Media Ownership, Political Economy And Media Content

Résumé du document

Mass media has undoubtedly become the primary medium used to distribute information. The functioning of the mass media is complex and the influence it bares on shaping the audience's opinions and attitudes is colossal. This characteristic makes it a great source of power too. This ensemble of institutions and methods is interrelated with political, economical and social institutions and has therefore been studied in great depth. The aspect that will be examined in this presentation is the functioning of the mass media as large, profit-oriented corporations. To understand media functioning, it is necessary to have knowledge of who owns those organizations, the pressures and influences they are subjected to, and what effects those elements bear on media content. One of the main sources we used is the book "Manufacturing consent, the political economy of the mass media" by Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky that proposes a "propaganda model" to explain how media ownership is at the root of what information and messages the audience has access to. The definition of propaganda focuses on the unrestrained process and most specifically on the purpose of the process: propaganda is the intentional and organized attempt to shape perceptions, control and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.

Extraits

[...] It was always a porous wall, and now, self righteously they run a bulldozer through The content of the media is influenced by a large variety of processes that are the product of the political economy of the media and the profit orientation of those organizations, by the willingness of owners to increase their profits to the detriment of the quality of the content and regardless of the how true a picture of reality is conveyed to audiences. There seem to have been attempts to move towards changing the functioning of the mass media, shifting the focus from exclusively financial priorities as it is reported in an article written by Lawrence K. Grossman , a former president of NBC News and PBS, ”Wanted: A New Breed of Media CEOs with Old-Fashioned Values.” . [...]

[...] Advertisers are essential to media companies to recover production costs especially in periods of recession of the business cycle. In his interview Ben H. Baggdikian points out the fact that news that sells can be traced by locating ads. According to him basic form and content in newspapers, magazines and television programs have been altered to create editorial content not primarily for the needs and interests of the audience but for the audience collecting needs of advertisers.”[3]. II. Advertising constitutes the second filter media content has to go through according to Edward S. [...]

[...] In another way, can we still believe the media? http//www.islr.org/columns/1996/13feb96.html http:// www.pbs.org./wgbh/pages/frontline/smoke/interviews/bagdikian.html Ben H. Baggdikian Media Monopoly”, 5th edition, Beacon Press Boston, p.8 Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky “manufacturing consent, the political economy of the mass media”, Vintage, p17 Edward S. [...]

[...] Advertising is a series of appeals and statements aiming to influence the receiver and to make him act as the message aims to make him act or think, whether it is to buy a commodity or promote an ideology that is advantageous to the producers of the message. Capitalism is undoubtedly one of the messages we are constantly bombarded with, an ideology that is both to the advantage of advertisers as well as for the ruling elite. Advertising is a constant reminder of the cultural and economic basis of our society and has a symbolic and cultural usefulness that goes beyond the simple selling of commodities. III. [...]

[...] Bagdikian, in his book media monopoly” explores the implications of the highly concentrated ownership of the media by a very restricted number of multinational corporations. Those corporations having similar economic and political interests, and the media being a great tool of power in shaping values and opinions he sees a homogenisation of news content, diminishing the audience's real choices. In one of the interviews, given by the author, he reports that: have maybe anywhere from 20 to a half a dozen huge corporations who have the dominant media voice in the media absorbing world, especially in the developed world - and now, getting a foothold in the less developed world .And that means that inevitably people who have such power see the world in a particular way. [...]