6

Negotiation of control in media organizations and occupations

MARGARET GALLAGHER

THE MEANING OF CONTROL IN THE MEDIA

Media organizations and occupations lie right at the heart of any study of mass communication, for they embody the processes through which the output of the media comes into being. The assumption that media messages and images constitute a powerful social, cultural and political force dominates both public debate and perspectives of research in the field of mass communication. Whether expressed in terms of a search for ‘measurable effects’ or formulated as a more macro-analysis of the ‘agenda-setting’ or ‘reality-defining’ function of the media, this assumption underlies practically all questions concerned with the link between media output and social consciousness.

In the decade since Jeremy Tunstall suggested that:

a more organization-oriented view of the media in general seems essential if we are not to perpetuate the predominant view in which the media messages sometimes appear to be reaching the audience members’ eyes and ears as if from heaven above or (in some perspectives) hell below (Tunstall, 1970, p. 15)

an increasing number of British and American studies have begun to redress a longstanding imbalance in media research, which has historically tended to be preoccupied with mass media ‘effects’, rather than with how and why media output comes to be as it is. More recent research, however (for example, Halloran et al, 1970; Cantor, 1971; Elliott, 1972; Epstein, 1973; Tuchman, 1974; Burns, 1977; Tracey, 1978; Steen, 1979), examining the interaction of organizational, production, professional and personal factors and their influence on the output of the media, has broken new ground in opening up the previously obscure contexts within which mass communicators operate.

Reasons for the concentration of media research on the end, rather than on the beginning, of the mass communication process are not hard to find (see Blumler and Gurevitch). Quite apart from the particular origins and development of research into the media—its sources of question and problem formulation, of institutional support, of funding, not to mention the theoretical and methodological influences of its contributory disciplines —it is clear that from the outset the audience has been a much more accessible focus of enquiry than the communicators themselves.

Paul Lazarsfeld was one of the first to note the problems for research in this area:

If there is any one institutional disease to which the media of mass communications seem particularly subject, it is a nervous reaction to criticism. As a student of mass media I have been continually struck and occasionally puzzled by this reaction, for it is the media themselves which so vigorously defend principles guaranteeing the right to criticize. (Lazarsfeld, 1972, p. 123)

In Britain, Tom Burns has documented the BBC's refusal to permit publication of his 1963 study of the organization (Burns, 1977). Burns is at pains to point out the Corporation's complete reversal, in 1972, of its initial decision—and indeed its invitation to update the original study; and the very accumulation of a body of serious work on the media has contributed to a climate of greater acceptance of the role of research in this field. Nevertheless, access to media organizations remains difficult—in some cases impossible—to negotiate in terms acceptable to both researchers and communicators. Different levels of problems and different attempts at their solution are evident in, for example, Elliott, 1972; Glasgow University Media Group, 1976; Tracey, 1978.

If the relative inaccessibility of media organizations is in one sense a testament to their power in controlling the communication channels of society, the very fact of media sensitivity to external criticism, and the mechanisms developed to deal with it, are also an acknowledgement that this power is by no means absolute, and that the means and limits of control must be negotiated. Study of these processes of negotiation—with agencies both external and internal to the organizations themselves—is essential to an understanding of the nature of control in the media. For while the question of who controls (see Murdock, 1977) is fundamental, the significance of that control rests in the way in which it is, or can be, exercised. In other words, ‘control’ in the media has meaning primarily in terms of the extent to which communicators are able to shape output. What is the interplay of factors which determines this ability? What is the relative importance, for example, of external political, economic and social factors against internal factors such as professional ideologies, ownership and management structures, editorial polices, and technical and financial constraints? How does the communicator preserve creative autonomy within the organizational setting? How and why, finally, does media output come to be as it is?

Research has so far provided only very partial answers to these questions. A number of early American studies of the communicator (White, 1950; Breed, 1955; Gieber, 1956) did attempt to highlight some of the organizational constraints on media production, within a framework which could broadly be described as that of functional or systems analysis, although this framework was more frequently implicit in the research design than expressed as an explicit theoretical formulation. From this early work emerged the concept of the ‘gatekeeper’—the powerful and often overtly prejudiced ‘Mr Gates’ who selects, processes and organizes the information to be made available to an audience which is—by implication at least—passive and unsuspecting. Subjected to numerous refinements since its first appearance in the work of David White in 1950, the gatekeeper concept is still prominent. It remains, however, essentially narrow in its treatment of communicators whom it casts as agents for system maintenance and control:

Processes of ‘gatekeeping’ in mass communication may be viewed within a framework of a total social system, made up of a series of subsystems whose primary concerns include the control of information in the interest of gaining other social ends. (Donahue et al., 1972, p. 42)

The problems of functional or social systems analysis need not be detailed here. It is perhaps sufficient to note that its limited ability, in theoretical terms, to account for conflict and its causes, change, individual purpose, the relationship between organizations and social structure has, when applied to the study of mass communicators, resulted in very restricted conceptualizations of the context in which media output is produced.

Other theoretical perspectives can be seen to underly some of the more recent studies of media organizations and occupations, though again these theories more often exist at an implicit than at an explicit level. There is the liberal-pluralist view, which sees media and media practitioners as autonomous, responsible institutions and individuals (for example, Seymour-Ure, 1968; Blumler, 1969). This contrasts with class-based or Marxist analyses which view the media as inextricable from society's dominant institutions and ideologies, and see media output as an articulation and legitimation of the controlling interests in those institutions and ideologies (for example, Hall, 1977; Murdock and Golding, 1977; elements of this approach can also be traced in less explicitly political contexts in, for example, Elliott, 1972; Glasgow University Media Group, 1976). Yet it seems that neither the liberal-pluralist nor the Marxist perspective has so far been really successful in moving from theoretical formulation to empirical validation (q.v. Bennett for an analysis of some of the problems involved in ‘operationalizing’ theory). Moreover, both Richard Hoggart—in Glasgow University Media Group (1976)—and Michael Tracey (1978) have argued that each of these perspectives obscures the complexities of the internal and external relations of media production.

A further approach, in fact that adopted by Tracey (1978) in his study of the production of political television in Britain, derives from a paradigm for the social action analysis of organizations proposed by Silverman (1968). This calls for a more actor-based perspective, an analysis of the process relating an organization to the wider environment, the development of hypotheses based on internal and external factors and the interrelationship of these factors. Such an approach, which informs the direction of the arguments which follow here, would see media output as the ‘present outcome of the ends sought by different groups and the actions which they have chosen to pursue in the light of the means available to them’ (Silverman, 1968).

This perspective views organizations and occupations as dynamic, as part of a social process, as change-oriented. It demands an examination of the relationships of the wider environments of media organizations to routines and practices in their operations; an analysis of this relationship as part of a socio-historical development, within which mass communication organizations can be placed in particular social contexts; and a consideration of the relative importance of organizational and occupational factors in shaping media output.

MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS: SOURCES OF EXTERNAL CONSTRAINT

A central feature of mass communication organizations is their ambivalent relationship to other sources of power in society. Mass communicators are typically characterized as a potentially powerful social group with access to scarce societal resources—the channels of communication. This power, however, is exercised in the context of a network of public controls and constraints external to the organization. Such controls are used to counterbalance the potentially disruptive power of the mass communicators: access to large diffuse audiences, for instance, could be used to threaten accepted social distributions of knowledge and ideas which, in stable societies, tend to be integrated with established hierarchies of power and social control.

However, it cannot be assumed that mass communication organizations are directly or even particularly effectively controlled by other powerful social institutions. External constraints, for example, are paralleled by equally influential demands internal to the organizations themselves. In part, these relate to the claims of individual communicators to a sense of professional autonomy and are manifested primarily in terms of intraorganizational conflict or tension. At the same time, this drive towards autonomy or independence is expressed collectively in organizational terms in the delicate set of balances which maintain the separation of media institutions from the apparatus of the state. Overriding all these individual and organizational demands, however, is the problem of survival: communication organizations are concerned to stay in business. Consequently, they are involved in a continual and evolving process of negotiation or bargaining with other sources of civil and social power. This means that the operation of a mass media organization will be bounded by rules and conventions which may not be explicit, but which fit the prevailing notions about more general social organization, and which are mediated by such factors as media ownership, finance, organizational conceptions of the audience, and the development of professional or occupational ideologies.

Limits of organizational autonomy: the case of monopoly control in British broadcasting

One of the most important features of media history has been the location of broadcasting within centrally controlled systems. There have been countries—for example, Holland—which developed systems partly analogous to publishing, where control of the wavelength and editorial control were separated, but these were very few indeed. Even in America, with its powerful doctrine of personal cultural freedom and its lack of prescription on cultural choice, a central licensing authority, the Federal Communications Commission, was set up to regulate the allocation of wavelengths. Moreover, the rapid development of three great networks with their own codes and editorial and commercial demands helped to create a central ethos in American broadcasting.

The United States presents a different picture from much of the rest of the world, especially from Europe where the central national authority (modelled in many cases on the BBC) was accepted with seeming inevitability. Commentators have ascribed this tendency to various factors. In Britain, for example, the BBC's first Chief Engineer Peter Eckersley has described the origins of centralization in broadcasting organization solely in terms of a technical problem—the wavelength shortage: ‘The BBC was formed as the expedient solution of a technical problem; it owes its existence solely to the scarcity of wavelengths’ (Eckersley, 1942, p. 48).

But although the wavelength problem was clearly of importance in influencing the decision to confine broadcasting within a single national institution—the chaos of early radio broadcasting in America, where thousands of stations sprang up in the early 1920s before the establishment of the FCC, had an important effect in pushing Britain towards a highly disciplined system—there was no technical need to concentrate wavelength and editorial control in the same hands. The decision to create a broadcasting monopoly in Britain can be traced, rather, to an historical period when developments in wireless telephone and telegraphy had already been brought firmly under a form of government control, via the Post Office; and when World War I had underlined the major importance of the new medium of wireless. Moreover, centralization was in part a response to the demands of the growing public of radio hams who pushed for the setting up of some central broadcasting of programmes for general entertainment (Smith, 1974).

Although a variety of technical, historical and social pressures pushed towards centralization, the particular form of centralized control eventually adopted in Britain—the public service monopoly—has in large part been attributed to the lobbying of one particular man, John Reith, the General Manager of the British Broadcasting Company, and later the first DirectorGeneral of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Reith saw the ‘brute force of monopoly’ as one of four fundamentals necessary to the development of a particular type of broadcasting—the other three being the motive of public service, a sense of moral obligation, and assured finance. Reith's version of the public role of broadcasting was, in Raymond Williams’ definition, an ‘authoritarian system with a conscience’ (Williams, 1962):

There was to hand a mighty instrument to instruct and fashion public opinion; to banish ignorance and misery; to contribute richly and in many ways to the sum total of human well-being. The present concern of those to whom the stewardship had, by accident, been committed was that those basic ideals should be sealed and safeguarded, so that broadcasting might play its destined part…. (Reith, 1949, p. 103)

So the responsibility at the outset conceived, and despite all discouragements pursued, was to carry into the greatest number of homes everything that was best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement; and to avoid whatever was or might be hurtful. In the earliest years accused of setting out to give the public not what it wanted but what it needed, the answer was that few knew what they wanted, fewer what they needed. (Ibid., 101)

Since its inception, then, the type of programming broadcast by the BBC was inextricably bound up with, indeed consciously dictated by, the nature of the organization itself, its system of internal control and its relationship to external controls. Anthony Smith has described the Reithian ‘idea of serving a public by forcing it to confront the frontiers of its own taste’ as a powerful, political measure, which ensured the success of Reith's enterprise, and was to have a lasting influence on the ways in which the BBC would address its audience (Smith, 1974).

The ‘public service monopoly’ in Britain lasted for almost thirty years until the advent of commercial television in the 1950s. During that time the BBC had expanded from a service which barely filled a single radio channel to one which had three national radio programmes, extensive regional and overseas services and a television channel. To what extent can the persistence of monopolistic paternalism in British broadcasting be ascribed to the prevailing dynamic influence of Reith alone? To what extent was it the result of the convergence of interests of certain dominant institutional forces in society? Peter Eckersley, the BBC's Chief Engineer, adhered strongly to the importance of Reith's personal influence, seeing it as ‘one man's conception of the role of broadcasting in a modern democracy’ (Eckersley, 1942, p. 55). R.L.Coase, in his study of monopoly in British broadcasting, also subscribed to the power of the Reithian influence but saw it—along with that of the political parties, the Press and the Post Office—as just one combination of forces which led to widespread support for monopoly:

Had the Labour Party been in power at the time of the formation of the BBC; had independent broadcasting systems not been associated in the minds of the Press with commercial broadcasting and finance by means of advertisements; had another department, say the Board of Trade, been responsible for broadcasting policy; had the views of the first chief executive of the BBC been like those of the second; with this combination of circumstances, there would be no reason to suppose that such a formidable body of support for a monopoly of broadcasting would ever have arisen. (Coase, 1950, p. 195)

Given the context in which it emerged, it is difficult to accept the Reithian concept of monopolistic control as a ‘brute force’ either in preserving organizational autonomy or in fostering a particular approach to programming. Rather, supported by the governing party, the bureaucracy and the other media, the form and output of the organization reflected the social forces which had brought it into being. Subsequent changes in the arrangement of those forces (beginning after World War II) were fed into parallel changes in the structure of British broadcasting and its programming.

The diffuse nature of the social controls within which the media are rooted make those controls no less influential, however. From this perspective, the limits to organizational and individual communicator autonomy are well-defined. For example, the development of distinguishing organizational codes, practices and rituals within media institutions may well be professional responses to the tensions involved in finding the boundaries of institutional autonomy. But in the sense that they arise within organizational contexts predefined by the wider socio-political environment, such responses remain fundamentally limited and even ambiguous as a means of tension resolution. Two of the most important sources of external constraint on media organizations derive from the commercial and political environments in which they operate.

The commercial context of control

The early development of broadcasting in Britain illustrates the complexity of the external forces which shape and constrain mass media organizations, and the dynamic nature of the relationship in which the organization draws on, incorporates and transforms prevailing social attitudes before transmitting them again according to its own formula. In this light definitions of the media as either ‘the tools of government’ or ‘the fourth estate’ become untenable. What can be said is that the mass’ media arise from, reflect, may reinforce or even change prevalent social hierarchies, but that the strength and direction of this relationship will vary greatly according to specific historical and social contexts.

Perhaps the biggest single change in direction and emphasis in British broadcasting, for example, occurred with the breaking of the BBC's monopoly in the 1950s and the advent of commercial television. This arrived as the result of pressure for an expansion in advertising—an expansion which coincided with the career and financial interests of those who lobbied for the introduction of a commercial system. Wilson argues that the change of direction was made politically possible by changes within the governing Conservative party, changes which in turn reflected and expressed forces which were shaping British society: Throughout the controversy it was apparent that the commercial advocates were contemptuous of efforts to uphold either cultural or intellectual standards; the decisive consideration was that television was a great marketing device’ (Wilson, 1961, pp. 214–15).

What was involved here was a change in the purpose of communication. The implications should have been far-reaching. In the event, for a variety of reasons some of which will be dealt with later, the fundamental difference between the ‘public service’ commitment of the BBC and the ‘independence’ of the commercial system did not become a reality. Nevertheless, the competitive relationship which of necessity developed between the two systems had important consequences for programming in both the BBC and the independent companies. Tracey (1978) in his case study of one of these (ATV), concluded that the output of its programme departments was as much a ‘product for consumption’ as were the products advertised in the commercial breaks. But, he argues, the ‘logic’ of commercialism is not escaped by the BBC because it too must compete for a share of the audience. In the mid-1950s, for example, the full impact of ITV's competition was apparent to the BBC through the 30:70 ratio of audience ratings. If the Corporation was to be able to rely on its revenue from the public licence fee, it had to demonstrate its public appeal by attracting a larger share of the audience: the pursuit of the ratings was conducted with a vigour which resulted in the achievement of a roughly 50:50 ratio during the 1960s.

Two devices were crucially important in the ratings battle. First, there was the emergence of the programme ‘series’ built around a production team, rather than resting with an individual producer. These series, such as Tonight’, ‘Panorama’, ‘Sportsview’, ‘Maigret’, and ‘This is Your Life’, were immensely popular—‘the shock troops of the BBC's effective counterattack on the commercial opposition’ (Jay, 1972, p. 23)—guaranteed the viewers a predictable programme and guaranteed the BBC an audience. These were devised as much from a need to impose an ‘administrative logic’ on a rapidly expanding and increasingly cost-conscious organization as in the interests of audience maximization:

Production teams responsible for output right through the year meant that… orders and contracts could be placed for 12 months, with the consequent advantages of price to the BBC and security to suppliers, writers and performers. And the relationship between the production team's budget and the audience research figures gave a quick and easy measure of cost-effectiveness. (Jay, 1972, p. 23)

The other strategy developed to cope with competition was the ‘art of scheduling’. Huw Wheldon, former Managing Director of BBC Television, has commented that ‘It is always difficult for people to accept the brutal proposition that competition means putting Like against Like but the fact remains that it is so’ (quoted in Smith, 1974, p. 136). The knowledge that certain sorts of programme attracted a much larger audience than others and the discovery in the 1960s of the ‘inheritance factor’—the factor which tended to cause the viewer, once ‘caught’, to stay with whatever channel had originally grabbed him—has led to a drive not only to fight like with like, but to begin the fight earlier and earlier. This drive is evidenced not simply in a standardization in the substance or content of programmes but also in their form and style.

In Britain, certain potential excesses of commercial competition are to an extent limited by the relationship of both the BBC and ITV to government: in fact Burns (1977), who describes the programe scheduling activities of both organizations as a mutually convenient ‘pacing’ rather than competition in any real sense, finds the competitive relationships ambivalent and in some respects fictional. In the United States, on the other hand, the spirit of the First Amendment and the tradition of complete personal economic freedom militate against any governmental control of the editorial process and result in an immensely powerful competitive ethic. At the same time, the dominant social ethos of private enterprise creates its own constraints: if the British media are rooted in a broadly-based social control, American media organizations are bounded by powerful economic control mechanisms which are extremely influential on both the organizational context of media production and the nature of media output.

In the early days of network broadcasting the production of programmes was the almost exclusive province of advertising agencies. During this period the networks—NBC, CBS and later ABC—contented themselves with profits made from the purchase and resale (to advertisers) of transmission time on groups of stations. But in the 1940s each network began to develop programme packages for commercial sale. This meant increased revenue, which now came from the sale of programmes as well as of time. This development has, of course, led to further concentration of network control: since the network holds an option on the most desirable transmission times on stations coast to coast it will inevitably fill those times with programmes in which it has a financial stake. Indeed the three networks now originate 95 per cent of all programmes transmitted throughout the USA.

Supported by revenues from advertisers, the network is primarily interested in reaching the largest possible number of ‘buyers’ for the products advertised. The function of the local station is to deliver this audience to the network, which in turn sells it to the advertiser. Various systems—for example, the Nielsen Marketing Research Territory groupings, or Arbitron's Area of Dominant Influence markets—provide potential advertisers with minutely detailed information needed to determine the most efficient way of achieving the desired coverage in specific market areas. In the ‘TV marketplace’ the advertiser ‘buys’ his viewers at anything between $2¼ per thousand ‘unassorted’ to $10½ a thousand if they can be refined down to particular categories like young women, teenagers and so on, who can be more valuable in that form to sellers of specific products. The sums involved are vast: the average 30-second prime-time network television announcement costs about $60,000 (the highest cost to date, for commercials during the first television broadcast of the film Gone With the Wind, was $130,000); even low-rated spots average about $45,000. In 1977, commercial television had total revenues of $5.9 billion and profits of $1.4 billion (Broadcast Yearbook, 1979).

The collective financial and social pressures under which American broadcasting operates affect programme policy and production in profound ways. Epstein (1975) has documented in considerable detail how, in the struggle to attain a competitive rating for its failing news programme, ABC completely changed not just the format, style and pace of the broadcast but the political perspective which it encapsulated, in order to meet the ‘Middle America’ predilections of its affiliated station managers. While the price of advertising time during the news broadcast did rise dramatically (by more than 100 per cent) this, concludes Epstein, was achieved only at the cost of a fundamental change in the journalistic product.

The political dimension of constraint

Probably the most crucial of all the relationships which bind any media organization to its society is that between the organization and the government. In essence this relationship is characterized by the links of both media and government to the electorate, whose support is necessary to both sets of institution. In Britain, it is particularly important in mediating the commercial imperative which dominates the US media system. Thus, whether one chooses to describe the British broadcast media as ‘industrial and commercial organizations’ (Golding, 1974)—stressing the predominantly market situation in which they compete—or as ‘two state-owned networks’ (Beadle, 1963)—emphasizing the failure of the pressure for decentralization of control—the broadcasting system remains essentially unitary in character.

From time to time all broadcasting organizations undergo review by the state in order to obtain re-licensing or re-chartering. These periods of scrutiny have profound effects on all internal decision making over programmes, since the organizations tend to construct their programme schedules in ways designed to gain the political support of various sections of the community. Since the BBC was established fifty years ago, it has been subjected to at least twelve major reviews which have affected its internal interests. Smith (1973) describes the history of broadcasting as ‘a history of crises, each causing a wave of special caution, sometimes lasting for years, inside the organization.’ Sykes, Crawford, Beveridge, Pilkington, and Annan—names of the men who headed the influential Committees which have investigated broadcasting's structure and practices in Britain—are names which loom large in the mythology of the broadcasting organizations. The story of broadcasting is in many ways a history of how broadcasting organizations set about the task of staying in business. The actual programmes reveal the institution's needs as much as the interests of the audience’ (Smith, 1973, p. 59).

The relationship with government means that the broadcasting organization is constantly under review, at times under direct scrutiny, and occasionally—at least in the perception of the broadcasters—under threat. For instance, Sir Hugh Greene, former Director General of the BBC, has tellingly described the Corporation's response to the Pilkington Committee as a ‘battle campaign’ to be won by ensuring that no public row broke out over any programme during the period of investigation (Greene, 1969). The ‘battle’ analogy, suggesting that positions can be fought for, boundaries defined and redefined, hostages exchanged, and so on, illustrates well the complexity of the positions involved, and the limits of control exercised by either ‘side’ in what could be described as a ‘war game’ (rather than a war) where the unwritten rules are as important as the written.

Because of the close and complex relationship between media organizations and other dominant social and political institutions, it is arguable that the mass media will essentially tend to reinforce—even though they may ostensibly, or in passing, challenge or question—prevailing social and political hierarchies. Examples of such reinforcement can be found in Britain, for instance, as far back as the General Strike in 1926 and in current coverage, or lack of coverage, of events in Northern Ireland.

We discussed the problem of reporting Northern Ireland affairs on many occasions with people at all levels, and on our visit to the Province. The BBC told us that they could not be impartial about people dedicated to using violent methods to break up the unity of the state. The views of illegal organizations like the IRA should be broadcast only ‘when it is of value to the people that they should be heard and not when it is in the IRA's interest to be heard’. The BBC said that before 1965 they had tried in their reports on Northern Ireland to maintain a consensus and build up the middle ground, but when that policy failed they abandoned it. In their programme in 1972, ‘The Question of Ulster’, they had examined the range of views in Northern Ireland, in order ‘to bring the information to the attention of the British public because in the end it was their opinions which were going to decide’. In considering what should be broadcast the BBC had intensified the ‘reference-up’ system; and they told us that they gave particular consideration to the effect of BBC broadcasts on the army in Northern Ireland. The IBA told us that they had to consider under the IBA Act whether a programme was likely to encourage or incite to crime or to lead to disorder, and they also took into account what the public believed might be the effect of such a programme. They did not consider the right course was to hive Northern Ireland off from the rest of the network while programmes on Northern Ireland affairs were being shown to the rest of the UK. The IBA's policy has been criticized as unduly restrictive. Journalists at Thames Television and London Weekend Television have both protested to us about IBA decisions to stop the transmission of material. (Annan, 1977, p. 269–70)

It must also be clear, however, that the degree of reinforcement and the nature of the controls within which it operates will vary enormously with differing historical and social circumstances. Tracey (1978) illustrates this through a chronological series of case studies of political broadcasting. The complexity of the relationship between the media and dominant social institutions, he contends, is highlighted by ‘alternate moments of apparent autonomy and real subjection’. Tracey argues convincingly that external controls or constraints on the mass media have functioned indirectly through ‘the defining of impartiality, the underpinning of conventional forms and a commitment to the productive and consumptive practices of a commercial process’, rather than through the exercise of any direct authority. Instead there operates, according to Burns (1977) a ‘politics of accommodation’, in which the relationship between communication organizations and the central social authority is mediated by, for example, organizational conceptions of audience interests and the professional or occupational ideologies of the communicators themselves.

THE COMMUNICATOR IN THE ORGANIZATION: SOURCES OF INTERNAL TENSION

The fact that the structure and organization of mass media institutions can be shown—at least in a partial sense—to arise from and be shaped by extrinsic factors has implications for the individuals who work within the media organizations. Mass communicators must operate within the context of institutionalized values and criteria of success, which are not simply the particular values of their peers or reference groups but are to some extent the central values of normative order in society. Moreover, it can be argued that structural constraints are implicit in the social organization of mass communicators and the ways the organization helps or precludes the achievement of occupational goals. The structural organization of production is important primarily because of the way in which individual roles are defined: for example, television organizations have found it useful to leave the position of creative roles, such as the producer, structurally imprecise. At the same time, the existence of creative, ambiguous roles within organizations of bureaucratic centralization is a potential source of conflict or tension. Indeed, the very terms ‘structure’ and ‘organization’ imply a pressure towards bureaucratic methods of problem solution, methods which may take various forms—from the use of standardized decision-making processes to the development of institutionalized expectations—but whose overall aim is to deal with potentially conflict-ridden situations or relationships.

Professionalism as a response to conflict

The term ‘professional’ is commonly used in at least three different ways. First, there is the use of the term to denote the ‘expert’, in contrast to the ‘amateur’. This is a usage which Burns (1969) found widespread in the BBC. Second, there is the Weberian view of the professional as the rational, bureaucratic, efficient role embodying an ethic of ‘service’ to the client or public. The third, Durkheimian use describes the way in which professionals invest their work and organizations with moral values and norms.

It is often argued that a central dilemma for mass communicators concerns the extent to which the large-scale media organization tends to ‘bureaucratize’ the creative role of its members. Demands for stability, regularity and continuity may be said to drive media institutions towards the rationalization of staff roles—to create professionals in the sense described by Weber. However, it can also be argued that the negative effects of bureaucratization on individual roles can be countered by the development of professional pride and values—in the sense used by Durkheim—which may at times even run counter to the interests of the organization. It follows, therefore, that media ‘professionalism’, while perhaps arising from one basic source of conflict—that between organizational goal and creative occupational role—can actually be used to respond to that conflict in two quite different ways, which may in themselves promote conflict.

Elliott (1977) suggests that claims to professionalism in the mass media represent, on the one hand, an occupational adaptation or response to the dilemmas of role conflict and, on the other, an organizational strategy to meet the demands of significant constituents in the environment of media institutions. Examining the contradictory demands of ‘art’ and ‘commerce’ in media organizations, Elliott points out that this simple dichotomy actually fuses a number of interrelated dilemmas for the communicator, notably the pursuit of ideas such as ‘creativity’ and ‘autonomy’ within organizational milieus which may tend to foster more pragmatic responses to day-to-day events. The basic dilemmas are complex and may encompass such contradictory demands as those between high and low culture, professional standards and commercial judgement, self-regulation and bureaucratic control, self-motivation and financial inducement, self-monitoring and serving an audience, using one's talents to some artistic, social or political purpose and having them used solely for the commercial ends of the organization. Given this complexity, the responses or adaptations made by communicators are equally complex. However, Elliott argues, the end result—the media output—will only vary if the response of the individual communicator is supported by the organizational system in which the communicator is working.

A focus on the twin dilemmas posed by the professional pursuit of ‘creativity’ and ‘autonomy’ within an organizational context raises a further dimension or set of tensions in relation to media production. This concerns the relative importance of structural and of operational factors in the development of media output. In a general sense, it should become clear that although structural considerations partly, at least, determine both the nature of mass media operations and the approaches adopted in their execution, in the main they impinge more on the general organization of communicators’ activities than on the day-to-day implementation of individuals’ roles. These are affected at least as much by immediate, operational considerations as by their structural location within the organization.

Creativity in an organizational context

The ‘mass’ character of mass communication presents the media organization with its first all-pervasive dilemma: how can ‘mass media industries’ reconcile the dictates of organizational efficiency—for example, towards regularity, routine, control—with the commitment of individual ‘creators’ to their skills or craft?

The real trouble is that the ‘industrial revolution’ in entertainment inevitably revolutionizes the production as well as the distribution of art. It must, for the output required is too great for individual craft creation; and even plagiarism, in which the industry indulges on a scale undreamed of in the previous history of mankind, implies some industrial processing. (Newton, 1961)

This analogy with industrial organization is a prevalent one in the analysis of mass media roles and production processes. Newton goes on to argue that the impossibility of individual craft is paralleled by the organization of production for quantity, speed and marketability, rather than for quality. Because of the industrialized distribution system in the field of popular music, for example, and its reliance on large audiences, the mass media can afford neither the unreliability of the individual music creator nor the tastes of sophisticated minorities. This, the argument goes, produces an inevitable drive towards standardized, commercial, musical pap, which leads to a further worsening in audience taste and the alienation of the professional musician. Other studies (for example, Coser, 1965) have described alienation as a typical communicator response, and pointed to the development of occupational ideologies and values which dismiss general audiences as unappreciative ‘outsiders’.

It is not difficult to identify a number of inadequacies in arguments of this kind. In the first place, by baldly confronting the needs of the artist or producer with the demands of the audience, the argument fails to take account of the role of the intermediary organization, which can provide a sort of refuge or shield for its employees: the distance between producer and audience can allow the former to avoid any precise definition of relationship and attitude towards the latter. Seen in this light, the bureaucracy of the organization may have a dual function for the producer: while regulating his integration into the organizational system, it may also allow him considerable autonomy. Second, it can be argued that specialization and professionalization within media organizations have led to the growth of powerful professional reference groups—either formal or informal in organization—which both protect individual producers and provide alternative definitions of success. Third, the argument ignores economic variations between different media which allow those sectors with low unit costs (and the music or record industry is one of these) to overproduce, balancing failures against successes, in an attempt to ensure that no potential ‘hit’ is missed. This allows for provision for minorities, which may indeed evolve into mass markets—as, for instance, in the development of reggae music—and provides scope for innovation and idiosyncracy on the part of producers. Finally, there is a distinction to be made between standardization of product style and standardization of productive role.

There is a tendency, in arguments which create a dichotomy between creativity and industrial process, to blur the line between production and dissemination activities in mass media organizations. The fact that mass production techniques and the bureaucratic formal organizaton that goes with them play a vital role in the circulation of mass media artefacts does not necessarily mean that industrial techniques are applied to their production. Yet when Lewis Coser describes the formal organization as an ‘emasculator’ of the individual's creativity, resulting in alienation, he ascribes this to the ‘industrial mode of production’ within media organizations:

The industries engaged in the production of mass culture share basic characteristics with other mass-production industries. In both, the process of production involves a highly developed division of labour and the hierarchical co-ordination of many specialised activities. In these industries, no worker, no matter how highly placed in the organisational structure, has individual control over a particular product. The product emerges from the co-ordinated efforts of the whole production team, and it is therefore difficult for an individual producer to specify clearly his particular contribution. (Coser, 1965, p. 325)

Coser's conclusion is that the individual creative producer, in alienation, holding his work in contempt, is robbed by the production team of his need to make a unique contribution. However, such an interpretation begs a number of important questions concerning, for example, the nature of ‘creativity’, perceived needs and goals of individual producers, distinctions between ‘art’ and ‘craft’, and so on. The views of a producer from the original production team responsible for Tonight’, one of the most successful of Britain's early ‘formula’ shows, indicate a different set of priorities from that imagined by Coser:

It was on ‘Tonight’ that I learned the creative logic of a production team…. Although an idea can only originate in one person's mind, it often emerges in a halfformed state: it can be greatly improved if six or seven people question it and add to it and elaborate it and refine it. In the same way, after the programme was over, six or seven people were much better than one at evaluating it, drawing conclusions, seeing new possibilities to exploit or errors to be corrected…. It makes a production team the best place for any novice to learn the craft…. It also offers him a variety of different roles—writer, film director, researcher, studio director, interviewer, producer—with a correspondingly better chance of finding a suitable niche than he would have if apprenticed to a single producer. (Jay, 1972, pp. 24–5)

‘Formula’ styles do not necessarily mean standardized trivia, any more than they apparently mean standardized roles: while the range of styles may be dictated by the organization and technology of the medium, the quality of the finished product may have more to do with the ability of those performing the major creative functions and with the general socioeconomic and socio-cultural milieus.

Nevertheless, the power of general economic and commercial factors in determining the creative freedom of individuals in the production process should not be underestimated. In times of financial stringency, particularly, experimentation and originality tend to be subordinated to predominantly market considerations.

Whereas, in the early sixties, a schedule of ten to twelve weeks was considered acceptable for a half-hour documentary, nowadays a standard series (such as ‘Horizon’) will think itself lucky to get more than five weeks for an hour. But, as a fellow-editor remarked to me recently: ‘In those days we were developing the conventions. Now we merely apply them’. It is the technician's pride in his workmanship which leads him to tolerate and hence to perpetuate, this condition…. He will show that he can do a good job regardless of the difficulties (for if he does not, someone else will)…. Haste necessitates the adoption of rules-of-thumb for calculating the viewer's response, and this in turn requires the adoption of methods to which such calculation is appropriate…. It is really not good enough for me to say that we employ the commercial and authoritarian models of communication only as a shorthand, since shorthand is all we have time for. What has happened is that we have adopted towards our own work a mode of sensitivity born of the need of others to pass snap judgement upon it. Professionalism is the technician's bad faith. (Vaughan, 1976, p. 19)

The question of control of media operations and output is thus very much broader and more complex than the attempt at a simple polarization of creativity and industrial process. This can be pursued further by examining the extent and nature of the autonomy enjoyed by the individual communicator within the media organization, and by looking at the effect of this on the products which ensue. The fundamental question here is: to what extent and in what ways can media personnel exercise operational control over their institutionally transmitted messages?

Communicator autonomy and organizational control

It has already been argued that organizational structure and policy both arise from and confront the social and political contexts within which they are located. In looking at the communicator within the organization, a similar iteration can be found: the individual is drawn to, and recruited by, an organization with whose operation and practices he generally feels some sympathy; at the same time, he has some scope for making a personal impact and for shaping the product in a particular way. Again, the extent of his potential impact will vary depending on the type of organization and on the nature of his individual role within it.

Roles and goals Media organizations and the communicators who work within them may have different goals. Three dominant sets of goals confront most media organizations, all determining the shape of the media output. Audience maximization, for instance, is a major economic goal whose attainment pushes for the application of certain criteria (broadly associated with ‘entertainment’ values) to output. Organizational goals can derive from the relationship to the controlling authority or the external legal, cultural, political and economic demands: the organization coordinates its output within an overall policy or strategy. Professional goals relate both to output—the use of inexplicit and diffuse criteria to characterize ‘good television’ or ‘good journalism’—and to personnel, in terms of career patterns and criteria of success and appraisal.

In his study of news-gathering journalists, Tunstall (1972) provides an alternative categorization of the goals of news organizations: an audience goal, an advertising goal, and a non-revenue goal, which refers to any other objective—the pursuit of policy, political influence, prestige and so on. Through an examination of the relationship of these goals to the prevailing work roles, Tunstall explores the issue of autonomy and control in news journalism. His study indicates that role/goal conflict is generally controlled by a somewhat subtle process of negotiation, and rarely becomes overt: specialist journalists tend to have the same views as their major sources—those who cover trade unions vote Labour, those who cover the police vote Conservative, and so on. Any specialist has a variety of defences he or she can use against the organization, and both journalists and news organizations are able largely to have their way with what most concerns them.

Tactical autonomy and strategic control Despite some real autonomy in tactical detail (at the operational level), however, communicators can be strategically controlled (at the level of policy implementation) by notions accepted within their own occupation and more broadly within the media organization. For example, accepted ‘professional truths’ about how an interview should be conducted, what kinds of people are ‘names’, the appropriate budget for a particular ‘time-slot’ and so on are all important; above all, communicators can be constrained by the past performance of their organization in terms of learning what is ‘acceptable’. This comes through clearly in Tom Burns's study of BBC professionals: ‘What is drummed into producers is that if there is any doubt in their minds about a topic, or viewpoint, or film sequence, or contributor they must refer up to their chief editor, or head of department’ (Burns, 1977, p. 195). At the same time, of course, it is open to the individual to push forward the boundaries of acceptability, but this is more likely to be allowed to happen at times of economic buoyancy or, in the case of the BBC, when the spectre of the Royal Commission is less visible. Thus, in the middle 1960s, the BBC could pioneer new forms of political satire in ‘That Was the Week That Was’, of drama in the Wednesday Play slot, of comedy in ‘Monty Python’. These forms provoked an enormous amount of public comment and protest which the BBC firmly withstood.

By the beginning of the 1970s, with Annan appearing in the middle distance, the mood had changed. A programme entitled ‘Yesterday's Men’, concerned with the Labour opposition leaders one year after their ousting in the General Election of 1970, produced a violent political storm to which the BBC was forced to react publicly—by setting up the Complaints Commission. Tracey (1978) in his case study of the episode highlights the dual role of the BBC in both controlling and protecting its employees. Despite sanctions and changes imposed after the event, the programme-makers had, in fact, a great deal of freedom to develop and implement their conception of what the programme should be like. Little overt censorship was apparent at any stage. The policy of ‘referral upwards’ appeared to work in favour of the communicators through the invocation of ‘professionalism’ as a joint response—of both executives and producer—to outside attack. However, there is little doubt that the ‘Yesterday's Men’ episode has entered into the organizational lore as an example of what is, or is not, ‘acceptable’. As the programme's producer said: ‘Nobody must do “Yesterday's Men” again. You mustn't. Better be safe than imaginative’ (Tracey, 1978, p. 201). The Annan Committee itself subsequently related these events to changes in the social and political climate:

Hitherto it had been assumed—apart from the occasional flurry over a programme—that Britain had ‘solved’ the problem of the political relations of broadcasting to Government, Parliament and the public. Now people of all political persuasions began to object that many programmes were biased or obnoxious…. The appointment of Lord Hill as Chairman of the BBC, and the subsequent appointment in his place at the ITA of Lord Aylestone, was widely interpreted as a sign that Government was firing a shot across the bows of the broadcasters to warn them that many members of the viewing public thought they were off course…. When Lord Hill and the Governors decided…to assert the editorial independence of broadcasters by refusing to ban ‘Yesterday's Men’…politicians may have wondered whether they had appointed an admiral who habitually turned a blind eye when the Admiralty made a signal. The broadcasters realized they were heading for trouble, so they battened down the hatches. (Annan, 1977, p. 15)

The economic control mechanism The possibilities for, and limitations of, the autonomy of individual communicators within any media organization cannot be considered without reference to the economic base of the organization. The effects of the introduction of a competitive commercial element to British broadcasting have already been related to the programme policy orientations of the organizations. In another sense, and although it has been argued that British media professionals—particularly in the BBC—are primarily limited by a form of social control (by rather vague reference to standards, taste, acceptability), communicators in Britain are also subject to controls rooted in straightforward notions of business efficiency. For example, the emergence of a strong new stratum of middle management in the BBC in the late 1960s is conventionally attributed to the impact of the McKinsey Report. An unofficial submission to the Annan Commission pointed to the repercussions of this for programmemakers:

The BBC initiated the McKinsey Report which recommended a stricter internal system of control over financial expenditure. The BBC understandably complied. We do not dispute the necessity for rigorous financial stringency but we submit that we have now not only unrealistically elaborate financial procedures but that these have led to an even more Byzantine system of planning and control over programmes themselves….

Programme-makers feel strongly that real control, artistic as well as financial, has moved further and further away from themselves. We submit that this has had a correspondingly ill effect on programmes for which producers often feel accountable rather than responsible. (Quoted in Vaughan, 1976, p. 12)

It is in the United States, however, that the strictest limitations are imposed by a decidedly economic mechanism of control—by direct and measurable reference to what will sell. This stringent economic imperative leaves American comrnunicators in an extremely weak position vis-à-vis the powerful networks.

The people at the networks say they want something fresh, they want something new, they want something different. You come in with something new, fresh and different. You work on it a little more and they say, wait a minute—that's a little too different. They pay lip-service to the idea of originality but in actuality the activity takes place along areas that are somewhat familiar to them. They will buy anything they can relate to success. They don't want it exactly like it was before. If you wanted to do a western that was similar to ‘Gunsmoke’ but not ‘Gunsmoke’, you are in pretty good shape. But if you do something that is totally different or something that is exactly ‘Gunsmoke’ chances are you are dead. (Cantor, 1971, pp. 128–9)

Paralysed by the ferocious competition in which they engage, the networks respond by minimizing all possible risks, hedging all bets. Every year they commission about 100 pilot shows for projected new series. These shows are then rigorously pre-tested according to the most sophisticated marketing techniques available, vetted in special annual screening sessions by the biggest advertisers, and finally weeded down to the twenty or twenty-five which are most likely to deliver the goods. The networks commission work to detailed and rigid specifications in terms of established formulae, and particularly of those which succeeded best in the previous season.

The image of the audience The economic mechanism is closely linked to organizational perceptions of audience requirements and behaviour. However, the relationship of media organizations and communicators to their audience is essentially ambiguous: Tracey (1978) defined it as an ‘absent framework’ in his study of the production of political television in Britain. Indeed, there is a sense in which the organization can be said to develop a model of the audience to suit its own needs:

It can be shown that the role of the audience extends beyond the creation and the contents of the mass media product, but affects the structure and the culture of the mass media industries themselves…. Every mass media creator, whatever his skill, is to some degree dependent on the validity of his audience image for his status and standing in the industry. (Gans, 1957, p. 322)

This struggle—between the communicator's image of the audience, and the organizational or institutional image of an audience or society in whose name the organization has been constructed—is illustrated by a particular form of transaction which emerged in the late 1970s.

A disastrous 1975–6 American television season, in which ratings indicated average viewing down by nine to fifteen minutes a day, and in which sixteen of the twenty-seven new shows launched at the beginning of the season were cancelled and replaced, led to speculation about the possibility of a change in American tastes and leisure patterns. Paralleled by a boom in the export of British television programmes to the United States, the move was interpreted as a triumph for ‘quality programming’: ‘What has happened is that U.S. TV audiences have grown up. They will not take a steady diet of junk, and Britain produces quality material’ (Mason, 1976, p. 40). The British imports receiving most acclaim in the United States were the big, long-running glossies: ‘The Forsyte Saga’, The Six Wives of Henry VIII’, ‘America’, ‘Elizabeth R’. Some British imports inspired American imitations, such as ‘All in the Family’ (from ‘Till Death Us Do Part’ and also shown in Britain), ‘Sanford and Son’ (‘Steptoe and Son’), and a costly failure ‘Beacon Hill’ (‘Upstairs, Downstairs’).

To what extent might this actually reflect the emergence of a deep-seated audience need for a certain type of programming? (This would imply a personalized, communicator image of the audience.) Or how much could it be due to the expansion of big-business interests with capital to invest in long-term promotion (implying an institutionalized, organizational need)? For one thing, the selling of British programming was not an easy matter. Richard Price Associates, a company formed to market abroad the programmes of several commercial companies, took eighteen months and twelve major sales presentations to sell ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ to the United States. For another, the foreign film arm of Sir Lew Grade's ATV, Independent Television Corporation (ITC), was at that time developing one of the largest production schedules in Europe, being involved not only in co-productions with Radiotelevision Italiana (RAI), but also in a major export drive to the United States. ITC-RAI co-productions of the late 1970s, such as ‘The Life and Times of William Shakespeare’, and ‘The Life of Jesus’ starred some of Hollywood's and Britain's biggest names.

In this context, it is difficult to see the purely ‘quality’ explanation as holding water (moreover, the falling pound in the late 1970s meant that British programmes were a cheap buy). An alternative explanation is that this is an example of the external ‘survival’ needs of the organization being fed into the communicators as intellectual attitudes, ideals and values which, although organizational in origin, may be expressed, interpreted, or even experienced as occupational or professional tenets.

THE LIMITS OF CONTROL

Consideration of the external and internal contexts of media organizations and occupations, it has been argued, is fundamental to an understanding of the sources, nature and directions of control in the media, particularly in relation to the shaping of output. The complex of constraints which has been outlined, and within which communication organizations and professionals operate, makes it difficult to sustain a view of the media and media practitioners as autonomous ‘watch-dogs’. On the other hand, to the extent that the media can be observed to negotiate the parameters of constraint—exercising, at least at times, a policy of ‘brinkmanship’—they cannot be dismissed as subservient ‘tools of government’. Rather, the general conclusion must be that mass communication is indeed bound with, and bounded by, the interests of the dominant institutions in society, but that these interests are continually redefined through a process to which the media themselves contribute.

Tracey (1978, p. 242) concludes that ‘the external political and commercial context locks the programme-making process into a cycle of dependency’. The external context of programme making, he argues, functions as a latent ‘presence’. Thus, ‘broadcasting is always conducted with a certain degree of fear; an error or misjudgement by a producer can by damaging the public image… severely endanger its essential economic or political interests’ (Smith, 1972, p. 4). Consequently, the capacity to influence, if not control, rests on an understanding of the powers and consequences which may for the most part remain latent.

Yet the process is not wholly contained. For example, the ‘Yesterday's Men’ episode, as both Burns (1977) and Tracey (1978) suggest, indicates the limits within which both influence is possible and criticism tolerable. Burns contends that the limits of criticism have, since the mid-1950s, actually been proven extensible. His thesis that the broadcasters’ historical acceptance that the ‘national interest’ must be served is a price which they pay for their dedication to professionalism is intriguing. Put the other way round, certain professional stances—such as those of the investigative or adversary journalist, or the antiestablishment tone of certain items of output—are a reaction against the restraints imposed by the accommodation reached between professionalism and the national interest: they gained acceptance as the ‘price’ which it has been found possible to exact for that accommodation.

The politics of accommodation in the mass media is played out at different levels—between the professionals and the management, between the organization and the establishment. Within this accommodation, the limits of control are in constant negotiation: from the trivial ‘You put in a “crap” to get two “hells” and a “damn”’ (US programme producer, in Levine, 1975, p. 22) to the politically resonant ‘At the time of the General Strike…the compromises [Reith] accepted made it possible for his successors to be much more firm and uncompromising when they faced the anger of governments about the BBC's treatment of such crises as Suez’ (Greene, 1972, p. 549). Through these negotiations and accommodations different interests are served. The precise nature and the implications of the controls expressed through those interests have, as yet, been only very loosely defined and interpreted by media research. However, the questions which such definitions and interpretations raise are as much political as sociological.

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