The dependency between government and media is a contentious issue in contemporary times. The media, once termed the Fourth Estate due to the unique role it plays in society, is supposed to be the conscience of the First Estate, namely the government. Yet, a simple analysis of the functioning of media organizations makes obvious that its role had deviated from the purported ideal. Rather than serving the interests of the general public, the media is shown to serve vested interests of the powers that be. The object of this essay is to ascertain the magnitude of such deviances from ethical journalism. Scholarly sources are perused in the process to provide supporting evidence.
In any critical discussion of modern geo-polity, the word ‘propaganda’ finds recurrent mention. This is nowhere truer than in discussions about the policies and actions of the world’s only superpower, the United States of America. In his book, ‘Managing Public Opinion: The Corporate Offensive’, Alex Carey says that in the United States, “great progress had been made towards the ideal of a propaganda-managed democracy, whose principal aim was to identify a rapacious business state with every cherished human value” (Pilger, 2005). If the objective of this propaganda framework is met, then notions of democracy and individual franchise will be overwhelmed by constructs of the public relations industry in the form of advertisements and business-controlled news. Carey goes on to say that it will not be long before other functioning democracies adopt this model of control, which essentially negates institutions of democracy. In essence, Alex Carey is suggesting that in the United States, the media has become subservient to the state (Pilger, 2005).
The state of mass media in Britain, as in other modern democracies, should be also be gauged in the context of its participation in ideological propaganda. Ideology as a sociological term has been interpreted in many different ways. But the following is an approximate definition of the term: Any system of beliefs, values and habits that are based on a particular political or religious school of thought. Media in general and Television in particular has always been used to propagate ideologies. Although the word “ideology” has come to carry negative connotations, the propagated ideas need not necessarily be detrimental to the interests of the audience (Payne, 2005, p. 81). A very good example of this positive use of ideology is the British government run propaganda machinery during the First World War. As the strength of the British army grew weak in confronting an imposing German hostility, the military administration had to resort to Conscription as a means of restoring its strength. But a glimpse at the history of media in the backdrop of public administration and consumerism will show that the positive application of ideological propaganda is an exception than the rule. Empirical studies show that instances when the media and the state collaborate on a project, the consequences are unfavourable for the general public. For most part, the conservative owners of leading media houses want to ‘preach their viewers what is good conduct and what is not. The way they do it is by ‘showing’ what acceptable conduct is. While the merits and demerits of their beliefs are subject to debate, their role as the moral custodians of society is highly objectionable. The worrying aspect of this subtle coercion of values into the citizenry is that the viewers are not even aware of it, which makes them vulnerable to ideological indoctrination (New Statesman, July 24, 2000, p. 129).
A key talking point amongst the intelligentsia is the dangers posed by lack of diversity and representation in the mainstream media’s coverage. The phenomena of media concentration, which has seen greater consolidation in the last decade, gives rise to production of news content that serves the interests of select media elite. This concentration of power in the hands of large media conglomerates makes it easy for them to set the political agenda on the national scale as exemplified by Rupert Murdoch’s near monopoly ownership of media space in Britain. In fact, when Tony Blair first came to power in 1997 his first foreign visit was to Australia to have a one-on-one conversation with Mr. Murdoch. Irrespective of the official rhetoric, this gesture on part of Mr. Blair can only be construed as an informal pact of media-state cooperation in the subsequent years of New Labour rule. It is no surprise then that the issues that media coverage, in general, is infested with their personal biases, prejudices and interests. The general public, made helpless by this system, are presented a narrow political agenda that holds no real significance for them (Eldridge, Kitzinger & Williams, 1997, p. 27). In other words, while the media has the power to elicit a policy response from the government, the outcomes tend to benefit the media elite and ruling classes rather than people. Only a few news stories get picked for publication/broadcast among numerous other pieces competing for the same space/time. The journalists in charge of deciding the news content are subject to personal biases, external coercion (both implicit and explicit) and other constraints that influence their decision making. For these reasons, there are only a minority of journalists who adhere to standards of objectivity and professional integrity, while the rest succumb to various pressures consciously or otherwise. This decline in journalistic ethos is seen across geo-political entities and cultures, making it a cause of concern for all (Eldridge, Kitzinger & Williams, 1997, p. 28).
While media industries across geo-political entities have similarities, no two media organization operates in the same environment. To this extent one cannot draw sweeping generalizations with respect to ascertaining the independence or the lack of it in the media industry. Not only is the difference induced by realities of individual nation-states, but they are also demarcated by political transformation from within. A case in point is Eastern Europe, whose constituent nations previously belonged to the Communist bloc of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union had provided the fledgling democracies of the bloc to form a new media culture. But, as is the usually the case, orthodox media establishments proved difficult to budge even as Eastern European countries are now “the scene of the gradual disentanglement of the media from structures of the state, a process that, in many other countries, took place already a long time ago” (Jakubowicz, 1995, p.128).
Even today, authoritarian regimes do exist and they exert strict control over news media establishments. In fact, under these regimes, media is just another agency of the government, as opposed to a neutral one. The classic examples of this model of information dissemination were first witnessed during the Stalinist years post Second World War. In contemporary times, China adopts a similar approach. So do Islamist nations of the Middle East. In the case of the former, “The Communist Party state sought to achieve unity of power and ownership, that is, absolute power subordinating political, economic, military, ideological, police, and judiciary powers and, of course, the media to a centralized command system of government it controlled”. Although this system is being challenged by a growing number of citizen activists, it is still a far cry from the standards of press freedom seen here in Britain. The erstwhile Communist states “must retrace the process that began with the original battle for liberty of the press in 17thcentury England” (Jakubowicz, 1995, p.127).
Furthermore, the functioning of media under the Communist system sought complete subservience of the media, and, as a consequence, instituted the centralized command media system, whose defining characteristics were
“state monopoly of the media (or a ban on opposition media), financial control, administrative control (of appointments, goals, allocation of frequencies and newsprint, monopoly of press distribution), prepublication political censorship (leading to self-censorship), laws banning critical (“subversive,” “seditious”) journalism, and barriers to international information flows (jamming of foreign radio stations, bans on imports and distribution of foreign newspapers, periodicals, books, etc.). The media fulfilled for the state the hegemonic functions of dominance, ideological homogenization of the audience, and reproduction of the existing social order.” (Jakubowicz, 1995, p.125)
While the media-state relations might not be so intertwined in modern capitalist democracies, here too the government-media nexus exists, but from a subtler government-business community of interests. This is particularly true in capitalist societies, whereas it is less blatant in nations with a socialist tradition. Even in Britain, whose public representatives believe that they are at the forefront of democratic principles, the mutual dependency between government and business enterprises is quite obvious. Since mainstream media is only one manifestation of the larger corporate world, it is established by deduction that the government and media are dependent upon one another. To cite a popular example, the radio series Absolute Power, starring Stephen Fry and Mark Tavener, which featured in BBC Radio4 during the Blair years, is a humorous expose on the media’s ulterior motive. The lead characters in the series – Charles Prentice and Martin McCabe – play the role of partners and directors of the company Prentice-McCabe, which specializes in ‘Government-Media’ relations. The reality is not much different from this humorous take on the media. Across the Atlantic, for example, a thorough investigation of news and public affairs programming by the media watchdog group FAIR revealed that “the voice of business on television was much louder than all others even on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). More than one-third of all on-camera sources were representatives of corporate America or Wall Street. Corporate influence pervades nearly every aspect of society – from simple things, like our daily diet and the clothes we wear, to matters of larger scale, like the way we communicate with each other” (Gerbner, 2001, p.186).
To fully grasp the extent of media-state collaboration, one has to evaluate the extent to which media has fulfilled its primary purposes. For example, the primary roles of Journalism are to inform and educate the general public about domestic and international political developments. Apart from these functions, the mass media is also expected to serve as a dissenting voice against excesses of power. In an ideal world the press would act as a faithful servant to the general public, earnestly endeavoring to inform and educate them. But the state of media in the contemporary world is far from ideal, which is reflected in the news product (TV news programme or newspaper) as well as the processes involved in making the product (including editorial policy, government censorship, advertiser pressure, etc). Instead of the media framework being set by democratic mechanisms from the bottom-up, we actually have a system that is directed by corporate and political interests. It is no surprise then that the general public is increasingly growing sceptical of the motives that decide editorial frameworks. Coinciding with the decline in public confidence on media industry is the disturbing trend of incompetence among journalists. This phenomenon is more obvious in the electronic media – especially Television – where many talk show hosts don’t have the requisite expertise and range of knowledge to hold forth on issues of international diplomacy and economics. These “celebrity journalists” seem to pick and choose stories that serve their own career prospects as opposed to keeping the interests of the viewers in mind (Shaw, 1999, p. 6).
Also, while the present state of media leaves a lot to be desired, media reform is not as straight forward as one might expect. For instance, “in the process of media reform, the general assumption is that media should progress ever nearer to an ideal of freedom and independence and away from dependency and control” (Craig, 2004). Many scholars concur that a media industry that is independent of governmental and corporate interference is better equipped to sustain the competitive and participative elements that keep alive democratic traditions. Yet, “free and independent media are not a good in and of themselves, but only in as much as they support other, more intrinsic values and goals (that is, democracy, a particular economic structure, greater cultural understanding, general human development, and so on). In a certain sense, free and independent media buttress these greater societal objectives and are, therefore, subordinate to them” (Gerbner, 2001, p.186).
Hence, in sum, it could be asserted that the government and media largely depend on one another. For the media houses, which are mostly business corporations, pleasing the government is a way to more profits. For the government, befriending the media goes a long way in help retain power. So, as long as this symbiotic arrangement goes undisturbed, the general public will not find their interests served. On a more optimistic note, there are some signs already that the media’s role as an ideological vehicle is facing a new challenge. With the advent of new technologies for communication, people have more control over the content and are in a better position to demand what they want. Many surveys have reflected the fact that public opinion is in favour of such empowerment. It remains to be seen, however, when this change actually manifests. While this will justly diminish media’s role as collaborators with an ideologue, it will help democratic governance and overall public contentment (Eldridge, Kitzinger & Williams, 1997, p. 160).
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