mediadiscourse

DEMOCRATIZING GLOBAL MEDIA
Generating a Discourse

2. ASSESSING MAINSTREAM MEDIA
what is wrong with media today?

EVERYONE SEEMS TO HAVE SOME SENSE REGARDING THE FACT THAT THERE IS SOMETHING FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG WITH THE WAY MEDIA IS FUNCTIONING TODAY. IF YOU WERE TO INDICATE SOME OF THE MAJOR CONCERNS WITH CONTEMPORARY MAINSTREAM MEDIA, WHAT WOULD THOSE BE?

Michael Albert
To me this is very much like asking what is wrong with the pharmaceutical industry. That is, some people tend to think that media is quite exceptional, really very special in ways nothing else is special. I think, instead, that once we answer what is wrong with industries per se, then refining the answer to address the special aspects of media, or of pharmaceuticals, or of whatever else we might want to address – each having its own special features, of course – isn't really all that difficult. Perceiving and correcting the common flaws of all is the key issue, then moving on to special features.

So, the first thing is that mainstream media is capitalist – that is, it is corporate and operates in a competitive market. Mainstream media remunerates property. It replicates all society's defining inequalities and hierarchies in its own organization, and thus also in its products. Mainstream media employs wage slaves. It enriches owners. It subordinates the many, internally, to the will of the few, and it is the few, enjoying their elite advantages, whose ideas and values define the practices and products of media.

More, mainstream media's product is most often audience, which is sold to advertisers. Information and entertainment is in these cases only a means to the end of profit via the sale of people with disposable income to corporations who are also trying to profit. Truth, aesthetics, news, wisdom – these are all secondary matters, at most – and this is so even when information is the actual product that is sold, as well. That is, contemporary mainstream media exists in a system of advantage and domination and is as a result oriented by its owners and rulers to preserve that system from which those owners and rulers benefit and whose systemic logic and values are inscribed in their minds and manners.

Mainstream media are trying to profit and to maintain the conditions that ensure that productive surpluses will be conveyed to them as profits rather then going instead to workers in the form of higher wages or better conditions or better social services.
There is the matter of the class of people who I call coordinators, who don't own capital, but who instead monopolize skills and knowledge and daily decision- making levers of power – lawyers, doctors, engineers, managers – people who largely control their own circumstances and, whether collectively or individually, also those of others, below. These coordinators too have class interests, sometimes in line with those of capital, sometimes more in pursuit of their own direct gain. But, all the time, with few exceptions, the coordinator class is committed to making sure that those below, those who are isolated from skills, knowledge, and decision-making power, stay below. This too impacts the nature of mainstream media and its priorities, curbing it from providing a democratic outlet and from empowering the weak.

Stephen Fein
The major media are powerful institutions that see themselves as sharing power with the ruling elite. Those who own and run the major media, think it is their role to be responsible participants within that elite. They are upper-middle-class or wealthy individuals who come to believe that what is in the best interest of the people in power, is in their best interest as well. The institutions, they run, ultimately become biased towards those in power and towards their ideas.

The biggest problems in the media today are:
1) the concentration of global media in very few hands, all Western-based corporations,
2) the paucity of non-profit and public-interest media/programs, and the commercialization of the public media that still does exist,
3) the interference of policymakers with the development of community-based alternative media (eg. microradio broadcasting),
4) the ability of major media corporations to influence (dictate) government media policy.

Chavi Nana
Given that one of my visions for the proper role of media is that it should provide a forum for a multiplicity of diverse views, one of the major problems with the media is that it is controlled by large conglomerates, obviously in their own interests. Microsoft, various search engines, CNN, etc., although they rarely admit it, all have their own agendas (both explicit and implicit) that color the information they regard as relevant and permissive – thus, our ‘freedom of access’ to all information is ordered by the preferences of these large companies. The fact that these large companies are now aggregating under the umbrella of large conglomerates is even more detrimental, as it further limits 1) the scope of the information we receive, 2) our ability to contest this at levels lower than the conglomerate. Finally, the fact that most of these businesses are located in the West means that for the Western readership/web surfer, their information is limited to particular views present in their societies – for those in other parts of the world, however, it means that their access to the world and what is exported as advantageous is colored through the dominant Western liberal paradigm.

In addition, while some major cultures, views, etc. are ignored, in another sense there is too much information presented and too few tools to sort out the good from the bad or detrimental. On the one hand, I am against companies filtering information (as they already do) for the consumer; on the other hand, consumers must be more critically educated in their use of the resources like the web and newspapers – taught that even the ‘world wide web’ only presents certain views, that certain newspapers have a conservative or liberal bias, and helped to develop the tools to sort through information and seek other sources, within their own culture and experience, or outside of it.

Janet Weil
This question begs another question: what is wrong with human beings? Answer: quite a lot. Media too often operates out of the following dynamic: some few people produce, distribute and profit from media products (TV shows, to take one example) that ‘hook’ perhaps millions of other people into an uncritical dependency. A case can be made for television, including broadcast, cable and videos, having the most negative effects of all global media, as it is:
1) one-way communication, inducing a state of passive, somewhat addictive visual arousal (see Scientific American, February 2002, “Television Addiction,” by Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for recent research results on this effect);
2) watched individually or in small groups rather than communally like movies;
3) expensive to produce, compared to print or even websites, so that rich countries and corporations have huge advantages in being the producers;
4) disruptive of family cultural values and behaviors, such as home prayers, reading to children, bedtimes, eating dinner together, etc.
5) often considered trivial in a way other media are not, so that critical attention is not placed on it, even by people who analyze films, books, and other media;

Television watching displaces communal activities such as social or political meetings, team sports for adults, group singing, conversation and many others. The way television operates as a cultural/political force throughout the world is not in the public interest, though individual shows may be, or try to be. In short, global media, in my example television, are phenomena with unprecedented, enormous social effects, produced by some people for money or power or influence, consumed by other people for information, diversion or even addiction.

Javed Jabbar
It is also important to make the distinction that media are not homogenous when we say there’s something inherently wrong with mainstream media. In many segments, I have found media being assumed to be electronic media. Even in very educated circles of Pakistan, South Asia, it is assumed that the word press means newspapers and when you say media, you are talking about radio and TV. But I want to make a distinction between newspapers, radio and television and then further distinctions will have to be made about whether we are talking about media originating from the West or now originating from Asia, pretending to be Asian and, yet being actually controlled by the West.

One good example is the Star TV Network owned by an Australian, now an American citizen, who has gone to India bringing out Star Television and is willing to sink 600 million dollars over 10 years into it. They lose 60 million dollars per year and are willing to lose more because in the next twenty years, they hope to recover investment, they are already beginning to recover it. That’s another kind of media and it cannot be compared to, let us say, a courageous individual newspaper, which is making its own contribution to international discourse but is owned by a family or a person with many more limited means but because of its editorial boldness or its ethical integrity, it has a voice and a respect. So while it’s a part of mainstream media, it is not prone to the corrupted distortions that others are very easily prone to.

There is no such thing as mainstream media, which are homogenous and can be described with one stroke. Within them there are qualifications and sub qualifications. For example, lets take BBC World TV. I believe that in their news treatment, even though it’s increasingly superficial, the average duration of the news headline has been shrinking over the past 20 years. If the average headline used to take a minute and a half, today in thirty seconds they want to cover it and move on to the next one, which is one example of the superficiality and the lack of depth even in the BBC World TV, which is probably the world’s best television network, if you had to choose.

Now, the news tries to balance it by always representing two points of view: the Palestinian and the Israeli point of view. Within one channel you have two facets; you have balance on one hand in news content, for whatever it is worth, they do give Yasser Arafat’s spokesmen a chance to have their say and they give the same to Israelis.

When it comes to programming, take the case of South Asia it is grossly imbalanced. In South Asia they do not, for example, at the moment originate a single program from Pakistan. They have Question Time India, they have India Business Today, they have Face to Face India, everything is Indian because they are market driven.

I just want to make that distinction that within a single medium, there are facets that are positive and there are facets that are highly negative. Mainstream media today are clearly protagonists with a very direct vested interest in what is happening in the corporate commercial sense or the state and governmental sense.

The state and government controlled media, too, have a very direct vested interest. I am saying this just to make the point that media are assumed to be the custodians of public interest, that they have adversarial relationship with the government and, they help people monitor what the state and government are doing wrong and they are the true representatives of the public interest. But actually, often, the media are not the custodians of the public interest and ironically what has now happened is that there is a space being created for a new type of institution, which is independent of the media, independent of the state and government, which acts purely in the public interest without a commercial motive and, without a motive of power which states and governments want.

I’m first of all referring to a need for an independent monitoring mechanism, which then uses media to disseminate its findings about media. At the moment there is barely any institution of this nature, there are some watchdog groups in the United States for example, but in South Asia and in Pakistan there was virtually none. We set up something called the Citizens Media Commission in December 1997, in order to observe, first of all, electronic media freedom. The purpose was to serve as a public interest body, independent of government and independent of the media so as to keep track of both. Now there is a need to develop and nurture such institutions because the power of the media, to set the tone and terms of public debate, is so great that you become enslaved by the media-driven terms of debate. So the media themselves become the kind of indoctrinating, controlling process, which they are not supposed to be. They are supposed to be the custodians of public interest but they, ironically, end up doing considerable disservice to the public interest.

Wasif Rizvi
I think ever since the technology itself exposed various forms of media to a lot public opinion one positive thing that has come out by accident is that people have a first-hand opportunity to look at the media frameworks of very powerful systems and societies and examine it somewhat freely. This sense has existed for a very long time but what is wrong with media is that it is a very important tool for a very small and very concentrated wealth and interest groups to consolidate and protect their powers. We are talking about few hundred thousand people controlling the access to almost all the resources of the world. And, in order for it to become possible it is essential that people whose lives are being controlled are given some sort of a justification, and more critically their reflection and analysis is blocked somehow. A framework of analyzing scenarios in their lives and lives and actions of people who govern them is limited, isolated and restricted and it should not go beyond a specified set of reference points; all of these sophisticated functions are performed by media, one example of which you may have seen the other day on that show India Times on BBC world.

Few weeks ago a panel of supposed Indian experts was discussing the possibilities of war with Pakistan. They were given a specified framework that whether Pakistan is attacked now or should any form of discussion be allowed with Pakistan so it could give up its alleged hostility. Now none of the six actually questioned that India infact is a hostile state, which is beyond any doubt. India has almost half a million troops present in Kashmir. Between 50,000 to 100,000 Kashmiris have been brutally murdered by the Indian army. Now, these are hard indisputable facts, which are usually rendered unnecessary by the media intellectuals. Ironically though, they were discussing Kashmir, the Kashmir dispute and its repercussions on the relationship with Pakistan but they were not allowed to deviate from the framework, which was given by the power managers in India. Again the framework was that you discuss that either we talk with Pakistan or should we beat them up. We are not discussing our role in Kashmir that is not allowed in that framework.

This pathology, the moral pathology exists at the core of media intellectuals. They automatically absorb the line that they have to take to please the power managers. So ranging from a callous, meaningless, senseless, way that the media in a very non-sophisticated manner following the state line or in a somewhat glitzy and a little flashy manner in which you have your BBCs and CNNs; the purpose of it stays absolutely within the framework that has been allowed by the power managers which usually include the actual owners of media as well.

Under such circumstances, it is simply not possible for anyone to anchor a serious problem on any big media outfit if they have not already absorbed and subscribed to limiting themselves; limiting their discourses within the outlines that have been given. No one is going to ask the obvious questions, no one is going to reflect on the pervasive reality. It is all about confusing terms; it is all about deflecting and refraining from discussing any serious issue.

Another much touted form of media these days is the Internet. Usually many people open up the Internet everyday, they go on yahoo and yahoo usually has a headline on the tragic situation in the Middle East. Now you go in and lots being said particularly about Palestinian militant killed, Israel kills Palestinian militant and if there is an Israeli dead, Israeli died because of the terror attack. Palestinian terrorists attack and Israeli killed. When you read it, it is actually a suicide mission at a military post and Israeli occupation army within the Palestinian territory and within the framework of international law any occupation army should be attacked and resisted. But such resistance is "terror" and they are the terrorists and they are attacking Israel and when Israelis invade Palestinian villages with tanks and F-16 bombers, they are actually killing Palestinian terrorists and that's on supposedly a democratized form of media the Internet where anyone can make a web page. So these are some disturbing examples of what is tragically wrong with the media.

Shilpa Jain
a. The mass media is highly skewed towards reinforcing and expanding the status quo: The media largely projects and elevates (in brilliant color) the culture of competition, profit, material success above all else, which is dominating in the world today. It tries to convince us that this is the ONLY possibility for the present and the future; this path is inevitable and unavoidable; and so we should all play the game to win it. Winning, according to its terms, of course, means greater consumption of market services and products, often to the detriment of our fellow human beings and the natural world. This attitude is largely a function of advertising – by far, the dominant feature and function of media. In this way, the mass media assists in the project of Modernity: to produce self-serving, de-humanized units, disconnected from one another and dependent on modern institutions for their thoughts, values and actions.

b. The mass media heightens a culture of expertism and elitism: By constantly and deliberately blurring the line between ‘fact’ and ‘interpretation’, it tries to pass off its subjective (biased) analyses as the objective ‘Truth’. It props up celebrities and experts to show that we, the viewers, are incapable of understanding the world, our localities, even our families, without their professional guidance. Our own lived experiences are nothing, when compared to the images we are shown and the commentaries we are given about ‘reality’. (In this way, the mass media complements the indoctrination we received in schooling, to defer to ‘authority’ and ‘experts’ in all situations.) The mass media’s near-total reliance on advance technologies exacerbates this culture of expertism and elitism, as it is impossible for the majority of the world’s people to access either the technology itself and/or the technical knowledge needed to operate the technology. This alienation and dependency on technology aggravates the other feelings of inadequacy that media produces: our losses of self-esteem, confidence, creativity, responsibility, diversity, etc.

c. The mass media enhances a culture of silent obedience: By locking us in the passive role of viewer, the media almost guarantees our quiet acceptance of its (read: elite) power. We are muted zombies, ever watching, never acting. We rarely feel prompted to raise serious questions about the roots of the crises being faced today (extreme inequalities, ecological extermination, widespread violence), and instead find ourselves intensely occupied with superficial and trivial matters – of sports, soap operas, game shows. Such silent obedience is further magnified by the media’s projection of our individual and collective impotence – our powerlessness to do anything in the face of such a massive machine.