Cunningham and Flew appear to attempt to deal with this aspect in their article, drawing on Marxist elements stemming from the Enlightenment, such as their consideration of the impact of commercialisation on the production of Australian media, they do perhaps neglect to consider the selective demographic- that is upper-middle class, white educated male- of "non-commercial" media channels, which thus, purposely or not, manage to parallel the social atmosphere of the "bourgeoisie" public domain of the Salons, which developed as a result of Enlightenment thinking. As a result, Cunningham and Flew consequentially end up with a somewhat inaccurate perspective. This point is further emphasised by John Keane in his article The Media and Democracy. In this article, Keane believes that enlightenment thinkers "failed to see that their utopian vision contained several blind spots" (Keane, 1991: 35).
Similar to Kant's theory, "the use of reason must be free in public", Cunningham and Flew continually consider the role of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and other non-commercial media such as the SBS (Special Broadcasting Station), as the primary channel through which critical reason is accomplished in a commercial environment where, all to often, it seems that public opinion is dictated rather than the result of free thought and expression. This perspective too parallels early enlightenment thinking on the freedom of thought, when it was perceived that only through freedom of expression could a workable public sphere be achieved. .
According to Milner, Political economy can be defined as a "culturalist sense of the antithesis between culture and utilitarian capitalist civilisation [combined with] a utilitarian sense of the importance of material interest" (Milner, 1991: 40). Cunningham and Flew see the ABC as an attempt to achieve a synthesis of these elements to create a sense of cultural identity (Cunningham and Flew, 2000: 237-240).