It's Show Time!
Media, Politics, and Popular Culture

Edited by David A. Schultz

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: It's Show Time!: Media, Politics, and Popular Culture. Contributors: David A. Schultz - author. Publisher: Peter Lang. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 2000.

Excerpt only: To access full text, visit www.questia.com, a subscription-based library of academic and journalistic resources.

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Chapter 2
The Cultural Contradictions of the American Media
 
By David Schultz

     What is news? Perhaps no question is more frequently asked about the media or the news industry than this one. For some, news has been defined as "the unusual, the aberrant, the out of the ordinary," ( Salent 1999, 243) as "an objective and trustworthy account of reality," ( McQuail 1998, 252 ) or "an attempt to reconstruct the essential framework" of an event ( Schramm 1960, 2 ).Yet none of these definitions adequately captures what is shown on the evening television news, what appears in newspapers and magazines, or what is heard on the radio. Instead, to understand what news is in any country, one needs to look to the cultural forces of a society, to the various social values, constraints, or institutions affecting the news production industry. An adequate understanding and definition of what constitutes news is developed by examining four social imperatives or forces that shape news. These imperatives are:

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the role of the news in a democracy;

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the corporate structure of news production;

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the entertainment imperative of news; and

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the political behavior of news entities in the United States.

These four imperatives, social forces, or constraints are in tension with one another, often dictating conflicting, or contradictory demands upon the news ( Gouldner 1980, 169 ). The result is that what is produced or emerges as "news" in the United States is shaped by, and is the by-product or interplay of the democratic, corporate, entertainment, and political demands that are placed on it.

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News as a Social Institution

The production and definition of news does not occur in a vacuum. What is news and the conditions under which it is defined and reported take place within a social context. Reporters, radio, television, and the entire news gathering and reporting process are embedded within a society. To locate news within a social context means that what is defined as news responds to, and reflects these social assumptions, beliefs, values, and biases.

But to say news is embedded in a social context goes even further than saying that it is reflective of social values. News is not defined under circumstances chosen by the news industry itself, but under specific social, economic, and political conditions. It is these forces of production that to a large extent shape what will air on television or radio or will appear in newspapers. The economic or social forces of production that determine the structure of the ownership of the news gathering industry, or the political values that define the relationship between the media and the government, create a specific set of patterns of behavior that define news.

News is an institution defined by other social institutions in society. By an institution, it exhibits "social patterns of behavior identifiable across the organizations that are generally seen within a society to preside over a particular social sphere" ( Cook 1998, 70 ). Within any society, certain institutions form and these institutions have regularized behavior, norms, and conventions. In the United States, there are political, social, and economic institutions, all of which have their own values and specific patterns of behavior. To borrow from the title of media critic Marshall McLuhan's famous book, not only does the medium determine the message, but many other forces also operate to influence what one reads, hears, or sees in the news. News is a product of the forces of production of other institutions that bear upon the news production industry.

In the United States, four major social institutions or imperatives are especially important in defining and structuring the news production establishment. The first is the democratic imperative, and it refers to the special relationship between the press or news gathering industry and the government. It also describes the role that the press and other media are supposed to play in our democracy.

A second institution refers to the corporate structure of news ownership and production in the United States. The news industry is not owned by the government, it is privately owned and increasingly with a corporate for-profit structure. The third imperative is the increasing entertainment focus on the news, dictated, in part, by its need to compete for audiences against other forms of entertainment. Finally, the political nature of news refers to the participatory role of the news industry in the political process. Here, the news industry itself competes against citizens and other organizations to lobby and influence the political process to obtain specific political outcomes.  

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The Democratic Functions of Media

A free press is important to the maintenance of a democratic society because it provides for a forum for political debate, public scrutiny of the government. It provides citizens with the objective information they need to make political judgments. Because of its importance in a free society, the press is the only economic enterprise specifically mentioned in the United States Constitution ( Grossman 1995, 69 ).

The press has long enjoyed a privileged position within the United States. From the earliest colony days of the United States, freedom of the press has been important to the dissemination of political ideas and the criticism of ruling authority. Back in 1735, Peter Zenger was put on trial in colonial America because an article in his paper criticized the local British governor of New York ( Levy 1985, 125 ). Yet a jury acquitted him of libel, stating that the printing of truth was a defense to this charge. The Zenger trial stood for the proposition that the press should be unrestrained in its efforts to report and criticize.

Similarly, the language and ideas of the American revolution were spread through the press, in terms of political pamphlets, handbills, and letters to newspapers ( Bailyn 1967, 2 ; Hyneman and Lutz 1983, xi ). Without the freedom of the press, the language of rebellion could not have been spread. The use of the press was critical in 1787, with James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay using The New York Tribune newspaper as the forum to publish the Federalist Papers and urge adoption of the new Constitution. Benjamin Franklin spoke for many when he stated in 1789 that one ought to "leave the liberty of the press untouched, to be exercised in its full extent, force, and vigor" ( Franklin 1983, 708 ). George Washington echoed this sentiment, indicating that the press was important to "facilitating the circulation of political intelligence and information"( Davis 1996, 21 ). Thomas Jefferson best stated the Framers' views on a free press when he declared: "The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers

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without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter" ( Jefferson 1984, 880 ).

Indicative of the importance the Framers placed on freedom of the press was the eventual adoption in 1791 of the First Amendment that guaranteed its constitutional protection. Without a constitutional guarantee for the press, a free society would be impossible. According to Thomas Jefferson: "Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions" ( Jefferson 1984, 1147 ).

For Jefferson, a free press was the tool of public criticism. It held public officials accountable, opening them up to the judgment of people who could decide whether the government was doing good or whether it had anything to hide.

In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville underscored the importance of a free press to a democratic society. For de Tocqueville, the proliferation and maintenance of voluntary associations is critical to fighting the tyranny of the majority and fostering a democratic society. Equally as important to serving these twin tasks is a free press. For de Tocqueville, there "is a necessary connection between public associations and newspapers: newspapers make associations, and associations make newspapers" ( de Tocqueville 1961, 135 ). A newspaper brings people together, serves as an advisor. Because the press was local, with every community possessing several papers, these papers represented the views of a specific group or interest, providing a forum for its views and to exchange ideas and engage in political debate.

A democratic and free society is dependent upon the media to inform. If a government is to operate on public opinion as the Framers hoped it would, the public needs to inform its views about government in some way and the way is through the press because few have direct and immediate access to what the government is doing. For most, information about politics is mediated or learned through the press and we look to them to inform us. The news, such as television, can frame public opinion and how we view issues ( Iyengar 1991, 8 ). In a democracy, the media operate as agenda setters ( Graber 1993, 307 ) and they have some effect on elections, perhaps including turnout in close elections. The media are also important in interpreting messages, and socializing individuals to democratic norms ( Laswell 1969 ). More recently, the new media, which include the Intemet and talk radio, have been important in shaping the public agenda ( Davis and

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Owen 1998, 231-53). Bill Clinton was introduced to America playing the saxophone on the June 3, 1992 airing of the Arsenio Hall Show, and radio talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh launched the coverage of Monica Lewinsky and the introduction of the term feminazis to our political discourse ( Davis and Owen 1998, 253 ).

Overall, as Justice Brennan stated regarding the important role of the press to democracy in New York Times v. Sullivan: "The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions. . . . The maintenance of the opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes may be obtained by lawful means, an opportunity essential to the security of the Republic, is a fundamental principle of our constitutional system" (376 U.S. 254, 269 ( 1964).

The Corporate Function of the Media

The press and the news may be important to the maintenance of democracy, yet the news does not simply serve the needs of the citizen. The ownership structure of the media dictates that the production of news must be for a profit and, thus, what appears as news is shaped by the needs of making money.

Richard Salent, former head of the news division for CBS, stated the conflict well when he contended that to "give priority to information which the people of a democracy need to know, on the one hand, or to what will interest and titillate them, on the other, is a fundamental and underlying one -- both for print and for broadcast" ( Salent 1999, 248).

From its colonial origins, American news production has been marked by private ownership. Yet this ownership structure did not always dictate that news was supposed to be simply a for-profit enterprise. The production of news passed from local newspapers by printers to party presses to penny presses. As voices of political parties, the presses promoted political dialogue and as revolutionary rags, they attacked the British ( Davis 1996, 24-40 ). Today the media are market-driven as opposed to the nineteenth century when they were party -- driven ( Grossman 1995, 85 ). What are the implications of news being a for profit industry? There are several, but the most important factor is that news is business. For Salent: News is a special kind

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of business, but it is a business -- a part of the free enterprise system this nation has chosen. It has to make money in order to spend money. The New York Times boasts "All the News That's Fit to Print," while the former Aspen Flier, a small paper and more modestly -- and accurately -- announced, "As Independent as Revenues Permit" ( Salent 1999, 140).

News and information are commodities to be bought and sold like mouthwash, toilet paper, and soda ( Lyotard 1979, 5 ; Wolf 1999, 109 ). Industries that produce news wish to maximize revenues and will seek to present those news items that are most likely to generate readers, viewers, listeners, and profits. John Welch, chairman of General Electric, the parent company that owns NBC, requires every division to maintain the same profit margin as every other division ( Grossman 1995, 75 ). Media services, thus, must be profitable, and profitable they have been. Media companies are an attractive corporate investment because for every dollar of revenue, 30 to 35 cents are profit ( Parenti 1995, 166 ). As a result of this high profitability, the media and news industry has become the source of corporate takeovers and increased concentration in the last twenty to thirty years.

While media concentration is less in America than Europe, the trend nonetheless has been toward concentration of the media and news production into fewer and fewer corporate hands ( Picard 1998, 201 ). For example, the number of controlling firms in the media -- daily newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books, and movies -- has shrunk from 50 corporations in 1984 to 26 in 1987 to 23 in 1990 and to less than 10 in 1996. These ten are Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation Limited (Murdoch/Fox), Sony, Tele-Communications, Inc., Seagram, Westinghouse, Gannett, and General Electric ( Bagdikian 1997, xiii ). In 1999 alone, there were talks of several major mergers, including Viacom and CBS, that would produce even greater media concentration and power into fewer and fewer hands.

In addition to this concentration, there is the rise of multiple owners in media where one conglomerate owns several types of media. Presently, there are fewer than 1,800 daily papers and 1,200 commercial stations in the United States. In 1995, Gannett owned 93 daily papers, 15 television stations, and 19 radio stations. Cox Broadcasting owned 11 radio stations, 3 television stations, 4 cable vision systems, and nine newspaper companies. The New York Times Company owned 35 daily newspapers, 8 weeklies, 2 radio stations, five television stations, and numerous magazines. Capital Cities/ABC owned 7 television stations, 7 radio networks serving more than 3,000 affiliated radio stations, 18 radio stations, 75 weekly newspapers, and numerous trade magazines. All this was before Walt Disney Company

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bought them in 1995 ( Graber 1997, 39 ; Bagdikian 1997, xxv ; Woodward 1997, 28-29 ). The Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted many of the ownership restrictions that had been in place so that now one owner can own a total of 8 AM/FM and 12 television stations in one market. Since then, media concentration has accelerated.

Corporate owners such as General Electric use the media they own to support their companies and their other interests, and studies suggest that corporate chains are more likely to pursue profit than traditional editorial policy ( Underwood 1995, 119). GE, for example, is a large company with military and consumer products, power distribution systems, computer services, financial services, medical services, and yes, media services. Westinghouse is a major defense contractor and owner of CBS ( Parenti 1995, 186 ). This increased corporate nature of news and media means that the media are not only a profit-making division for GE and Westinghouse, but that the news or media division is also implemented to secure corporate objectives and goals that support the vast holdings of these companies. These news producers are less attached to community than before. As noted above, General Electric required NBC to maintain the same profit margin as every other division. This means that GE is more' concerned with profits than with necessarily representing the diverse interests and voices de Tocqueville had in mind.

Overall, the increasingly corporate structure of the media means that news is not simply an objective presentation of political events where the needs of democracy dictate what will be aired or printed. In making decisions regarding what is produced as news, the logic of for-profit journalism means that "rational news departments should compete with each other to offer the least expensive mix of content that protects the interests of the sponsors and investors while garnering the largest audience advertisers will pay to reach" ( McManus 1995, 85).

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The Entertainment Function of the Media

If news is for profit, it must compete against other sources of entertainment for audience attention. For some, such as former PBS and NBC News President Lawrence Pressman, the result is that the "firewall that separates politics from entertainment has all but disappeared" ( Grossman 1995, 108-9 ). When Bill Moyers quit CBS he indicated that traditional journalism judgments were being replaced with market demands.

Managers [at CBS News]. . . yielded to the encroachment of entertainment values from within. Not only were those values invited in, they were exalted . . . In meeting after meeting, "Entertainment Tonight" was touted as the model -- visual images containing a highly emotional quotient that are passed on to the viewer unfiltered and unexamined. ( Grossman 1995, 108-9 )

The fact that journalism and media are increasingly "market-driven" means that audiences are seen not as citizens to inform but consumers to attract. The imperative of market needs comes into conflict with democratic needs ( McManus 1994, 3 ), producing news that is less about the government and more focused on attracting audiences, regardless of the content.

Entertainment-focused journalism, however, is not simply a product of the internal drive for profits by mainstream or established news or media services. Instead, the "new media," including talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show, Oprah Winfrey, and tabloid style shows such as Hard Copy or Current Affair, as well as information providers or media services such as MTV, the Intemet and the World Wide Web, and even magazines such as People also serve as competition to the more traditional news services and media outlets ( Davis and Owen 1998 ). These highly profitable shows are in competition for audiences with more traditional news services, thus forcing, as Bill Moyers noted, mainstream news to change its product if it wishes to maintain audiences and revenues.

The new media have the potential to inform, to educate, and facilitate public discourse, yet even the "new media's promise is undercut by the commercial and entertainment imperatives that drive them" ( Davis and Owen 1998, 7 ). It is a profit-making fare that competes against mainstream news, forcing even the latter to change ( Davis and Owen 1998, 18 ). The new media cover politics but only politics as it entertains, in part, because the audience the new media attract is a less politically interested audience than traditional news audiences ( Davis and Owen 1998, 18 ).

One result is that traditional national evening news on ABC, CBS, and NBC now have relatively little "hard news" in a thirty-minute format, with soft and nonnews and commercials occupying the lion's share of the broadcast ( "Around the News in 22 Minutes" 1991). One study suggested less than one percent of the news covered is political news ( Purdum 1999 ).

Similarly, recent expansion of news shows on television such as Date Line and 20/20 is a result not of corporate news services newfound discovery that people want information about politics and government so much as a

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discovery that expanded entertainment-orientated news is profitable. Studies confirm that mainstream news now covers many of the topics previously only found in tabloid shows such as Hard Copy ( Mifflin 1999 ). For example, in 1992, the National Enquirer broke a story about an alleged affair between Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers. Subsequently it was picked up by mainstream media, including a front page New York Times story crediting this supermarket tabloid. Apparently, now "All the News That's Fit to Print" includes "What enquiring minds want to know."

The media can deliver news useful to a democracy or useful in selling soap and securing profits. What Edward R. Murrow, one of the early pioneers of journalism, stated about television can easily be generalized to all of the media today when he asserted:

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. The weapon of television could be useful. ( Sperber 1986, 540 )

The Political Role of the Media

The media are not simply important to the maintenance of a democracy but its fourth imperative is as a substantive political actor with its own political interests and impact. In addition to the media serving an important role in setting the political agenda, framing political issues, or perhaps influencing turnout in close elections, the corporate owners and agents involved with the news occupy a significant role in the halls of Congress.

For one, media lobbyists work the corridors of government the same as any other group. In 1988, the Magazine Publishers Association gave $12,000 to Republican candidates for a "Victory 88" fund. From 1985 to 1988, the National Cable Television Association gave $446,000 to federal candidates, and the National Association of Broadcasters gave $308,000 ( Bagdikian 1997, 11 ). In lobbying for changes that resulted in the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, U.S. House of Representatives Republicans met in closed-door meetings with the media industry to discuss changes. In lobbying efforts, $40 million were spent by the telecommunications industry on this bill and $4 million in direct candidate and lawmaker contributions ( Bagdikian 1997, xv ). The result? Relaxation of telecommunications anti-trust laws that now permit more concentrated media ownership.

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The National Association of Broadcasters has a multimillion dollar budget and represents over 6,000 members. It can use this network to mobilize member stations and cover or even ignore issues. For example, in 1979 the federal government proposed major telecommunication law changes that pleased the networks, but that night no news program mentioned it, even though over 200 press people were present at the announcement ( Bagdikian 1997,93 ).

News organization lobbyists have successfully lobbied to prevent a change in postal rates that would have hurt media interests ( Cook 1998, 184 ). Similarly, Katharine Graham, head of the Washington Post media empire and president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, lobbied personally to keep AT&T from competing with the papers ( Bagdikian 1997, 92).

Most major media corporations, such as Time, Inc., have their own political action committees ( Bagdikian 1997, 95 ). For example, in 1997 almost $4 million were given to the Democratic and Republican Parties and candidates as major media corporations sought to influence debates on the awarding of broadcast rights to high definition television (HDTV) (Common Cause 1997). During that time ABC/ Disney contributed $850,000, with Fox ($928,000), NBC/ GE ($762,000), and CBS/Westinghouse ($312,000). Other media giants also expended large sums of money for lobbying and direct political contributions.

Overall, the media and the owners of the news industry are not politically neutral and disinterested. They have their own corporate, economic, and political agenda, using their vast wealth and media power to support that agenda.

Cultural Contradictions of the American Media

The American news industry is caught at the intersection of the democratic, corporate, entertainment, and political imperatives that define its structure and mandates. What does this mean for news and what is defined as news?

First, these four imperatives are not in harmony but often come into conflict with one another. The democratic imperative to provide an objective account of governmental information citizens need to make informed political

decisions, or the demand that the media occupy an adversarial role to check abuses of power, or the need to have competition among news providers to stimulate robust and informed debate that can only come from a diversity of ideas and opinions, is seriously threatened by the corporate, entertainment, and political imperatives of the news media.

For example, concentration in media ownership means a decrease in the diversity of viewpoints expressed. No longer do the media represent the voices of many local interests as de Tocqueville once described; now they represent a handful of corporate speakers able to silence views that hurt corporate objectives. For example, HarperCollins was prepared to print a book written by Chris Patten, the former British governor of Hong Kong, who was critical of the leaders in China. When the parent company of HarperCollins, News Corporation Limited, realized this, publication was halted lest it threaten the telecommunications interests the News Corporation was seeking to protect in China.

In addition, the imperatives of corporate ownership forces more episodic coverage rather than thematic coverage. Thematic coverage places stories in context but episodic does not. Research indicates that episodic coverage frames the way viewers understand events, such that they do not see public officials responsible for issues such as poverty or crime. The result is news does not hold elites responsible for social events. Corporate control of the news is the reason for this type of coverage ( Iyengar 1991, 138-39 ). Corporate ownership biases the content of news in ways that are distinct from merely being "liberal" or "conservative." The bias is structural or institutional rather than individual ( Cook 1998, 92 ). It comes by way of favoring official sources from government or industry ( Cook 1998, 92 ; Herman 1988, 18-26 ). The result is a corporate bias in favor of the status quo.

The increasing corporatized and centralized control of the media is producing more stories not heard. For example, not one mainstream media service carried a story indicating how much money was spent by the major news industry to lobby for the broadcast rights to HDTV. In 1996, when Bob Dole ran for president, he stated that these broadcast rights, with an estimated value of up to $70 billion, should be auctioned off since they were owned by the public ( Alger 1998, 100 ). The news media gave little attention to this story and gave no attention to the fact they were spending money on candidates and lobbying to receive these broadcast rights for free! Should the public know about this? Yes? Do the media report this? No!

Similarly, it is unlikely that the media will report on its lobbying efforts

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in Congress or that NBC will report adverse stories about its parent company GE, including the fact that GE is involved in a major dispute with the government over its alleged pollution of the Hudson River in New York State.

The pressures of corporate ownership also affect what is broadcast on the news. After GE bought RCA/NBC, GE chairman John Welch called NBC News president Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC news, to express anger about coverage of the stock market collapse in 1987, saying that the reporting further hurt the economy and that using the term "Black Monday" hurt GE stock ( Grossman 1995, 83-84 ). At one point Westinghouse demanded a rewrite of a teleplay on television because it did not like the depiction of the military in it. Westinghouse is a major defense contractor and owner of CBS ( Parenti 1991, 186 ).

Overall, corporate discipline and the imperatives of corporate ownership influence what and how news is covered, often labeling that which challenges the status quo as irresponsible ( Herman and Chomsky 1988, 304 ). News can now be characterized by a chamber of commerce mentality where the line between news and marketing is crossed ( Underwood 1995, 139).

Others see additional ways that market-driven journalism affects the content of the news. First, consumers are less likely to learn from news. Second, consumers are misled. Third, news sources become more manipulative, and fourth, audiences become politically apathetic as less information is provided ( McManus 1994, 184-96 ). In addition, there is no investigative coverage of business ( Underwood 1995, 131-32). While all newspapers, magazines, and television news have a section devoted to business, there is no comparable "labor" or "workers" section devoted to examining news from the people's point of view.

Finally, there is good evidence that the drive toward a corporatized, forprofit, entertainment focused news industry provides less government news coverage, especially as reporters are pulled from government beats to cover other stories ( Underwood 1995, 19; Purdum 1999 ). Media ownership also influences the choice of story. For example, it is less likely that they will cover crime at a mall and more likely cover crime on the street corner, lest they offend their advertisers ( Schwarz 1996, 162-63 ). Lastly, while tobacco companies cannot advertise on television, these companies own food products, and the media feel tobacco influence through food advertising dollars. For example, TV Guide refused an American Heart Association ad in part because it felt pressure from tobacco companies not to accept such an ad critical of smoking ( Schwarz 1996, 170-71 ).

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The point here is that the news Americans need to be informed citizens comes into conflict with the news the news industry wants to provide to maintain its profits. What is news, then, is not simply "the unusual, the aberrant, the out of the ordinary, "an objective and trustworthy account of reality," or "an attempt to reconstruct the essential framework" of an event. News is increasingly what will entertain, sustain the status quo, and maximize corporate profits.

Conclusion: The Rise of the Entertainment-information Complex

In his farewell address to the nation in 1961, outgoing president Dwight Eisenhower warned of the rise of the "military-industrial complex" in America, a complex which was the product of military establishment and the government working together to set public policy at the expense of needs of American democracy. In language ironically reminiscent of Eisenhower's, Walt Disney president Michael Eisner stated:

It doesn't matter whether it comes in by cable, telephone lines, computer or satellite. Everyone is going to have to deal with Disney . . . The power center of America . . . has moved from its role as military-industrial giant to a new supremacy as the world's entertainment-information superpower. ( Bagdikian 1997, x )

If Jefferson was correct that the answer to governmental power is accountability which means giving voters full information and real choices, who holds the media accountable? With less than a handful of executives making decisions about what constitutes news, our society is losing the range of options and sources of information it needs to function. Power has shifted in the United States away from the people and even the military-industrial complex and toward a media-industrial complex. This shift in power has come at the expense of the traditional role of the media and the news in a free society, posing new threats to democracy.

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Publication Information: Book Title: It's Show Time!: Media, Politics, and Popular Culture. Contributors: David A. Schultz - author. Publisher: Peter Lang. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 2000. Page Number: 28.