accept certain media systems rather than others. The special history and customs of particular societies lead different governments to feel differently about the moral responsibility of certain regulations. As we see here in Pakistan, different political regimes have supported different press organizations and controlled some of them. Similarly, in the whole world, a particular government is unfriendly with a particular media organization and is unfriendly with others. And this is all about the influences on government regulation of media.