News as Consumption: the Effect of Corporate Media on Democracy
James Madison, an American founding father, once wrote: “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”
A free, unbiased and open press that has the unimpeded power to inform the population on current issues of public interest has always been an essential component of a functioning democracy. It enforces transparency in the political process and ensures leaders are accountable for their public actions.
Lately, the marriage between fierce corporatisation and consolidation of global media empires has spawned a hybrid form of journalism that inhabits a space somewhere between news, entertainment and partisan propaganda. Large media outlets, particularly cable news stations like CNN and Fox News, are finding it more profitable to air opinion-based shows with high-profile celebrity hosts than to engage in objective fact-finding journalism.
This form of media rhetoric espouses a superficial policy debate that enables corporate conglomerates to shape public perceptions and set the political agenda. It craftily and implicitly disempowers the electorate from making informed decisions, giving them more material but less information, which leaves them overwhelmed with quantity – perhaps amused at the shiny packaging but ultimately deprived of substantial evidence or meaningful analysis.
How does a profession that so values autonomy and freedom get caught in this web of corporate greed? According to Robert McChesney, a media professor and president of FreePress, the answer lies in the paradox of competition in an oligopoly. In other forms of markets, competition is thought to increase the quality and accessibility of a product. This is the opposite in an oligopoly. The media industry is owned by a handful of corporate giants – the biggest in the English-speaking world being Disney, Murdoch’s NewsCorp, Time Warner and Viacom – which have the market power to dictate content. But on the flip-side, there are enough of them to justify a competitive ‘race to the bottom’. This, in turn, sacrifices quality and journalistic integrity for a fatter bottom-line and higher returns to shareholders.
News outlets are not just victims of an increasingly commercial industry. They also have personal interests and deliberately use their considerable power to sway political discussion. This is done through their explicit links with political parties. For instance, Roger Ailes, the President of Fox News, was also a chief media consultant for three Republican presidents (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush). The biggest broadcaster in Italy, Mediaset, is known for its pro-government stance and is owned by the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In both cases, their bias is obvious – some might claim ridiculously so. Yet they endure, repugnant to objectivity, incompatible with transparency and unchallenged by representative government or civil society, because we seem to lack real alternatives.
Possible Solutions
So, what are our options for liberation? How do we reject corporate and political influence over the media and prevent re-infiltration? There are a few alternatives: government regulation, new investment, or the shift to citizen journalism and new media such as social networking and the Internet.
Government regulation can be useful as a protective measure to increase competition, by encouraging new entrants in the industry and punishing uncompetitive conduct. Madeleine King’s article in the previous edition of The Sydney Globalist outlined the state of media regulation in various countries. For instance, the UK’s 2008 House of Lords Select Committee on Communication acknowledged a highly concentrated media ownership and its threat to a ‘diversity of voices’. Similarly, while the industry has been mostly deregulated in the U.S., there is a strong grassroots movement for reform such that attempts at further deregulation have been blocked due to public disapproval. However, media ownership laws in Australia (a remnant of the Howard era) support the existence of a corporate oligopoly and, unlike in the U.S., there has been little activism against them.
Having a free press movement and new legislation is only part of the solution. Viable alternatives are also needed that will stand for journalistic integrity. But is this notion of an unbiased news source practical, or an implausible ideal? While public news outlets like Australia’s SBS and ABC rank high in objectivity, they are government-funded and commercially unviable. Privately owned outlets demonstrate bias in varying degrees, even those like Democracy Now which markets itself as impartial.
Perhaps Simone Murray, media critic from Monash University, had the answer when she suggested flooding the market with numerous admittedly biased news sources instead of trying to find a single true news source, thereby letting the reader/viewer take the mean as truth. While the Middle East’s Al Jazeera and Russia’s RT each have their own obvious political leanings, and differ both from each other and the Western media in the way they present news, they lack the sizable capital needed to establish new media channels.
The recent uprisings in the Middle East, particularly the initial movement in Tunisia, are a testament to the power of technology in disseminating genuine concerns and murmurings of the people. Despite this, there are still many obstacles to overcome before this seemingly utopian media ideal can be realised, particularly the issue of accessibility. It does, however, provide an unprecedented opportunity for more open public discourse and consequently, a more vibrant democratic process.
Lawrence Muskitta is in his second year of a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Philosophy and Psychology.
