Introduction

Discussions of the power of the media commonly focus on two different sets of questions. The first is concerned with the nature of the power of the media. Do they change people's views and opinions? Do they influence people to believe in certain ways, e.g. buy Brand X of soap-powder or vote for Party Y in an election? Do they ‘shape the climate of opinion’ in society (and what specifically is implied by that statement)? Do they ‘set the agenda’ for society? Do they contribute to the ‘shaping and reproduction of the hegemony of the dominant values’ in society? These, and similar questions, focus on the impact of the media on society, both at the microand at the macro-levels, and result in a variety of explanations and analyses of that impact. Some of these are discussed both in the first and in the last sections of this book.

The second set of questions are concerned with locating the centres of power in the media. Clearly, whatever the answers to the first set of questions, the wielding of power in the media must be in the hands of those who have control over the content and shape of the messages disseminated by the media. But where or with whom does that power reside? Indeed is it possible to pinpoint precisely the location of power and control in the media? Should the search focus on any specific individuals, such as the proprietors of newspapers, or the managing directors or editors-in-chief of press and broadcasting organizations? Or alternatively should the examination focus on the relationships between them and those professionals who are responsible for, or involved in, the production process in the media? Can the power of the media be explained by examining the norms and rules which govern the behaviour of media professionals? To what extent is the socio-political environment within which the media operate crucial for determining and explaining the performance of the media and in prescribing their impact? These questions, like those concerned with explaining the nature of media power, also represent a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of the media, and suggest different foci of examination and different kinds of inquiry. But irrespective of these differences, their starting point is similar. They all regard media organizations as the ‘correct’ setting within which the search for locating the power in the media ought to be conducted.

Having power in, or control over, the media must imply the capacity to determine or significantly to influence the contents of media products and the meanings carried by them. Any other form of control is secondary, because ultimately whatever power the media may be said to have, either over their mass audiences, or over the performance of various élites or over the ‘climate of opinions’, this power resides in what they say and the way in which they say it. This potential distinction between direct control over the contents of the messages and all other forms of institutional control (e.g. financial, bureaucratic, technological) lies at the root of the debate over the issue of ‘ownership and control’ in the media. An exposition of the different positions and schools of thought which take part in this debate opens the second section of the book, in the chapter by Graham Murdock. The Marxist position, which takes as its text Marx's argument that ‘the class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production’ and hence regards ownership in the media (and more generally, economic control) as the critical factor in determining control over media messages, is juxtaposed with the ‘managerialist’ thesis, which argues that in analysing the structure of control in media organizations a distinction should be made between control over longterm policies and the allocation of resources (labelled ‘allocative control’) and control over the day-to-day operation of the production of media products. Murdock presents a four-fold classification of approaches to corporate control, and illustrates his analysis with examples from contemporary work in Britain, although the general arguments, he claims, are applicable to all advanced capitalist economies.

The following chapter by Margaret Gallagher focuses on problems and issues of control within media organizations. Different sources of external constraints on the media (e.g. political, commercial and technical) are examined, and the discussion illustrates how these constraints helped to shape the structure of control in British broadcasting. The second half of the paper examines the ways in which organizational pressures toward structuring and regulating the work of media professionals are negotiated through the invocation of the notion of professionalism, and the attendant claims for professional autonomy. The implicit conclusion is that the very capacity of media organizations to perform in a creative and innovative manner is dependent on the way in which, in the author's phrase, the ‘politics of accommodation’ in the mass media is played out. Media audiences—the consumers of media products—must judge for themselves the extent to which creativity, and indeed courage, are reflected in the products disseminated by the media.

Finally, Oliver Boyd-Barrett widens the scope of the discussion and raises some of the issues in the ‘media imperialism’ debate, i.e. ‘the role of the mass media in relations of cultural dependency between nations’. This debate still provides the site for one of the more lively controversies in discussions of communication policies. On the one hand are arraigned the proponents of a laissez-faire approach to the flow of communication between nations, and on the other those who argue for the need to restrict and regulate this flow, in order to counter situations of cultural dependency and to preserve the sovereignty of weaker nations. Like most other debates among media scholars, the origins of this debate are easily traceable to a neo-Weberian position on the one hand, and a neo-Marxist position on the other. The author, however, is not content to adopt one position or the other but examines both of them critically since, in his view, many attempts at evaluating the role of the mass media in the process of cultural dependency ‘tend to select or give undue weight to evidence which will support a condemnatory attitude. A more fruitful line of investigation’, he argues, ‘may be to review and evaluate the kinds of claims which some western consultants originally made in support of harnessing the mass media to developmental objectives.’ In other words, issues of policy should be judged by the discrepancies, if any, between the promises and the consequences of such policies, rather than on purely ideological grounds.