Chapter 7 assure a commitment of the media to their mandate as'watch dog' of the public interest 7 . 8 For example if the media, taking advantage of their right to free expression, contrive to publish pseudo-events or to propagate outright falsehoods, the interested public who rely on that media will be hard pressed to secure proper accountability or responsiveness to their social needs and political preferences. In Newton's formulation, therefore, the term media malaise'is used broadly to cover those types of democratic pathology which are supposed to be caused, at least in part, by the modern mass media – political apathy, alienation, distrust, cynicism, confusion, disillusionment and even fear'(Newton, 1999, p. 581). Political Efficacy Political efficacy is a theoretical construct that suggests that citizens' faith in and commitment to democratic values are related, in some way, to their conviction about the capacity of the electoral process to enable them to exact redeemable promises and hold the feet of elected leaders to the fire of public accountability. Therefore, all agencies of political socialisation(the family, school, religion, political parties, the media) must help the citizenry to become more politically conscious and empowered. The empirical evidence suggests that the use of incendiary rhetoric, and of falsehood and fear-mongering in and by the media, leads inexorably to a public feeling of cynicism – and even antipathy – towards electoral politics and the democratic alter 79 native. Therefore if, rather than deliver the quality of 78 Ansu-Kyeremeh provided a typology of various constitutionally grounded canine metaphors by which the Ghanaian media might be characterised: watch dog(Articles 21(1)(a), 41, 162, 163, 164); attack dog(Articles 21(1)(a), 41(f), 162); lap dog(Act 449(19), Article 55(12)) in'Ka nea woahu(Publish only the verified) – An African Communication Paradigm', Inaugural lecture, University of Ghana(2008), 16, 17. 79 Cf. Peter L. Francia and Paul S. Herrnson,'Keeping it Professional: The Influence of Political Consultants on Candidate Attitudes toward Negative Campaigning', Politics& Policy, 35(2)(2007), 246-272; Stephen Ansolabehere, Shanto Iyengar, and Adam Simon,'Replicating Experiments Using Aggregate and Survey Data: The Case of Negative Advertising and Turnout', American Political Science Review, 93(4)(1999), 901–9. 216