Influence of Media in Political Stance - Research Paper Example

In What Ways Might the Ownership and Control of the Media be said to Influence its Political Stance? Faculty Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Media III. Ownership and Control of Media IV. Influence on Political Stance V. Conclusion VI. Reference I. Introduction Media is one of the important parts of our society which provides not only information but also acts as a source of entertainment and education. There have been various debates over the ownership and control issues of media. Media has been influencing society in various ways. In such scenario when the role of media has become so important in the society that it can create positive or negative image of people, company, party or any specific group, member of different segment of society try to have as much association and control over this as possible. Terrorist organisations seek media coverage to create terror. Political parties seek media support for creating positive image for themselves. Corporate house and business groups look forward for this medium to create positive brand image among their stakeholders. Mass media also depends on various sources for information needs, revenue and profit generation and operational ease. The first section of the paper discusses the role of media in general. This section is followed by ownership and control issues in media. The next section discusses influence of media in political stance which is followed by conclusion. II. Media The role of media is very important for any society. Media is one of the modes of information exchange. In the last few years the overall industry has rapidly developed in many senses in the level of reach, frequency, mode of presentation and approach. UK has the second largest publishing industry in Europe with turnover of at least £18.4 billion. More than 8000 plus companies have employed around 164,000 people1. Media is an important source of various kind of information for all of us. It as been developed with the development in technologies and availability of new medium of information flows. Traditionally the source of information has been newspapers. Newspapers are still one of the most important types of media available in our society. Various kinds of media available in the present society are as follows: Print Media: Newspapers, magazines and others Radio : Various radio channels like FM, National channels Electronic Media: Television channels Internet: world wide webs, bloggers society The print media is the traditional form of media. It includes leading newspapers, magazines. These can be categorised on the basis of target readers like their age group, gender and other demographic profiles, on the basis of its content and subject matters and on the basis of the way it is being published like daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Daily news papers provide daily news in details and try to cover almost all topics. The importance of Newspaper Company is to give useful information or news that has importance in people’s life. If one considers various reasons for writing it can vary from commercial, political to true journalism. It is very challenging for the journalist to present facts and figures of any incident or news in unbiased way. Robert Stone says that the “writer’s responsibility. …consists in writing well and truly, to use a Hemingwayesque Locution.”2 Any writer who betrays his calling is that who either for commercial or political reasons politicise his own perception and rendering for it. This is possible in the sensitive, sensational and controversial news. War, terrorism, killings, bombing and their effects have increased in multi-folds due to the progress in communication channels. Today multiple channels, newspapers and media sources present news in various ways. Many publications are targeted for specific group of readers based on their demographic profile, needs, religions and cultural groups and many others. Various kind of information is shared through various kinds of publications. At the same time question arises on the authentication of various news. Especially in the case of any crisis, people look for information with curiosity and the kind of information available to them becomes an integral part of there thought process. III. Ownership and Control of Media For any media group there are three man factors impacting its decision making process at each and every level. These are company or the media firm, readers and advertisers. The media firm based on its strengths and brand image covers the news and topics. The readers are the group of people interested in such topics for which they require these newspapers. The third important component of the media industry is the advertisers. The selling of newspaper has no longer remained profitable for the newspaper agencies. In the media like radio and TV the programs are hardly sold to the viewers. It is advertisers who pay for running these programs. Hence it is important to have advertisers to run the business. The ownership of the media has been an issue of vital interest among sociologist, media researchers and other academicians. Mass media influences the way society thinks and acts. It helps in framing the views based on the information available and the ability of the receivers. It offers a source of entertainment. The production and distribution of newspapers, books, magazines, television, radio, music, movies, and increasingly the Internet (i.e., the mass media) require great expense and frequently generate enormous profits. No research in mass communication can ignore questions of mass media ownership and the economic implications of that control. Mass media businesses routinely take in and spend vast sums of money. The media worldwide aims to maximise their profits. These acts as economic institutions and several factors impact the functioning of media like political, sociological, economical and technological. The issue of ownership of mass media has been highly debatable from the recent past. The information available from the popular culture is not always beneficial or in the interest of the target receiver of the information. The advertising and publicity contents serve the needs of advertisers. Many a time some important news is put on hold to keep any particular advertiser happy. Sometimes value of the products and services are created with the help of mass media which impacts the decision making process of the consumer groups. Sometimes information is presented in a sensitive environment where lack of knowledge and ability of the information provider hinders the proper presentation of the information which leads to creating certain environment which is not stable or good for anyone. The role of media has been put on questions several times. The British Industry Media Group (Associated Newspapers, Daily Telegraph, Pearson, Guardian Media Group) is constantly lobbying for an end to cross-media ownership restrictions. 3 IV. Influence on Political Stance Media has been involve in creating positive and negative image of people, religion specific, any special group in society, organisation or person specific. Various other issues are raised by Said (1996) on his work “Covering Islam”. In Said’s view the media have been posing the Islamic countries as a threat to the west since the Cold War from both a religious and territorial perspective. He further blamed the political intentions to move the attention of mass from the constructive and developmental issues to the threat of Islamic countries. These were related to the partial knowledge of the people in West about Islam and questioned the interpretation based on this partial knowledge. As he writes, “….representation of Islam have regularly testified to a penchant for dividing the world into pro- and anti-American (or pro- and anticommunist), an unwillingness to report political processes, an imposition of patterns and values that are ethnocentric or irrelevant or both, pure misinformation, repetition, an avoidance of detail, an absence of genuine perspective.”4 State uses Western culture and the media as a tool to disseminate the views and maintain the general consensus within society by encouraging ‘rogue’ states to be seen as binary oppositions. In the concept of Islamic world in the western society, the terrorist threat plays a huge part. Said has provided examples of the same with the description of West’s notion of Islam. Their assumptions are that ‘Islam’ can be included and described by the connotations of its proper name, “There is an unstated assumption, first of all, that the proper name ‘Islam’ denotes a simple thing to which one can refer immediately, as one refers to ‘democracy’ or to a person, or to an institution, like the Catholic Church.”5 In Said’s view the West is represented by the Media as modern, liberal and fully technological and unaffected by the religion or religious fundamentalism wherein non western states are represented as primitive and dominated by religion. Western culture considers itself beyond the religion and modern. It is no longer governed by religion only. “Since the media strive to meet the same audience which they believe is ruled by a uniform set of assumptions about reality, the picture of Islam…is likely to be quite uniform, in some ways reductive and monochromatic.”6 The critics and work of Said have already influenced various thinkers and people in general. It has provided another angle to look into the same issue. Said have emphasised on the knowledge and education of the reporters. The reporters and journalist need to know the language and the culture of the specific group they are presenting in their works because lack of knowledge leads to the misrepresentation of particular community. In the future the growth of electronic media especially internet will increase with the penetration of computers and web world. This platform is already offering an alternative media from the mainstream media. Ralph Negrine points out (1994) that in recent years some newspapers have clearly abandoned any notion of social responsibility, throwing their weight wholeheartedly behind a political point of view, allowing no room for discussion and argument. He takes the 1984-5 miners strike as an example.7 The mainstream media to be biased towards the community and religion specific based on the political interests, influence and profit motives. The news strengthening the old perception of people of Islamic community being anti-American is selling more. This is one of the motives which increase the comfort level of journalist to write what people want to read. Alternative media offers a platform to promote or advocate a specific political view, often dissident views. Authors such as Louis Althusser, Said and Noam Chomsky have focused on problems of the mainstream press in their writings. Their work has been a source of inspiration for the creation of many alternative press efforts. The focus on one particular view and emphasis on that by the mainstream media created need for alternative sources where people with different thoughts can get a platform for their views. Ownership and control of media has influenced political stance in various ways. The way news has been presented depends upon the ownership of the media group and the control government and other agencies have over it. At some places news are published when it follows certain guidelines set by the federation of news agencies or government guidelines. These guidelines are common for all the publishing and media companies. In various other cases the control comes from the advertisers and pressure groups to publish or not to publish news. The media which is said to be free expression in reality is many times pressurised with many factors from the control groups or ownership issues. V. Conclusion Media is assumed to be free. It is free to a certain level but beyond that when it comes to the ownership and control issues it has been influenced by many factors in the society. These factors can be internal to the organisation or external. The interest of stakeholders especially the advertisers many a times act as a pressure centre to help them creating a positive stance for them among their target consumers. The political process gets influenced by the media. People depend on mass media for number of reasons from information need to entertainment and education. If the information they receive from the popular media is biased towards any political interest it is more likely to create positive or negative impact among the readers or audience group. VI. Reference ONeil, P.H (edr)(1998) Communicating Democracy: The Media and Political Transitions, Lynne Rienner: Boulder, CO. Publication Compaine B.M and Gomery D (2000)Who Owns the Media?: Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ. Bryant J and Zillmann D(2002) Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ. Chomsky, N (2002) Media Control, The spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Post 9/11 Edition, The Role of Media in Contemporary Politics, New York: A Seven Stories Press Publication Chomsky, Noam (2000) Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. London: Pluto. p30 Said E. W (1981) Covering Islam London: Vintage (Vintage Introduction) Said, E (1996) Covering Islam, How Media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world, revised edition. Vintage Books New York: Random House Inc pg 44 Stone, Robert. “We Are Not Excused; Isabel Allende, Charles McCarry, Marge Piercy, Robert Stone, Gore Vidal.” Paths of Resistance: The Art and Craft of the Political Novel, William Zinsser, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Media ownership in the UK retrieved on 25 Nov. 06 from http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/mediaown.html Said, E (1996) Covering Islam, How Media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world, revised edition. Vintage Books New York: Random House Inc Hall, Stuart (1992) The West and the Rest in Formations of Modernity (1992) eds Hall, Stuart & Gieben. Open University: Polity. p277 Schlesinger, Philip (1991) Media, State and Nation. London: Sage. p21-28 and 173-198 Hall, Stuart (1996) Racist Ideologies in the Media in Marris, Paul and Thornham, Sue (eds) Media Studies-A Reader (1996) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Debatin, Bernhard (2002) Plane Wreck with Spectators in Greenburg, B. S (eds) Communication and Terrorism: Public and media responses to 9/11. USA: Hampton Inc. p165 Islam Through Western Eyes, Edward W. 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