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COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course introduces students to theories ranging from normative to process to effects. Media content, mass communications effects, audience psychology, and socio-economic and political aspects of mass media will also be discussed. The course emphasises forms and effects of media and how they impact the visual imagery that surrounds our lives.
This course will be comparative and engaged with the creative analysis and comparison of media systems and examine the tension between (and among) culture, communication and media systems and the objectives of those systems.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
The course will help students develop the skills to carry out their own media analysis projects based on the theories, models, and perspectives.
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TABLE OF CONTENT
 UNIT ONE: MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION
 Mass media as an institution
Mass media and Society
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UNIT TWO: COMMUNICATION THEORY AND RESEARCH
 Communication Effects and Paradigms
 Powerful Effects Paradigm
 Limited Effects Paradigm
 Cumulative Effects Paradigm
 Uses and Gratifications Research
 Individual Selectivity Research
 Socialization role of media
 Media and Public Opinion
 Media and Violence
 Media and Public Sphere
 The right know, Press Freedom and Responsibility
 Censorship and freedom of Expression: Different Perspective
 Developments on the Media Market
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UNIT THREE: POLITICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AND DEMOCRATIC VALUES
 Media and Democratic 25
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UNIT FOUR: MASS MEDIA SYSTEM
FOUR THEORIES O F THE PRESS
The Authoritarian Press System
 Functionalist Perspective
 Liberal Pluralism Perspective
 Marxist Media Perspective
 The Libertarian Press System
 The Social Responsibility Press System
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The Socialist Press System
Development Press Theory
FUNCTIONALIST AND CRITICAL MEDIA THEORIES
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 Political Economy Perspective
 Cultural Studies Perspective
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Planning
Gathering
 Selection
 Production
 News Values and News Production
UNIT FIVE: THE PRODUCTION OF NEWS
UNIT SIX: JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION ETHICS
THE GATHERING, SELECTING AND PRESENTATION OF NEWS
 What is ethics?
 Truth-telling
 Independence
 Minimise harm
 Privacy
 Ethical Principles on Reporting HIV and Aids
DEONTOLOGICAL THEORIES
 Aristotle’s Golden Mean
 Emmanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative
 Mills Principle of Utility
 Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance
 The Judeo-Christian-Persons
REFERENCES
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UNIT ONE: MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION
MASS MEDIA are the technologies and social institutions (such as newspapers, radio and television) that are involved in the production and distribution of messages to large audience . MASS COMMUNICATION on the other hand can be defined as the process of delivering information, ideas and attitudes to a sizeable and diversified audience through a medium developed for that purpose (Steinberg, 1994). It is important to be aware that while the mass media are essential in the process of mass communication, they represent the technological instrument used to convey messages to large audiences; they do not constitute the process involved.
MASS MEDIA AS AN INSTITUTION
The term ‘institution’ can be defined as: enduring regulatory and organising structures of any society, which constrain and control individuals and individuality–the underlying principles and values according to which many social and cultural practices are organised and co-ordinated – the major social sources of codes, rules and relations (in Branson & Stafford 2003: 182).
The above refers to institutions in a general sense. Needless to say, different disciplinary fields– anthropology, classical economics, political economy, psychology, sociology, etc. – will have some specific elements to emphasis. The different disciplinary perspectives on institutions have coalesced into the framework of what is called ‘institutional analyses’. Institutional analysis has the following general themes:
 The visible structures and routines that make up organisations are direct reflections and effects of rules and structures built into (or institutionalised within) wider environments (i.e. cultural and symbolic patterns of society).
 The dependence of organisations on the patterning built up in wider environments–rather than on purely internal technical and functional logic – produces organisational forms that are often rather loosely integrated structures (i.e. there is a disjuncture between the internal and the external, largely because stable organizing requires and results from external legitimation).
 The environmental patterns that drive organising work through linkages and effects go beyond simple direct control (i.e. institutionalised social and cultural meanings as opposed to just adherence to legal and economic rationality).
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 The environmental patterns that create and change organisations can be described as rationalised and rationalising (i.e. long-term processes of rationalisation – scientific and professional, cultural and ideological, political and organisational – contribute towards continual possibilities and necessities for expanding and changing organisations) (Scott et al 1994).
Based upon the above broad themes, Richard Scott et al (1994: 56-64) propose what they call a ‘layered model’ of conceptualising institutions. This model has three elements, namely:
1. Meaning systems and related behaviour patterns, which contain;
2. Symbolic elements, including representational, constitutive and normative components that are
3. Enforced by regulatory processes.
To explicate these elements: By ‘meaning systems’ is meant the subjective meanings attached to individual behaviour within organisations. This subjective meaning constitutes what Max Weber refers to as ‘social action’ in so far as it takes into account the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course (in
Scott et al 1996: 57).
In other words, shared meanings are indispensable to collective activity. Arising from this, the authors present various definitions of institution, to buttress the idea of how institutions become congealed in a particular sense. By ‘behaviour patterns’ is meant the ‘social action’ – the ‘informal logic of actual life’ – that arises in the interaction of humans. Meanings arise in interaction, and they are preserved and modified by human behaviour (Scott et al 1996: 59). By ‘symbolic elements’ is meant the elevation of the meaning systems to incorporate representational, constitutive, and normative rules.
Representational rules are the ‘institutional logics’ which establish the framework within which knowledge claims are situated and provide the rules by which the claims are validated and challenged. The
‘institutional logics’ are the knowledge claims, whether empirically tested or not, which govern ways of organising.
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Constitutive rules define the nature of actors and their capacity for action. Constitutive rules are the institutional rules which empower or constrain individuals to pursue certain courses of action. It assumes that certain behavior is possible given the extent to which the interests of individuals, their rights, and their capacities for action are provided for by specific rules. Institutions, in short, ‘construct’ actors; it is the institutional structure of society which creates and legitimates the social entities that are seen as ‘actors’.
Four component elements entailed in the social construction of an actor can be discerned, namely: endowments (e.g. property rights); utilities (an actor’s preferences); capabilities (capacity to act, resources); and self-identities (internalised definitions of social location or role).
Normative rules, for their part, refer to conceptions of appropriate behaviour–what we ought to do. They may be general, applicable to all. They may be specific to some people. They often become internalised as a result of socialisation. In a word, they are not simply anticipations or predictions, but prescriptions or proscriptions of behaviour.
The features described above can, after Branson & Stafford (2003), be applied in an institutional analysis of journalism. In a word, the foregoing discussion serves to help us understand the key definitional features of journalism as an institutionalised practice. Understanding citizen journalism necessarily involves understanding the institutional trapping or ensnaring of conventional journalism.
To take Branston and Stafford’s characterisation of the institutional basis of journalism, and mindful of Scott et al’s (1994: 56-64) layered model of institutions, there are six variables that can be used to define how journalism lends itself to institutionalisation. These are: (i) establishment; (ii) regulation; (iii) collectivism; (iv) work; (v) values; and (vi) status.
• Establishment: Conventional mass media have an enduring history, going as far back as the period before the invention of the 1450 Gutenberg printing press prototype in the form of one-sheet corantos.
Since then, it has passed through different phases of growth, cultivating in its wake established meanings and practices. To the extent that each country has a form of mass media system, complete with a historical context, mass media, and the associated institutionalised practices of journalism, can be treated as an
‘establishment’.
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As such, conventional journalism tends, if it can help it, to bar any outside intrusion into its historical space, expurgating as unprofessional practices that would want to deinstitutionalise it. Citizen journalism would thus rightly fit into a frame of practice that would conflict with the historically grounded ways of practicing journalism, perhaps indicating why some traditional journalists look upon it with a degree of disdain and mistrust.
• Regulation: Institutions regulate and structure their activities. Mass media are no exception – they are given to various regulatory regimes. In most jurisdictions, for example, journalism has adopted ethical codes of conduct to constrain its members or practitioners. These codes are enforced by professional bodies that are voluntary in nature. The debate is still raging as to what is the best mode of regulating the practice of journalism. The dominant paradigm is that journalism must be self-directing or regulatory. In
Africa, and elsewhere, there are questions about whether or not self-regulation does not amount to selfservice (Ogus 1995; Campbell 1999).
To the extent that citizen journalism has not accumulated sufficient historical capital (see the above point), it has not evolved sophisticated codes of practice which lend themselves to the kind of system of selfregulation that most traditional journalism has. It thus would appear to exist on the fringes of mainstream journalism.
• Collectivism: Although mass media operations revolve around different specialisms (reporting, subediting, designing, photo-journalism, anchoring, directing, producing, etc.), they are a collectivist undertaking. Although there is a hierarchy of executive and editorial decision-making – themselves a testament of the institutionalised nature of media production – media activity organises individuals and individuality around teamwork to deliver a unitary output, i.e. news bulletin, documentary, etc. Journalism is therefore built around team-work or collectivism. Even free-lance journalists – some of whom have arrogated to themselves the status of ‘citizen journalists’ – end up having their work collectivised as soon as it gets into the organisational/ institutional mainstream of media production. This is an important point to make because it raises questions about whether or not certain types of citizen journalism can indeed be as revolutionary as is often claimed (cf. Moyo 2009).
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• Work: Journalism has some specific entry-points. Ordinarily, there are schools of journalism that churn out journalists. Where this is not done, entrants are trained on the job, and conform to some specific house styles of writing or producing news stories. Training institutions offer some certification to entitle one to work as a journalist. In some countries, journalists are required to be registered by a relevant body to work as such. In other countries this is not the case. There is no rigid system of certification for citizen journalists.
Journalists are also members of trade unions in most media organisations and can bargain for better terms and conditions of service. Free-lance journalists – many of whom are joining the so-called cadre of citizen journalists – are not as organised. This leaves them open to all forms of labour abuse by media organisations. Indeed, even those who do not really consider themselves to be trained journalists but nevertheless contribute user-generated-content (UGC) to media organisations can be similarly abused.
• Values: Media work is often underpinned by a shared sense of values. This is translated into a set of ethics, represented in codes of ethical principles. These may be an appropriation of internationally agreed ethical standards and contextualised to guide the practices and routines in a given media institution. The ethical value of journalistic objectivity has received much attention in academic literature, and we must treat it here within the context of news production. Because the standard of ‘objectivity’ is justified as a qualitycontrol measure, it is important to discuss it at some length here – at least in as far as it is important to distinguish it from some forms of citizen journalism. The first point to make, therefore, is this: journalism was not always objective. In early times of journalistic expression, journalists fought for liberal democratic rights of freedom of expression and intellectual dissent in authoritarian feudalistic societies. They were thus partisan, placing themselves in the service of the radical bourgeoisie and its struggles for intellectual pluralism, etc. (McNair 2001).
According to McNair (2001: 68-69), the emergence of objectivity was a function of three moments in history: (i) philosophical; (ii) technological; and (iii) economic. The philosophy of objectivity was part of the nineteenth century Reformation and Enlightenment developments, with their emphasis on the positivistic method of discovering ‘truth’ or ‘knowledge’ ‘out there’. Technological advances in the 1830s, such as the invention of photography, coincided with this philosophically inspired search for objective truth.
It became possible – so they thought – to represent ‘reality’ denotatively. Objectivity was also a by-product of a developing commercial market for journalism in the nineteenth century.
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This process led to the commodification of journalism and increased the need of journalistic media to sell their product (news) to ever broader markets. As newspapers became capitalist enterprises in the 1830s and after, they gradually lost their party affiliation (McNair 2001:68-69). It was no longer viable to be partisan when the audience began to be seen as de-politicised consumers of media products whose loyalties were only to themselves.
By the twentieth century, the key ‘strategic ritual’ of objectivity had become the principal legitimising ethic, presenting journalism as ‘truth’. Objectivity thus became associated with the following characteristics: (i) the separation of fact from opinion; (ii) a balanced account of a debate; and (iii) the validation of journalistic statements by reference to authoritative others (McNair 2001: 69).
These three characteristics have become ‘objectivated’ in the hierarchical nature of the news production process, based as it is on the ‘gate-keeping’ mechanism.
But objectivity is criticised by critical political economists as untenable. The processes of news production, according to this view, are tangled up in the media-institutional relationships with the economic substructurewhich is controlled by the capitalist/ruling class. Journalistic objectivity becomes nothing but
‘bourgeois objectivism’ (McNair 2001: 70), so that there is no neutral, value-free perspective from which the journalist can observe and report. In fact, the concept of ‘objectivity’ is seen as the legitimising ideology to cover the output of cultural institutions which are owned and/or controlled by a small elite of capitalist entrepreneurs and establishment figures (McNair 2001: 72).
There have since emerged other ways of discounting the notion of objectivity, such as:
(i) cultural relativism, whereby there is no single absolute truth but a multiplicity of available accounts from which the journalist has to select and construct ‘news’;
(ii) the ‘new journalism’, whereby the 1960s saw a group of US journalists, frustrated by the fetishisation of the objectivity principle and limits which they believed it placed on their work, broke free of the conventions of their profession and began to develop a subversive, ‘anti-objective’ style; and
(iii) ‘public journalism’, whereby journalists see themselves as citizens and thus become engaged in the process of constructing reality as they go about covering issues and events (cf. McNair 2001: 72).
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It is these epistemic shifts that have made it possible for citizen journalism to find a place in the scheme of journalistic practice. But, as we shall see in our discussion of the concept of citizen journalism, problems still abound, leading some to identify three categories of citizen journalists – accidental journalists,
advocacy journalists and citizen journalists (cf. Ross & Cormier 2010).
• Status: Journalism operates within a network of relationships with the public in which the public are both sources and consumers of information. This relationship is built on trust, and journalists adhere to the ethical requirement of confidentiality in order to maintain this trust. Journalism also invokes the notion of
‘public interest’ to justify its relevance to society. But just as it is conceptually difficult to operationalise the concept of the ‘public’, it is conceptually difficult to define the notion of ‘public interest’. Experience demonstrates that media may have their own set of public-interest objectives, which often conflict with that of the different segments of their actual and potential audience.
The status of citizen journalism is not clearly elucidated; in fact, the extent to which the public ‘authorise’ citizen journalism is not itself clearly elucidated. It appears to be sandwiched somewhere in the crevice of the private and the public. Some citizen journalists have greater public recognition and legitimacy, while others have never known any public recognition and legitimacy. The struggle is to continue to push for a public status of the practice, while ensuring that it continues to draw its lifeblood from private citizens. In fact, it is arguable that the more citizen journalists there are, the more of public affair citizen journalism becomes. The fact that it is not absolutely clear what status the variegated public gives to mass media should alert us to the problem that is likely to attend the definition of ‘citizen media’ or ‘citizen journalism’.
Who defines it? Who validates it? Are the very definitions of citizen media and journalism are an attempt at institutionalising their practices?
MASS MEDIA AND SOCIETY
The mass media are influenced by many factors: Media owners define the overall editorial policy of a medium. Economic factors determine the amount of journalistic investigation and cultural production that can be afforded. A highly competitive market with wasteful duplication of the most popular genres leaves few economic resources to spend on heightening the quality of each program.
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Economic considerations may force the media to deploy an attention-catching strategy by emphasizing entertainment, emotional and personalized stories, sex, violence, gossip, etc. Economy determines the influence of advertisers and sponsors on the types of programs and stories that are being published.
Sponsors also have an influence through sponsored cultural events and sports events that may not take place unless they are profitable to the sponsors.
INTEGRATED MODEL SHOWING THE ROLE OF THE MASS MEDIA IN SOCIETY. THE THICK, GRAY
ARROWS INDICATE META-FACTORS THAT DETERMINE THE WEIGHT OF OTHER FACTORS.
The news are obtained from sources such as politicians, opinion leaders, experts, professionals, police, organizations, and ordinary people who happen to be involved in a newsworthy situation. These sources can influence the media, not only through the stories they tell, but also by rewarding or punishing certain media by providing or withholding desired information. The editors and journalists who produce stories obviously have an influence through their personal engagement as well as their professional, ideological and ethical principles. Technology determines how many media channels we can have and which formats are possible and attractive. Government regulation may impose additional ethical principles such as fairness requirements and public service obligations.
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All these factors influence the form and contents of the media products. However, the most important implication of the integrated model is that the degree of economic competition between the mass media is a
meta-factor, which determines the weight of the other factors. A strongly competitive market situation may force the media producers to give more weight to considerations of attention-catching and to the wishes of the advertisers and less weight to ideology and ethics. Ideals of fairness, relevance, and thorough investigative journalism have little influence when fierce economic competition drains the media organizations of resources and forces them to compete on attention-catching stories and entertainment.
Quality media that refuse to compete on these premises may simply perish unless they can rely on noncommercial sources of funding.
The media are conveying and influencing the public opinion, which in turn determines the democratic elections. The influence of the media works not only through voters' opinions. Everybody in society is influenced by the media, including politicians, opinion leaders, journalists, editors, and whoever may have the role of news sources. Furthermore, the media are influencing the criteria by which voters evaluate political candidates by means of agenda-setting, priming and framing. It is easy to see that this model has many feedback loops that provide ample opportunities for self-amplifying processes. These feedbacks are likely to make the effects stronger, reinforce existing tendencies, hide deficiencies, and make the system resistant to political intervention.
The impact of recent technological innovations on the media market has often been discussed. Some commentators have claimed that pay-per-view technologies can correct the market failures inherent in advertisement-based media. But even in the unlikely event that a commercial supplier will offer a pay-perview news channel free of advertisements, sponsoring and product placement, there will still be an economic influence from the owner, and the picture of figure 1 will not be changed much.
Tabloid newspapers sold from newsstands are known to produce more attention-catching headlines than subscription-based broadsheet newspapers, because they need to attract impulse buyers every day. A pay-per-view based supplier of TV or internet news will be likely to use a similar strategy. The increase in the number of channels and distribution methods will only increase the competition for attention further. The
Internet has made dissemination of information so cheap that non-commercial suppliers of information can afford to make their services available world-wide.
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This does not reduce the costs of investigative journalism; neither does it reduce the competition for attention, but at least it opens up more possibilities for a news-supply that is less influenced by economic interests. In a nutshell range of different scientific disciplines are explored for what they might contribute to an understanding of the economic and other factors that influence mass media, and how the media in turn influence the political climate and the democratic process in modern democracies. The contributions from the different disciplines are combined into an integrated model of a causal network.
This tentative model shows that fierce economic competition forces the media to produce entertaining stories that appeal to people's emotions. Preferred topics include danger, crime, and disaster, which the media select in ways that make the audience perceive the world as more dangerous than it is. This influences the democratic process significantly in the direction of authoritarianism and intolerance. More generally, the competitive news media select and frame stories in ways that hamper the ability of the democratic system to solve internal social problems as well as international conflicts in an optimal way.
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UNIT TWO: COMMUNICATION THEORY AND RESEARCH
The alleged power or influence of mass media has lead to extensive studies of media effects in areas ranging from political campaigns to portrayals of violence, pornography, racism and women. Governments and political parties have focused on the mass media as sources of powerful influence. More recently, businesses and organizations have recognized the importance of the media not only as channels for advertising, but for their perhaps even more influential editorial content. Editorial in leading mass media has been shown to significantly affect stock prices; lead to corporate collapses; cause falls in sales; result in the resignation of senior officeholders – even bring down Presidents. According to McQuil (1994) “the entire study of mass communication is based on the premise that media have significant effects, yet there is little agreement on the nature and extent of these assumed effects”. Prominent media academic James Curran
(2002, p. 158) says: “The conviction … that the media are important agencies of influence are broadly correct. However, the ways, in which the media exert influence, are complex and contingent”. Media
‘effects’ are simply the consequences of what the mass media do, whether intended or not. On the other
hands, Media ‘power’ refers to general potential on the part of the media to have effects, especially of a
planned kind (McQuil, 1994).
COMMUNICATION EFFECTS AND PARADIGMS
Theories about communication and the social effects of mass media generally are categorized into three historical eras. These theories are grouped and named according to the paradigm through which they were approached – powerful effects, minimum effects, cumulative effects.
 POWERFUL-EFFECTS PARADIGM
The earliest investigations into media effects, begun in the early 1900s, were based more on observations about the enormous popularity of the media rather than on formal scientific study. The observations led to the conclusion that the media are very powerful in people’s lives, having immediate and direct effects.
Metaphorically called the magic bullet theory or the hypodermic needle theory, this paradigm asserted that the media acted strongly and predictably on audiences in much the way a bullet or hypodermic needle would.
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The presumption was that media messages cause people to think and act in certain predictable ways. It also presumes that people in a mass audience are affected similarly and that communication produces identical results that can be pinpointed and direct. The examples pointed to were the use of commercial advertising and military propaganda, both of which were thought to be strong influencers over public opinion, though researchers were unable to explain how the influence occurred.
Two leading scholars were associated with this paradigm. Walter Lippmann observed that people see a world shaped primarily by the media. Harold Lasswell defined the classic linear explanation that communication involves who says what, in which channel, to whom and with what effect.
 LIMITED-EFFECTS PARADIGM
Further research dispelled the fears or hopes associated with the previous model and instead presented a minimalist model. Newer research had shown that the media are not very powerful, and that studies of topics such as voting behavior showed little direct or immediate power by the media.
Instead, the media operated in secondary ways.
Research by Carl Hovland of Yale University, for example, found that audiences generally do not act in unison and that the media often fail to change people’s minds. Another researcher, Paul Lazarsfeld, articulated the two-step flow of communication theory in which the media are seen to operate in stages. His observations were that the media effect opinion leaders (about 20 percent of the population), who in turn influence the masses. So while the media have little direct influence, indirectly they are very influential.
Another approach within the limited-effects paradigm is the status conferral theory, which suggests that the media create prominence for issues and people. Because the limited-effects paradigm emphasized the gaps in media effects, researchers began looking at other influences to fill in those gaps. Much of their attention turned to social relationships and psychological processes within individuals, and they began to study how people react individually to media messages.
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Joseph Klapper studied the categories of change that are effected by the media, particularly conversion, minor change and reinforcement. He identified several specific different media-induced change possibilities:
 The media may cause change within the audience as intended by the communicator, a result called conversion.
 The media may cause unintended change within an audience.
 The media may cause change that is only minor in form, intensity or duration.
 The media may facilitate change (intended or not) that is actually caused by other social factors.
 The media may support the status quo, sustaining an audience in its beliefs or behavior rather than causing change. This is known as reinforcement.
Finally, the media may prevent change, often through the propagandistic use of one-sided information aimed at an audience that would otherwise embrace change if it had all of the relevant information. The last two “no change” categories have been heavily studied, since there are so many examples of what seem to be ineffective media when, despite media activity, the intended change did not occur.
 CUMULATIVE-EFFECTS PARADIGM
Contemporary research since the 1970s is seeing the pendulum swing back to some of the earlier conclusions about the powerful influence of the media. One reason for this is the growing presence and popularity of television; recent research also has looked at the pervasiveness of films (particularly on videocassette) and the Internet. The current assumption is that the media should not be dismissed as having little influence. Rather, they have a powerful but long-term cumulative and collective effect.
George Gerbner articulated the cultivation theory to serve as the “grand theory” to explain a wide range of media influences. Cultivation theory noted the pervasiveness of television and its ability to seduce viewers who were relatively unaware of message content. It also noted television’s ability to blur distinctions between news and entertainment, or more deeply between reality and fiction. The theory rests on the notion that television (in both news and information models) distorts reality.
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Subsequent observers have noted that television similarly overstates crime and violence, exaggerates the role of sexuality in relationships, and minimizes faith and family. It should be noted that the media themselves do not claim to be representing average audiences; indeed the nature of both news and entertainment is to seek the unusual, highlight the unlikely, and focus on what is different from the mundane daily life of audiences. Much of the current theorizing about the influence of mass media is trying to deal with some assumptions about human behavior that have been studied by the behavioral sciences:
 That human behavioral influence is difficult to measure, in part because it is difficult to isolate media influences from the myriad of other influences in a person’s life.
 That other influences, particularly those more personal and cultural, play a primary role in the early formation of a person’s value system and set of interests, leaving the media to support or undermine those pre-existing values.
 That human beings are marvelously complex creatures who operate in many different individual ways, so that the same media message may have differing effects on different people.
 That humans are reflective and capable of both recognizing and moderating influences in their lives.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann articulated several theories relevant to this approach. One, called the cumulative-effects theory, notes that the media are ubiquitous, with constant and redundant messages.
She also has presented the third-person effect theory, observing that we tend to over-estimate media impact on other people and minimize it on ourselves, holding ourselves immune from the negative influence that we believe the media has on others.
Noelle-Neumann’s most well known observation is the spiral of silence theory, which observes that persons holding what they know to be minority viewpoints often are intimidated into silence and obscurity.
Sometimes this is done under the guise of politeness (don’t argue with somebody in his house, or don’t argue with everybody else at a party). But Noelle-Neumann’s observation is that the media identify what seem to be the commonly held opinions, and persons who hold differing opinions often avoid expressing themselves because they already known (or think they know) that they are out of step with mainstream thought.
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 USES AND GRATIFICATIONS RESEARCH
Over the years, scholars have taken many different approaches to communication research. Instead of focusing on media effects, some researchers have tired to describe how and why people use the media.
Communication scholars observe that people use the media for different reasons, and one area of media research focuses on uses and gratifications studies, originally formulated by Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler and
Michael Gurevitch. Such studies have identified three main reasons that people use the media:
surveillance, socialization, and diversion.
I.
The surveillance function is rooted in the media’s ability to provide information about what is happening in places or about topics of interest to the individual. This may be news about activities in one’s home town, or it may deal with politics, current events or other topics of particular interest happening around the world.
II.
The socialization function observes that the media help people know what is expected of them and how they can fit into society. Newspapers and magazines, television and film, radio and the internet all send constant (though often conflicting) signals about social roles: How to act in a business situation, what to expect when visiting a certain city or country, how to relate with people of a different ethnic background, and so on.
III.
Finally, the diversion function of the media focuses on the ability of the various mass media to entertain. Such entertainment may involve stimulation of the senses, for example by use of music.
Another type of entertainment focuses on relaxation, with the media offering verbal, visual or musical assistance in calmness and tranquility. The third aspect of entertainment is called release, in which the media provide a means for getting rid of tensions, hostilities or fears.
 INDIVIDUAL SELECTIVITY RESEARCH
A category for communication research generally known as attitude change research has focused on the phenomenon that different individuals may receive the same message but act on it quite differently. This research groups under the heading of selectivity. The studies of American researcher Carl Hovland in particular concluded that people are very selective in how they use media; in the topics they expose themselves to, in how they interpret information, and in how they retain information obtained through the
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media. Here is a look at some of the most important aspects of selectivity. Prominent among them are the theories of selective exposure, selective perception and selective retention.
I.
Selective exposure theory observes that people will seek out not only topics of interest to them but more importantly viewpoints with which they expect to agree. Thus they use to the media to reinforce existing biases. On occasions when people seek out opposing points of view, they often do so not with an open mind but rather for the purpose of hearing what the other side has to say so they can refute it later.
II.
Selective perception theory observes that people often interpret facts to suit their existing biases.
People hear what they want to hear and what they expect to hear. Thus the same information may carry different meaning for different people, particularly people with differing political, religious, cultural, ethnic, national or other substantial differences.
III.
Selective retention theory notes that people remember messages that support their opinion longer than they remember opposing messages, which often unconsciously are forgotten and set aside.
As with selective exposure and selective perception, selective retention is likely to reinforce existing beliefs and attitudes. Such tendencies make it less likely that the media can play a solo role in changing attitudes and behavior.
If one way of dealing with unpleasant information is to avoid, reinterpret or forget it, another way is to seek consonance and consistency between personal beliefs and observations about the world. Leon Festinger addressed this in his cognitive dissonance theory. This theory holds that information inconsistent with a person’s existing beliefs and attitudes will create psychological dissonance that must be resolved.
Festinger’s studies observed two ways to resolve the inconsistency: to modify the belief or attitude, or to reinterpret or dismiss the information as an exception to the rule. The latter is an easier and more common occurrence.
► SOCIALIZATION ROLE OF THE MEDIA
A body of research focuses on how the media offers guidance on how to fit into society. The media’s initiating role focuses on the transmission of social values. Children growing up in a media-saturated society receive many messages about what is socially acceptable and desirable. New immigrants to a
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country likewise receive a barrage of messages via television and newspapers, advertising, film and other media sources that seem to portray the values, interests and priorities of the new society. While much of the media information is conflicting, each person must make sense of it, ideally within the context of family and culture.
Role modeling is a similar socializing function of the media, highlighting people with whom audiences can identify and imitate. Another term for this is identification. These role models may be political or religious leaders seeking to influence others, or they may be sports or entertainment figures without even a personal interest in being a role model. But the nature of role models is not that they seek influence but that others bestow on them an admiration that leads to imitation and emulation.
Another aspect of role modeling is the imitation that is inspired by various media, but film and television in particular. Advertising relies on such imitation, hoping to seduce consumers into purchasing certain products. Some of the imitation is intended, such as writers’ and producers’ decisions to model the use of seat belts, safety helmets, and a variety of other beneficial products and practices. But imitation also is sometimes unintended, such as accidents caused by imitating the apparent violence of a video game or staged wrestling performances. Or worse, copy-cat violence caused by playing out in real life violent scenes from movies or even from news reports. The media also play a role in stereotyping, which earlier units noted uses generalities to facilitate story-telling and quick communication.
► MEDIA AND PUBLIC OPINION
Another category of research looks at the role between information and public opinion. In the belief-sharing model, a function of the media is to support the common beliefs and attitudes of the public. This can be quite effective in a homogenous society in which most people share the same values and beliefs. It even can work in a more complex society undergoing social stress that pulls people together, such as common resolve in the face of a military attack or a natural disaster. But in a heterogeneous and diverse society absent the common resolve, the media are likely to adopt a role of representing a variety of opinion.
Another useful theory to understand the role of media in public opinion is the agenda-setting theory articulated by Bernard Cohen.
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This theory observes that the media create an agenda, a list of topics that the public is expected to think about and perhaps act on. Thus the media create awareness, establish priorities and perpetuate issues.
Similarly, the media determine when issues are passé and no longer of public interest. One aspect of the agenda-setting theory is the notion of herd mentality, more formally called inter-media agenda setting.
According to this phenomenon, the media often take their leads from each other as to what news stories follow. Reporters from one television station pursue a news story simply because other reporters are pursuing the same story. Conversely, one newspaper avoids covering a particular topic because nobody else is covering it.
Another observation on the role of media in the process of public opinion is on the phenomenon of priming.
The media call attention to particular topics, priming audiences to be attentive to those topics. At the same time, the media ignore other topics. Similar to agenda setting and priming is the concept of framing, in which the media are seen to present a set of expectations that audiences use to make sense of situations and establish subtle but persistent norms for status and social or political desirability. For example, if the media are focusing on a particular political campaign issue such as the domestic economy, then audiences are likely to use that frame (economy) as a reference on which political candidates should be addressed.
► MEDIA AND VIOLENCE
Much attention has been given to the influence of media that frequently depict violence, whether for journalistic or entertainment purposes. While most of the observed influences are negative, a few are neutral. One even shows a positive social value to media-depicted violence. The mere proliferation of many different observations and theories about the effect of media violence attests to the complexity not only of the issue but also of the social and psychological make-up of individuals and societies.
One neutral theory identifies with observational learning points out that people learn behavior by seeing it, either in real life or in media depictions. But most theories go further, concluding the social effect of media violence. A theory presents a positive effect of media violence. According to the cathartic-effect theory, violence in the media provides people with a socially acceptable release for their violent impulses. Seeing destruction and mayhem portrayed through the media allows some people to release their own violent urges without actually acting on them.
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But more researchers conclude that media violence has largely negative effects. The aggressive stimulation theory observes that some people are inspired to violence from media depictions. Parents, teachers, and in more extreme instances law-enforcement officers report that children often imitate violence they have seen on television or in films. Such violence sometimes leads to injury, even death.
The related catalytic theory suggests that media violence is among the factors that sometimes contribute to real-life violence, often by people who are emotionally unstable. The difficulty in finding a common influence by the media is that not all, not even most, people react negatively to media-depicted violence. But the catalytic theory suggests that, for people predisposed to violence behavior, the media can serve as a catalyst for action.
Researcher George Gerbner articulated the mean-world theory, observing that people who watch a lot of media violence tend to view the world as hostile and dangerous. They are more suspicious and fearful than people who watch less media violence. He noted that viewing a high volume of media-depicted violence often leads to an increase in fear and intimidation, which in turns lead often leads to self-imposed social isolation. Educators and developmental psychologists also have identified the desensitizing theory, observing that people who are exposed to high levels of media-depicted violence often have a higher than average tolerance for real-life violence. The explanation is that the media can make violence seem normal.
Media-depicted sex, soft core as well as pornography, shows similar patterns in terms of catharsis, stimulation, catalysm and desensitization. Promiscuity, sexual behavior, marital infidelity, and related issues often show statistical and anecdotal relationships with how these behaviors are portrayed in media that people frequently read, hear or watch. Though somewhat less studied, the effects of media portrayal of topics other than violence are similar. Prejudice, intolerance, ethnic hostility and related antisocial behaviors often are linked with media depictions of relevant attitudes and actions.
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UNIT THREE: POLITICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AND DEMOCRATIC VALUES
MASS MEDIA AND DEMOCRACY
The mass media constitute the backbone of democracy. Democracy is a highly exacting creed in its expectations of the mass media. It requires that the media perform and provide a number of functions and services for the political system. Among the more significant are:
1) Surveillance of the socio-political environment, reporting developments likely to impinge, positively or negatively, on the welfare of citizens;
2) Meaningful agenda-setting i.e. identifying the key issues of the day, including the forces that have formed and may resolve them,
3) Platform for an intelligible and illuminating advocacy by politicians and spokespersons of other causes and interest groups.
4) Dialogue across a diverse range of views, as well as between power holders (actual and prospective) and mass publics,
5) Mechanism for holding official to account for how they have exercised power, incentives for citizens to learn, choose, and become involved, rather than merely to follow and kibitz over the political process and
6) A principle resistance to the efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence, integrity and ability to serve the audience and lastly, a sense of respect for the audience members, as potentially concerned and able to make sense of his or her political environment (Gurevitch and
Blumler: 1990, p.25-26). NB: Examination.
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However, there is a growing concern that the mass media are not fulfilling these functions properly. Media critics claim that commercial mass media controlled by a few multinational conglomerates have become an antidemocratic force supporting the status quo. The news is more entertaining than informing, supplying mostly gossip, scandals, sex, and violence. Political news is more about personalities than about their ideologies. In the absence of serious debate, voters are left with paid political propaganda containing only meaningless slogans making them disinterested and cynical about politics. It is also claimed that the watchdogs are barking of the wrong things. The media hunt for scandals in the private lives of politicians and their families, but ignore much more serious consequences of their policies. They go after wounded politicians like sharks in a feeding frenzy. All too often, the media make us afraid of the wrong things. Minor dangers are hysterically blown out of proportions, while much more serious dangers in our society go largely unnoticed. The exaggerated fears often lead to unnecessary measures and legislation and "gonzo justice". Critics also complain that the media fail to report wrongdoings in the industry. Even more alarming is the claim that certain mass media (especially women's magazines) are promoting worthless alternative health products, thereby effectively conspiring with the industry to defraud consumers of billions of dollars every year.
The normative expectations for a democratic press, are not universally accepted. Therefore it is important to refrain from making any subjective statements about which norms to apply. Instead, it is important to provide an analysis of major consequences of the media market structure to the distribution of power, the prioritization of resources, and the ability of the democratic society to solve social problems and conflicts.
Any policy proposals that may be derived from this analysis depend on ideological norms, and are thus beyond the scope of a strictly scientific analysis. There is a long-standing debate about the relevance of causal and nomothetic models in the social sciences. This is not the place to delve into this debate
(http://www.agner.org/cultsel/mediacrisis.pdf).
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MEDIA AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
The public sphere is taken to be an arena, independent of government (even if in receipt of state funds) and also enjoying autonomy from partisan economic forces, which is dedicated to rational debate (i.e. to debate and discussion which is not ‘interests’, ‘disguised’ or ‘manipulated’). It is both accessible to entry and open to inspection by the citizenry. It is here, in this public sphere, that the public opinion is formed
(Holub 1991: pp. 2-8). The media are essential in the modern world of democracy because it can inform the people and influence their decisions in private and public life. It may also seek to lay down an agenda for the nation to pursue. A free press helps to preserve and promote democracy by safeguarding the independence of its institutions, including itself, and ensuring their accountability. It is on this account that it comes to earn the status of the fourth estate of the State (because of its “watchdog” function) and has today become one of the most powerful institutions of society.
No democratic society can exist or can be conceived of without a free media, which is its life-line, and at the same time democratic values alone are likely to nurture a free media. The role of a free press is to serve as a “watchdog” on government and its officials (as well as a watchdog of private centres of power. Vincent
Blasi (1977) asserts that one of the most important values attributed to a free press was that of checking the inherent tendency of government officials to abuse the power entrusted to them.
The following statement, made by a South African court in the case of Government of the Republic of South
Africa v. Sunday Times Newspaper, captured the inter-connection between freedom of expression and press freedom through this function: “The role of the press in a democratic society cannot be understated.
The press is in the frontline of the battle to maintain democracy. It is the function of the press to ferret out corruption, dishonesty and graft wherever it may occur and to expose the perpetrators. The press must reveal dishonest mal and inept administration. It must also contribute to the exchange of ideas. It must advance communication between the governed and those who govern. The press must act as the watchdog of the governed”. The news media should serve as the watchdog of democracy and can perform the task of protecting of the people’s interests. This has led several scholars to consider the role of the press as that of “the Fourth Estate”.
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The media are also essential to a democratic society. Alexander Meiklejohn (1965) stresses on two functions of freedom of the press in a democracy: one is the formative function, where a free press permits the flow of information necessary for citizens to make informed decisions and for leaders (public servants) to stay abreast of the interests of their constituents (the electorate); and the second is the critical function, where the press in particular serves as the people’s watchdog, ensuring independent criticism and evaluation of the government and other institutions that may usurp democratic power. Furthermore, freedom of the press is important to the public in order to attain truth.
The belief that anyone might make a valuable contribution to the search for truth or for better ways to do things does not mean that we think “anyone” is likely to. It means there is no way of telling in advance where a good idea will come from. Valuable contributions to arriving at truth come in many forms, speaking the truth being only one of them. We arrive at truth or the best policy largely by indirection thus, much of the value of a person’s contribution to the “marketplace of ideas” is its role in stimulating others to defend, reformulate or refute ideas, and that value may be quite independent of the merits of the original view. Even fallacy has its place in the search for truth (Lichtenberg 1987, 338).
THE RIGHT TO KNOW, PRESS FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY
According to H. Goodwin (1983, 9), this doctrine means that “the public has a legal right to know what its government is doing and the press is the representative of the public in finding that out”. Barney, R. (1986,
65) argued that the right to know is a basic component of a “participatory society”. As he points out, “in order for consistently intelligent social decisions to be made, adequate information to the individual produces greater awareness of alternatives in any decision-making opportunity”.
Fink, C. (1988, 11) describes the people’s right to know in terms of a duty, so that “while the freedom of expression gives the press the right to freely print the news, the people’s right to know gives the press the duty to print it”. What developed from this concept is “the idea of a press serving as surrogate of the people and demanding access to news, as well as freedom to print it, on behalf of the people”.
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It appears that the moral right to know, belonging to the public, and the legal concept of freedom of the press are inextricably bound together. The public’s right to know what is going on in its government and to have relevant information about government officials underlies press freedom. This may explain why the public’s right, expressed in shorthand as “the right to know”, is often interpreted in terms of the media’s right of access and publication. Some of these commentators suggest, as well, that the public’s right to know includes more than just information needed to make knowledgeable political decisions.
Gauthier, C. (1999), however believes that the right to know guarantees citizens access to any available information relevant to political, professional, and personal decisions essential for the exercise of constitutional rights in a democratic society. For example, exercise of the rights of free speech, religion, and assembly, as well as the rights to liberty and property requires access to information, making possible rational choices and responsible actions in these areas. The concept of freedom of the press developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the US and Europe. The mass media, however, began to come into being only in the 1830s with the penny press. Prior to this, political newspapers circulated only among elites, made no pretence of objectivity or neutrality, and were marked by a degree of vitriol and bias unmatched today. They were financed by political parties, candidates for office, or political factions, who were directly responsible for editorial policy.
Freedom of the press has been given a wide and confusing array of interpretations, evident in a study conducted by the Indian Press Freedom of the Press in the Public Sphere
( seven Commission which indicated that people variously understood freedom of press to mean (Holland 1956): freedom from legal restraint–liberty, that is to say, to publish any matter without legal restraint or prohibition; freedom from prejudices and preconceived notions; freedom from the executive control of government; freedom from the influence of advertisers, or proprietors and pressure groups; and freedom from want–freedom from dependence on others for financial assistance. (The Public Sphere and Media Politics in Malaysia
(http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/978-1-4438-0360-1-sample.pdf). NB: Examination
In fact, all these factors are important facets of press freedom and all five should no doubt be satisfied before press freedom can be said to enjoy a real significance. The intellectual heritage of the idea of free speech and free press is long and impressive.
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In 1644, John Milton (1644/1971) defended the freedom of the press and demanded the freedom to express his opinions above all other freedoms. Two centuries later, John Stuart Mill (1859/1974, 76), one of the most renowned philosophical advocates of the concept of liberty, stressed the importance of free flow of ideas and opinions. He emphasised the importance of freedom of opinion and expression to the free functioning of modern, democratic societies where the truth is upheld. The press undeniably plays a pivotal role in enabling the right of the individual to free speech to be exercised, as the press functions as conduit for disseminating information, which in turn contributes to the development of societies as a whole. Without the open communication of ideas and information, societies would remain in the darkness of ignorance.
Moreover, a free press and democracy are complementary to each other. The media helps to preserve and promote democracy by safeguarding the independence of its institutions and ensuring their accountability as well as by facilitating the communication of ideas and policies. A free press performs three essential features for a democracy: a “watchdog” role, the provision of knowledge and information, and the facilitation
of public discussion (Baker 2003). The press must be able to expose failures of and abuses by government and government officials–with this capacity providing probably the greatest democratic safeguard against both malfeasance and misfeasance by government (Blasi, 1977).
Democratic development absolutely depends on the press being permitted to perform this “checking” function effectively; the aim of preventing the press playing this role may be the single biggest reason for governments’ censoring the press or abridging its freedom. The acts of omission and commission, of corruption, waste, inefficiency and negligence on the part of the authorities, can be exposed by it. Through investigative journalism, scams and scandals can be unearthed, anti-social activities exposed and implementation of the policies and programmes monitored and pursued. It is the accountability of those in power that distinguishes democracy from other political systems, and to the extent that the press acts as an instrument to ensure day-to-day accountability, it helps to make democracy real and effective. Of course, as stated, this condition sounds so ideal that in reality even the most democratic country will not fully live up to it. Further, advocates of a free press always feel that government has a tendency to manipulate the media and cannot be trusted because of the power it holds.
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However, a free press does not mean free only from the Freedom of The Press in The Public Sphere overt restrictions of the government, which is a narrow conception of the freedom of the press, but also from other overt and covert influences; externally (i.e. from foreign powers and ownerships) and internally (i.e. the ownership of individuals who are close to the government and editorial censorship). The legitimate influence to the press is when the press is openly allowed diverse opinions from diverse sources to be debated and discuss as long as the opinions are not to be used to trigger disharmony situation.
The illegitimate influence to the press is surely when all or almost all the media companies are dominated by individuals, subversive organisations–such as racist organizations where strict restriction is normally imposed to only one particular idea and the circulation of diverse ideas are limited. Various conceptions of the right to know can be found in media ethics literature.
The danger comes in the too easy slide from the public’s right to know to the right of the media to access and to publication. The seemingly unlimited nature of the first leads to an understanding of press freedom as similarly unlimited. Moreover, the elliptical right to know, justifying ethically controversial media claims and activities, obscures the more complicated relation between the rights of the public and press rights and gives media the illusion of unlimited freedom.
Only the mass media is equipped to provide the information and make it publicly accessible. In doing so, the press will inevitably make errors. There will be factual inaccuracies and the press will make questionable, sometimes clearly misguided, decisions concerning what information is relevant to the public.
However, if a robust free press is to be maintained, it must not be punished for these errors, at least if honestly made. This is the lesson of New York Times v. Sullivan, where the US Court held that the press could not be held civilly (or criminally) libel for defaming a public official unless the plaintiff could prove the falsity of what was said and prove that the false statement was made “with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or (not)”.
In other words, unless the paper was demonstrably not contributing any real information or viewpoint to the public sphere and was not showing any real interest in doing so, unless its legal critics could show that the press’ assertions were false and knowingly (or recklessly) false, freedom of the press should protect the media from legal liability. After observing, in appropriately understated language, the nation’s “profound commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and
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that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials”, the Court explained “erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and (it) must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the breathing space that they need (to) survive” (Baker
2003).
The press can also act as a day-to-day parliament of the people by discussing the public matters in a way that may be more effective than the parliament itself. The press can provide an important forum for the people to debate and discuss the pros and cons of the issues and problems confronting them. Through news reports, articles, letters to the editor, interviews, panel discussion etc, the forum created by the press may supplement, and sometimes act more effectively, than parliament. The press can therefore act as an impartial, objective and constructive critic of official policies and programmes, and protect the interests of the nation from the politicians’ vote-centred actions or inaction. Democratic processes do not always lead to the best decisions being made. But at least they allow for the general participation in decision-making that is characteristic of a society free form the domination of elites. Equally, while free speech and a free press are no guarantee that the truth or the best policy will be arrived at, it seems that the most likely outcome of unfettered debate will be some approximation of the truth or the best policy. A healthy democracy is one in which people are exposed to a variety of ideas and are given the chance to examine and reject those which they find unacceptable. They might not be right, but the level of debate and the demands this places on people’s judgment will result in a populace with the ability to think critically and to make informed choices.
C
ENSORSHIP AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
: D
IFFERENT PERSPECTIVES
There is an argument that freedom of the press, even if worthless or harmful, must be tolerated and unregulated because of the risks created by suppression. According to Justice John Harlan, an attempt to purge public discourse of everything offensive and obnoxious would drastically impair “robust and uninhibited” public debate. There is also force in Harlan’s argument that it is risky to make any exceptions on this point, lest there be no principled stopping place. But is he justified in his faith that society is strong enough to shrug off the side effects of allowing even the most debased messages their place in the marketplace of ideas (Harlan and Shapiro 1969; Farber 1980, 283)? Harlan’s view is similar to the view of several writers such as William O. Douglas and Hugo Black who advocate the idea of “strong liberalism”.
They reject any regulation of free press by the government (Sunstein 1993, 5-8).
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They believe that the government is the enemy of freedom of the press and any effort to regulate the press by the government threatens the principle of free press. Government may not draw any lines between the coverage it likes and the coverage that it hates: all press coverage stands on the same footing. The protection given the right to free press also equally to the well-known extremists and racists like the
Communists, in the US. The government, in this view, should ensure that broadcasters, newspapers, and others may say what they wish, constrained only by the imperatives of the marketplace of ideas. “Strong liberals” also accept the “slippery slope” argument, where any restrictions on the press, once permitted, have a sinister and nearly inevitable tendency to expand. To allow one kind of restriction is in practice to allow many other acts of censorship as well.
The risk of censorship is so serious and omnipresent because seemingly small and innocuous acts of repression can turn quickly into a regime of repression that is anything but innocuous. Judges should not uphold restrictions on the press simply because government seems to have good reasons for the restriction in a particular case. Neither should they examine “the value” of the press at issue, compare it against the
“harm” of that press, and announce a judgment based on weighing value against harm. In any such judgements, there is far too large a risk of bias and discrimination. “Strong liberals” argue that if judges were to balance harm against value, they would be likely to uphold a wide range of laws censoring political dissent, literature, and other forms of speech.
However, the “strong liberals” are not only advocating complete freedom of the press, but also the constitutional protection of all speech in the press including commercial speech, sexually explicit speech, libel, publication of the names of rape victims, and advocacies of crime, the violent overthrow of the government and flag-burning (Sunstein 1993, 5-8). However, many are critical to the argument of “strong liberals”. Most of the criticisms come from the advocates of “reasonable regulation”, who call for a form of balancing between the interest in free press and the likely harms in some particular cases in the US. The opponents were led most vigorously by Felix Frankfurter, who waged a challenge for balancing and against
“strong liberals”, especially in the area of constitutional law (Sunstein, 1993, 7).
Frankfurter, in Bridges v. California 1951 and Beauharnais v. Illinois 1952, and, later, others, such as
Robert Bork (1971) and Alexander Bickel (1976) argue that balancing is a healthy and even an inevitable
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part of a sensible system of free speech and free press. Judges should take into account the various conflicting interests that are inevitably at stake. Speech, coverage and report that threaten real harm may legitimately be prohibited. This category includes the press calling for violent overthrow of the government, libel of racial groups, and publishing a threatening message to a judge with reprisal if he rules against one of the parties. These thinkers argue that “reasonable regulation” should not protect the advocacy of crime, commercial speech, hate speech, obscenity, and the libel of individuals and groups.
The government is not an enemy of free press; in fact, it should be allowed to maintain a civilised society.
This principle means that the government must not restrict any legitimate speech in the press, especially for public policies and interests, expressed by, for instance, the opposition, pressure groups and civil society.
At the same time, the government may also guard against the degradation produced by, for example, obscenity, the risk to social order posed by speech advocating violently overthrow of the government, and the threats to equality and civility produced by racial hate speech.
This is parallel with John Stuart Mill’s (1859/1974) view that states censorship is “only a prima facie wrong”, recognising as well that censorship can be justified on the basis of protecting others from harm. Edmund
Lambeth (1986), after reviewing Mill’s arguments for free press, pointed out that all aspects of liberty can be limited to prevent harm to the interests of others. Judith Lichtenberg (1987, 329-355) explains that the commitment to freedom of press has two different strands: The first is an opposition to censorship, based on a belief that “one should not be prevented from thinking, speaking, reading, writing, or listening as one sees fit”; the second, equally fundamental, is our conviction that the purposes of freedom of press are realised when expression and diversity of expression flourish. While government intervention seems to intrude upon the first principle, it may advance the second. Based on this argument, the state has a duty and responsibility to protect the right to press freedom.
However, restrictions or regulations in these areas are only permitted if they are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in order to maintain public good. The restrictions must also pursue a legitimate aim and be proportionate to the public interests pursued such as restricting hate speech for racial harmony. The state that restricts press freedom more than acceptable or agreeable, according to the argument of “reasonable regulation”, could be considered as non-democratic, less-democratic or autocratic state.
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DEVELOPMENTS ON THE MEDIA MARKET
The development of the mass media during the last several decades is characterized by the following main tendencies:
Convergence: Different media like newspapers, radio, television, telephone and internet are increasingly being fused together, technologically as well as economically.
Concentration: Media companies are being merged together and controlled by fewer owners. This concentration is horizontal (several media under the same owner) as well as vertical (several links in the
"food chain" under the same company group). Different media bring news from the same sources.
Globalization: The media are owned by multinational companies broadcasting across borders.
Commercialization: Advertisements are sneaked into entertainment as well as news stories. The distinctions between advertisements, news and entertainment are increasingly blurred. Audience groups with less spending money are not considered.
Commercial influence: Advertisers and owners have influence on editorial decisions.
Trivialization: More sex and violence and prying into the private lives of celebrities. The media avoid controversial issues and serious debates. Debates are reduced to an entertaining clash between personalities, resembling a boxing match, where the issue of controversy has only secondary importance.
Several media scholars agree that the main cause of these tendencies is the liberalization of the media market. Stories are selected for profitability rather than relevance (Bagdikian 1983).
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UNIT FOUR: MASS MEDIA SYSTEMS
FOUR THEORIES O F THE PRESS
Mass media do not operate in a vacuum. This assertion is generally agreed upon, and led researchers to study the relationship between mass media and government. The first well-known attempt to clarify the link between the mass media and the political society was introduced by Siebert et al. (1963), and presented in
Four Theories of the Press. The purpose of the work was to establish and explain four normative theories that ought to illustrate the press’ position in relation to its political environment. By “press” Siebert means all the media of mass communication, including television, radio, and newspapers.
A.
Authoritarian Press Theory
Under the authoritarian system of the time: Truth was conceived to be, not the product of the great mass of people, but of a few wise men who were in a position to guide and direct their fellows. Thus, truth was thought to be centered (sic.) near the center of power. The press therefore functioned from the top down.
The rulers of the time used the press to inform the people of what the rulers thought they should know and the policies the rulers thought they should support (Siebert et al., 1956). The following could be considered as typical authoritarian measures:
1) The press should do nothing which could undermine the established authority of the state, and should always be subordinate to the established authority.
2) The press should avoid causing offence to the majority or dominant moral and political values.
3) Censorship can be justified to enforce these principles.
4) Unacceptable attacks on the authority, deviations from official policy or offences against moral codes could be considered criminal acts.
5) Though the state may not own/ control the press outright, as in the Marxist-Leninist system, it does have a clear say about or input into the way it functions.
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The monarch or government had absolute power and control over ownership, content and use of the mass media. Criticism of the political machinery and officials in power through the mass media was forbidden and the press existed chiefly to support and advances the policies of the government in power and to service the state (Siebert et al., 1956) and therefore had no freedom.
B.
The Libertarian Free Press Theory
The libertarians believe that man is a thinking, independent and rational animal, capable of deciding between the good and the bad and between the good and the better when faced with alternative choices.
As expounded by Siebert, Peterson and Schramm (1956), under libertarianism Man is no longer conceived of as a dependent being [as in the authoritarian system] to be led and directed, but rather as a rational being able to discern between truth and falsehood, between a better and worse alternative, when faced with conflicting evidence and alternative choices. Truth is no longer conceived of as the property of power. Rather the right to search for truth is one of the inalienable natural rights of man… [And] The press is conceived of as a partner in the search for truth.
The three authors further underline the basis of press freedom at evolution under libertarianism: In libertarian
theory, the press is not an instrument of government, but rather a device for presenting evidence and arguments on
the basis of which the people can check on government and make up their minds as to policy. Therefore it is
imperative that the press be free from government control and influence. In order for truth to emerge, all ideas must
get a fair hearing; there must be a “free market place” of ideas and information. Minorities as well as majorities, the weak as well as the strong must have access to the press…(Siebert et al., 1956).
There are other major ingredients of press freedom under libertarianism. One is the assumption of the presence of a multiplicity of voices on public issues at all times. The libertarians… assumed that in a democratic society, there would be a multiplicity of voices available to, if not actually reaching the public. Let every man who has something to say on public issues express himself regardless of whether what he has to say is true or false and let the public ultimately decide… (Siebert et al., 1956).
This public decision is expected to be reached through the “self-righting process of truth.” The self-righting process of truth developed from Milton’s (1644) thesis that truth will ultimately drive away falsehood and assert itself in a free and open encounter with falsehood. Another important component of libertarian press freedom is the absence of state control in the operations of the news media in line with the laissez faire
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enterprise doctrine or philosophical foundation of capitalism. As put by Schiller (1986): [T]he proponents of
the libertarian theory were against state control and or involvement in the operation of the news media…News organizations need to be independent of both government and big business so that it can deliver disinterested
accounts of the key sources of power affecting people’s daily lives.
A third major ingredient is the emphasis on financial independence of the press. According to Oso (1988): It
[the libertarian theory/philosophy] stresses the financial autonomy of the press. Further, it accepts free enterprise and private ownership of the means of production as guarantees for the attainment of freedom of the press and individual
freedom. The government is not expected to compete with or eliminate privately owned media… McQuail (1987) summarises the basic characteristics of the press and its freedom under libertarianism as follows
1) Publication should be free from any prior censorship by any third party;
2) The act of publication and distribution should be open to a person or group without permit or license;
3) Attack on any government official or political party (as distinct from attacks on private individuals or treason and breaches of security) should not be punishable, even after the event;
4) There should be no compulsion to publish anything;
5) Publication of ‘error’ is protected equally with that of truth in matters of opinion and belief;
6) No restriction should be placed on the collection, by legal means, of information for publication;
7) There should be no restriction on export or import or sending or receiving ‘messages’ across national frontiers; Journalists should be able to claim a considerable degree of professional autonomy within their organizations.
From the listed qualities, press freedom at its genesis was based on the notion that individuals should be free to publish in the news or mass media whatever they like without interference from government or from other persons or groups. This freedom was seen as an extension of other freedoms, particularly that of free speech and as a palladium for all civil, political and religious rights. Being also a concomitant of commercial freedom, having evolved under a capitalist setting, it was closely associated with capitalist social organization. Hence, it also implied property rights i.e. the right to profitably own and use media production and facilities. (Omwanda, 1990 1991).
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C.
The Social Responsibility Press Theory
Although press freedom evolved in a capitalist liberal democracy i.e. England under libertarianism {as part of the parliamentary and congressional or presidential systems based on individual liberty and private enterprise (Ugboajah,1987)}, the notion of press freedom that presently obtains in capitalist liberal democracies the world over is that of the “social responsibility theory of the press”. The social responsibility theory originated in the United States in the 20th century although it can be regarded as an Anglo–
American concept (Siebert et al.,1956). It was a composite of ideas developed from the writings of W. E.
Hocking, the works of the 1947 United States Press Freedom Commission (Hutchins Commission), the ideas of mass communication practitioners and media codes. It arose in recognition of the fact that the free market (market forces) had failed to deliver the benefits or fulfill the promise of press freedom to public expectations.
In McQuail’s (1987) account: …the technological and commercial development of the press [evident in the rise of
media monopolies] was said to have led to lower chances of access for individuals and diverse groups, and lower
standards of performance [arising from undue influence of advertisers and from media sensationalism for profit motive] in meeting the informational, social and moral needs of society. It was also thought to have increased the power of a single class [that of news media owners]. At the same time, the rise of the new and seemingly powerful media of radio and film had demonstrated the need for some kinds of public control and means of accountability additional to those appropriate to the long established and professionally organized print media.
The theory therefore stipulates that since freedom carries concomitant obligations, the media of mass communication which enjoy a privileged position, as obtained under the libertarian theory, must assume obligation of social responsibility and if they do not, someone must ensure that they do. It takes the stance that the social roles of the press i.e. enlightening the people, promoting the democratic process, safeguarding the liberties of the individual, etc. should take precedence over its role of servicing the economic system.
It holds that the press should furnish the people with ‘good’ entertainment only that is entertainment which does not debase the norms and values of society for profit motive. It accepts the need for the press as an
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institution to remain financially self–supporting and independent, but if necessary, it would exempt certain individual media from having to earn their way in the market place and allow some form of control on mass media operations in the ‘public interest.’ (This is the basis on which the British Broadcasting Corporation is being run as a public trust by the British government.)
Thus although free as in the libertarian era, the following principles are to guide the western media under the social responsibility concept: (McQuail, 1987).
1) Media should accept and fulfill certain obligations to society.
2) These obligations are mainly to be met by setting high or professional standards of informativeness, truth, accuracy, objectivity and balance;
3) In accepting and applying these obligations, media should be self-regulating within the framework of law and established institutions;
4) The media should avoid whatever might lead to crime, violence or civil disorder or give offence to minority groups;
5) The media as a whole should be pluralist and reflect the diversity of their society giving access to various points of view and to rights of reply;
6) Society and the public, following the first named principle, have a right to expect high standards of performance and intervention can be justified to secure the, or a public good;
7) Journalists and media professionals should be accountable to society as well as to employers and the market.
The obligations of the press under the social responsibility theory which McQuail talks about here have been spelt out by the Hutchins Commission (1947) as follows:
I.
providing the public with “a truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning.”
II.
“serving as a forum for the exchange of comments and criticism.”
III.
projecting “a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society.”
IV.
being responsible for “the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society.” and
V.
providing “full access to the day’s intelligence.”
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The social responsibility theory attempts to reconcile independence and freedom of the news media with their obligations to society. According to Omwanda (1990-1991), it assumes that the news media have useful functions to society especially that of protecting democratic government through the provision of a variety of views and opinions. He contends that while the theory reaffirms the libertarian view of a free and independent press, it also insists that the press must accept its obligations to society, recognize that there are public expectations of standards of performance below which demands for control begin to be made, and accept the notion that media ownership is a kind of public trusteeship and not private franchise. Central to the social responsibility theory; he says, is an attempt to reconcile a set of three divergent principles, i.e. those of individual freedom and choice, of media freedom, and of media obligation to society.
From the foregoing, press freedom in capitalist liberal democracies, such as Britain and the United States, denotes that every individual (citizen and professional journalist) has the right to freely publish his or her sentiment(s) through the instrumentality of the news media without fear of prior restraint or of arbitrary punishment for whatever is published. Such individuals equally have the right to own any of the news media and to protect the source(s) of their information within the bounds of criminal law. This right of press freedom is however subject to regulation by the “self-righting process of truth” in “free market place of ideas” and by courts as obtained under pure libertarianism, but more importantly, under the social responsibility concept, by community opinion, consumer action and professional ethics. Invasion of recognized private rights and vital social interests is also forbidden.
In essence, the Western concept of press freedom is built around three main principles: a) the prohibition of government interference with the press in the form of censorship or similar prior restraint [although prior restraints are justified under carefully limited circumstances] (Nam, 1983) b) the principles that any restrictions on press freedom must be applied or subject to review by the courts, and that courts alone have the right to impose penalties (Wei, 1970); and c) the principle of completely private ownership of the print news media and a largely private ownership of the broadcast media. Let us now examine press freedom in the socialist world.
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D.
Socialist Press Theory
Unlike in the capitalist liberal democracies, the perception and definition of press freedom in the socialist world such as Cuba, China, Albania, North Korea, etc. is based on the Soviet Communist theory of the press which developed in the Soviet Union after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Under the theory which evolved from Marxist– Leninist – Stalinist thought, with mixture of Hegel and 19th Century Russian thinking, the chief purpose of the press is to contribute to the success and continuance of the socialist system, and especially to the dictatorship of the party (Siebert et al., 1956). The Soviet media theory itself derives from the basic principles of “scientific socialism”/ communism which are materialistic determinism and class struggle and has the following as its major ideas (McQuail, 1987).
1) The working class [the proletarian] by definition holds power in a socialist society, and to keep power, has to control the means of ‘mental production.’ Thus, all media should be subject to control by agencies of the working class – primarily the communist party;
2) Socialist societies are, or aspire to be, classless societies and thus lacking in conflict. The press should consequently not be structured along lines of political conflict;
3) The press has a positive role to play in the formation of society and the movement towards communism and this suggests a number of important functions for the media in socialization, informal social control and mobilization towards planned social and economic goals;
4) Marxism presupposes objective laws of history and thus an objective reality that the press should reflect; the general theory of the [socialist] state requires the media to submit to ultimate control by organs of the state and to be, in varying degrees, integrated with other instruments of political life.
The socialist media are, within these limits, expected to be self-regulatory. Thus Article 125 of the Soviet
Union’s 1936 (“Stalin”) Constitution, for instance, guarantees freedom of the press. It states that: In conformity with the interests of the working people and in order to strengthen the socialist system, the
citizens of the USSR are guaranteed by law. a) Freedom of speech; b) Freedom of the press; (emphasis, mine) c) Freedom of assembly; including the holding of mass meetings; d) Freedom of street processions and demonstrations
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These civil rights are ensured by placing at the disposal of the working people and their organizations printing presses, stocks of paper, public buildings, the streets, communication facilities and other material requisites for the exercise of these rights.
The communists [socialists] conceive that press freedom cannot exist in a system [capitalist] where only the monied classes have access to the mass media (Martin and Chaudhary, 1983). Marxist – Leninist theory holds that the freedom of the press is a delusion so long as capitalists commandeer the better printing establishmentsits power over the press (Ugboajah, 1987). In line with this thinking and since the poor – the masses – are in the majority, the proper thing to do to have ‘true’ freedom of the press, according to socialist thesis, is for the government to put the wherewithal for mass communication at the disposal of the masses. Private ownership of the media is therefore proscribed and profit motive is removed from media practice. For a socialist citizen or journalist then, freedom of the press means freedom from a class, most likely the bourgeoisie; freedom to use the press as an instrument of unity (Okunna, 1990).
E.
DEVELOPMENT PRESS THEORY
Altschull (1984) notes that in much of Africa and Asia (where we have a large concentration of developing countries), an indigenous press was slow in developing and tended to follow the models provided by colonial rulers. Nam (1983) also submits that the ‘Third World’ has at one extreme some of its countries copying the Western libertarian concept of the press and at the other extreme some countries that consciously model themselves after the Marxist– Leninist concept. While admitting that there are developing countries that fall in between the two extremes, he concludes that “regardless of the ideology of a Third World nation, strong developmental efforts by ruling elites in Third World nations, do not leave much room for a free and independent press in the Western tradition.” Nam is, perhaps, right is his submissions on press freedom in the developing countries. Many ‘Third World’ studies [and political leaders and even some journalists] insist that because of the glaring need for rapid socio-economic development and national integration or cohesion in the developing countries, developing countries’ news media differ from those of the other two socio-political systems in their basic functions which are to promote social stability and development (Omwanda,1990-1991).
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As succinctly expressed by Altschull (1984): To the struggling, insecure nations of the advancing world [his preference for ‘developing’ or ‘Third World’], abstract principles of press freedom are less important than
the viability of their nations. Kenyan journalist and publisher, Hilary Ng’weno, (1968) puts it more graphically: The challenge to the press in young countries is the challenge of laying down the foundations upon which future freedoms will thrive… [A] nyone who has lived or travelled widely in Africa, Asia or Latin
America cannot fail to be appauled at the enormous amount of poverty, illiteracy and disease that are to be found everywhere. Under some of the conditions in which Asians, Africans and Latin Americans live, it will be sacrilegious to talk about press freedom, for freedom loses meaning when human survival is the only
imperative principle on which a people lives.
Given this portrait, the concept of press freedom prevailing in the developing world is that of development media /development journalism theory. According to Kunczik (1988), the term development journalism first cropped up around 1967 to define a notion of journalism according to which reporting of events of national and international significance should be constructive, in the sense that it contributes positively to the development of the country concerned. Its main focus should not be on day to- day news but on long-term development processes. Development journalism/media theory advocates positive functions for the news media to further national development, promote political and cultural autonomy and allow for participatory communication structures, which enable grassroots involvement in media production and management.
To the extent that development is the main agendum of the ‘Third World’, journalists are supposed to subordinate their freedoms to the pursuit of development goal (Omwanda, 1990-1991).
1) McQuail (1987) gives the main principles of development media theory as follows:
2) Media should accept and carry out positive development tasks in line with nationally established policy;
3) Freedom of the media should be open to restriction according to (1) economic priorities and (2) development needs of society;
4) Media should give priority in their content to national culture and language;
5) Media should give priority in news and information to links with other developing countries which are close geographically, culturally or politically;
6) Journalists and other media workers have rights/ freedoms as well as responsibilities;
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7) In the interest of development ends, the state has a right to intervene in, or restrict, media operations and devices of censorship, subsidy and direct control can be justified.
From the foregoing, press freedom in the developing world is conceived and defined in accordance with the collective developmental purpose of society. The individual’s right to publish his or her sentiments in or through the news media is recognized and protected as in the western tradition provided such sentiments do not run counter to developmental goals of society as perceived by sometimes elected but mostly selfimposed political leaders. The right to own and operate, majorly, the print news media is also guaranteed within the same bounds. Of course, censorship, prior and post, and direct control by government are considered legitimate where the government feels that the press is about to or has transgressed. In the words of Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the most passionate defenders of liberty in the developing world, states must be “armed with the authority to deal with’’ dangerous language [and by logical extension, content] in the press. “We cannot”, he said, “imperil the safety of the whole nation in the name of some fancied freedom which put an end to all freedom” (sic.) ( Altschull,1984).
In spite of the prevalence of these seemingly lofty defenses or explanations for developmental journalism or theory of press freedom in developing countries however, critics of press freedom suppression in the sociopolitical system, particularly in African countries, are not impressed. Many of them contend that curbing press freedom is not the panacea for sociopolitical stability and national development. With over-flowing examples of instances where African political leaderships have restricted the freedom of the African press when the latter attempted to expose their wrong-doings, the critics hold that: …the African press is controlled by the government for the fear that a free press will readily unearth the staggering proportions of graft, ineptitude, lack of accountability as well as the corruption, mismanagement, bribery, roguery and
official stealing inherent within the ruling bourgeoisie class (Ogbondah, 1994).
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F.
FUNCTIONALIST AND CRITICAL MEDIA THEORIES

Functionalists approach the study of mass media from the standpoint that the media contribute to the benefit of society as a whole. In his classic 1975 work, Charles Wright outlines FOUR ways in which the mass media contribute to creating equilibrium in society: Surveillance the environment: To provide news and information. News essentially has two functions when it comes to transmitting social values and norms;
Correlation: correlating response to news and information (editorial function); How to think about; make sense of what is going on. The media coordinate and correlate information that is valuable to the culture.
Cultural transmission: of cultural heritage, values, history, etc. to future generations. The media are powerful agents of socialization. Through the media, cultural norms and values are communicated to the masses. Entertainment: (diversion function). By providing entertainment, the media act as stress relievers for members of society, which keeps social conflicts to a minimum.
News reporting has been a focus of sociological research into the functions of the media. Both Paul
Lazersfeld and Robert Merton argue that news essentially has two functions when it comes to transmitting social values and norms:
Status conferral refers to the importance given some social issues over others in the news media. The fact that certain issues receive attention raises their importance in the eyes of the culture.
The ethicizing effect suggests that society's norms, values, and beliefs (ethics) are reinforced through media surveillance. By focusing on wrongdoings in society, the media act as a kind of "morality squad." By giving attention to the consequences of criminal and other behaviour, the media reinforce ideas of what is good and what is right. This is true not only when the media report facts about crime and deviance
(murders, robberies, etc.), but also when they shed light on issues that were intended to remain private, particularly in the case of corporations and governments. President Clinton's encounters with Monica
Lewinsky and Prime Minister Chrétien’s alleged involvement in the handling of the APEC protesters in 1997 are excellent examples of the media's ethicizing effect.
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
Pluralists see society as a complex of competing groups and interests, none of them predominant all of the time. Media organizations are seen as bounded organizational systems, enjoying an important degree of autonomy from the state, political parties and institutionalized pressure groups. Control of the media is said to be in the hands of an autonomous managerial elite who allow a considerable degree of flexibility to media professionals. A basic symmetry is seen to exist between media institutions and their audiences, since in McQuail's words the 'relationship is generally entered into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms'... and audiences are seen as capable of manipulating the media in an infinite variety of ways according to their prior needs and dispositions, and as having access to what Halloran calls 'the plural values of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'. (Gurevitch et al. 1982).

Marxists view capitalist society as being one of class domination; the media are seen as part of an ideological arena in which various class views are fought out, although within the context of the dominance of certain classes; ultimate control is increasingly concentrated in monopoly capital; media professionals, while enjoying the illusion of autonomy, are socialized into and internalize the norms of the dominant culture; the media taken as a whole, relay interpretive frameworks consonant with the interests of the dominant classes, and media audiences, while sometimes negotiating and contesting these frameworks, lack ready access to alternative meaning systems that would enable them to reject the definitions offered by the media in favour of consistently oppositional definitions (ibid.). Marxist theorists tend to emphasize the role of the mass media in the reproduction of the status quo, in contrast to liberal pluralists who emphasize the role of the media in promoting freedom of speech.

Political economy thinking of mass media saw the dominant political, financial and industrial institutions of societies having a direct effect on the ideological forces maintaining control, including the media (Newbold,
2002, 219).
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Mosco (1995) defined political economy as the “study of the social relations, particularly the power relations that influence the production, distribution, and consumption of resources, including communication
resources”. The radical political economy tradition continued to argue that the media were powerfully shaped by their political and economic organisation” (Curran, 2002: p.113). This included media ownership, cross-ownership, monopolies competition, public service broadcasting, and controls over quantity and content of advertising. In turn, political economy thinking argued that this political and economic structure influenced media audiences. Political economy views on the media saw the media as having a moral purpose and aiming at social action (Newbold et al., 2002, p. 49).
In this sense, political economy and later cultural studies views of the media reversed thinking that mass media had limited effects. However, they did not return to direct effects thinking. “Rather, political economy and cultural studies started from the premise that reinforcement was not neutral.” Moreover, they took the concept of reinforcement further arguing that “reinforcement was the inevitable and contrived outcome of a system whose very purpose was to maintain order and to prevent change in societies that were riven by manifest inequalities” (Newbold et al., 2002, p. 34).
Political economy theory saw mass media involved in ‘the manufacture of consent’ – a concept made famous by Naom Chomsky. Marshall McLuhan’s famous adage “The medium is the message” further focused attention on mass media and their role in society (Lull, 2000, p. 37). However, McLuhan’s (1964) admonition pointed to the importance of the production and institutional processes of the mass media (e.g. their internal news selection criteria and production techniques) in shaping media messages. Previously, focus had been on the suppliers of information and mass media had been viewed as a neutral channel.

Cultural studies approaches to mass media borrowed from literary criticism and cinematic analysis and drew on linguistics and socio-linguistics. This approach shifted focus away from the structuralist politics of
Marx and Engels and the structuralist linguistic theories of Saussure and introduced qualitative methods which examined how different readers interpreted texts differently.. Even so, early neo-Marxist cultural studies saw mass media being used to influence or control audiences. However, they saw this as more subtle than direct control. Mass media, they argued, exerted influence through cultural hegemony.
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Hegemony is summarised by Lull (2000) as “the power or dominance that one social group holds over others” gained through “a tacit willingness by people to be governed by principles, rules and laws which
they believe operate in their best interests, even though in actual practice they may not” (p. 51). He states further: “Hegemony is a process of convergence, consent, and subordination. Ideas, social institutions, industries, and ways of living are synthesized into a mosaic which serves to preserve the economic, political, and cultural advantages of the already powerful … The mass media play an extraordinary role in the process” (p. 54). That people do not necessarily see the hegemonic power of mass media is not surprising when the subtle process of hegemony is understood. Lull points out: “The victims of hegemony don’t realise they are being repressed through ideology” (p. 73).
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UNIT FIVE: THE PRODUCTION OF NEWS (GOLDING, P. & ELLIOT, P. 1979: MAKING THE NEWS)
The term ‘production of news,’ refers to basically how news is produced. Generally the newsroom is a patterned, repetitive and predictable work routine. As in any industry news production is a sequence of gathering raw material, processing it into a required product, and distributing the product to an intended market. Whether it broadcast or print news production there is always a deadline to meet and cycle of work.
But the way journalists operate in a routine of gathering, editing and producing news is not to be taken face value. The production cycle consist of planning, gathering, selection and production.
PLANNING
Central among journalistic beliefs is the idea of news as random and unpredictable events tracked down by the skills of journalistic anticipation and circumspection. In fact much time is spent in the newsroom reducing the uncertainty of the task by plotting events in advance and determining which is to become news. This is done through long term planning considering general themes and policies to be included in news coverage and short term planning is more important because it is closer and more determinant of daily news production, and the diary is a key document in any newsroom because it record predictable events that automatically merit coverage by their unpredictable public importance e.g. listing planned visits of politicians, expected legislation, official reports, sporting occasions, editorial conference etc.
Selection of news coverage is based on three criteria: convenience (i.e. the availability of someone to do the job and the physical accessibility of the event); its intrinsic news value (pressure from news sources like government and corporations to cover it) and whether it has been incorporated into a news value. If the news is about the unpredictable, its production is about prediction. Both the diary and the editorial conference are aimed at plotting the flow of event in the world and marking them for manufacture into stories.
GATHERING
News material is actively collected by correspondents concerned with particular geographical areas or specific subjects, secondly by ‘stringer’/reporters especially for provincial and foreign news and third by
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regular contact with reliable and productive sources of news or news ‘beats’ and brought into the newsroom. Foreign coverage has to depend almost entirely upon news agencies either for complete information or as a guide and warning system about stories in their initial stage which might warrant the outlay of travel and subsistence funds for newsroom staff to go themselves. Thus having an area specialist in the newsroom enlarges the capacity of the organization to react to news of a foreign event by mobilizing his expertise and background knowledge.
SELECTION
The sifting and molding of material coming into the newsroom is the process of converting observed events into news stories. News material is collated from reporters and correspondents, culled from agencies and sifted down to a select number of items for final transmission. The skills involved are largely those of ‘subediting’; that is editing, but with less power of discretion that an editor-in-chief. In practice these skills range from the correction of style and grammar to conform to standard practice, to complete responsibility for the final product.
PRESENTATION
The selected items are put in order, treated for suitable presentation/ publication and packaged to make up a programme or bulletin for broadcasting.
NEWS VALUES AND NEWS PRODUCTION
News production is rarely the active application of decisions of rejection or promotion to highly varied and extensive material. On the contrary, it is for the most part the passive exercise of routine and highly regulated procedures in the task of selecting from already limited suppliers of information. News values are significant and are as much the resultant explanation or justification of necessary procedures as their source. News values are used in two ways: They are criteria of selection from material available to the newsroom of those items worthy of inclusion in the final product. They are guideline for the presentation of items, suggesting what to emphasize, what to omit, and where to give priority in the preparation of the items for presentation to the audience.
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News values are thus the working rules, comprising a corpus of occupational lore which implicitly and often expressly explains and guides newsroom practice. News values are qualities of events or of their journalistic construction, whose relative absence or presence recommends the inclusion in the news product. The more of such qualities a story exhibits; the greater its chance of inclusion. Alternatively, the more different news values a story contains, the greater its chances of inclusion. News values derive from unstated or implicit assumptions or judgments about three things:
1.
The audience: is this important to the audience or will it hold their attention? Is it of known interest, will it be understood, enjoyed, registered, perceived as relevant?
2.
Accessibility-in two ways:
prominence (to what extent is the events known to the news organization, how obvious is it) and
easy of capture (how available to journalists it the event, is it physically accessible, manageable technically, in a form, amenable to journalism, is it ready to prepare for easy coverage, will it greater resources to obtain).
3.
Fit: is the item consonant with the pragmatics of production routine, is it consummate with technical and organizational possibilities. In short, how does it fit in the production routine
(technically)?
In summing up, journalism is by no means random reaction to random events. On the contrary, it is a highly regulated and routine process of manufacturing a cultural product on (an electronic) production line. In stages of planning, gathering, selection and production, news is mold by the demands of composing order and organization within a daily cycle. The news is made, and like any other product it carries the marks of the technical and organizational structure from which it emerges. News is packaged neutral, objective reporting while providing a limited view of social reality- this view is a construction based on the built-in
production procedures and values of journalism.
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UNIT SIX: JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION ETHICS
THE GATHERING, SELECTING AND PRESENTATION OF NEWS
One of the leading voices in the U.S. on the subject of Journalistic Standards and Ethics is the Society of
Professional Journalists. The Preamble to its Code of Ethics states...public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is
the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility.
What is ethics?
Ethics is a systematic, reasoned approach based on principles. Ethics attempts to outline what is ‘wrong.
Media ethics are very much a normative field-helping journalists and other media practitioners) develop principles and maxims to follow in ethical practice. The freedom of expression, which media operators everywhere long for and defend, should necessarily bring with it a sense of responsibility. Being free to do research and report means that we are also answerable for that reporting, because as we are doing it freely, we know what we are doing and why. If journalists are answerable for their reporting, there needs to be some sort of reference point against which they can judge the goodness or badness of their professional activity.
Media ethics are defined as a reflection process, rule-oriented and putting moral values into practice. Media ethics are defined as a branch of philosophy which prescribes what is right and what is wrong. It was also defined as a ‘field that deals with nearly an endless array of gray areas where issues and appropriate courses of action are not clearly demarcated. It also involves a rational choice between what is right (good) and what is wrong (bad). Franz Kruger (2005) has discussed these in-depth in the context of South Africa.
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He identifies the following ethical norms
1) Truthtelling:
In some senses the first and most basic principle is accuracy. In the context of HIV and AIDS, this means that journalists need to be very careful about the science involved, which is sometimes very complex. Also, we often write about statistics, and again journalists need to be careful to get them right. In a broader sense, the truthtelling principle means telling the story fully and giving it due weight. This involves a number of things. It means reporting the pandemic in a nuanced way, and investigating the social, medical, personal, scientific, economic, educational, political and other aspects of the issue. That kind of balance won’t be achieved in a single story, but it can be achieved over time.
2) Independence
This means keeping a distance from the various players, in order to be able to report honestly. This includes governments, even (perhaps particularly) in countries where it owns or dominates broadcasting and other media.
3) Minimise harm
The media can cause significant harm. Established ethics call for harm to be minimised – not avoided completely, since some kinds are unavoidable or even justifiable. A corrupt official may be harmed by the exposure of his or her misdeeds, for instance, but this is far outweighed by the broader public benefit.
4) Privacy:
This right is enshrined in many constitutions, it is a legal right and an ethical duty. In concrete terms, it means taking great care when it comes to reporting on people’s status. Their story, the way their family deals with the situation, medical details, photographs - all of this belongs to their private sphere, over which they have control. The issue has a particular slant where, as is so often the case, journalists are dealing with people who are poor and disadvantaged. They need to take particular care not to bulldoze people, pushing them into doing something they may not really want to do. Public interest can trump the right to privacy, if there is a strong public interest. This is recognised in various codes.
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 Ethical Principles on Reporting HIV and Aids:
1) Accuracy is critical, since important personal and policy decisions may be influenced by media reports. Journalists should be particularly careful to get scientific and statistical information right.
2) Clarity means being prepared to discuss sex, cultural practices and other sensitive issues respectfully but openly.
3) Balance means giving due weight to the story, and covering all aspects, including medical, social, political, economic and other issues. It means focusing on the gender dimension, particularly, and reporting on the larger social forces driving the pandemic. Balance also means highlighting positive stories where appropriate, without underplaying the fact that HIV and AIDS is a serious crisis.
4) Journalists should ensure that the voices of people living with HIV and AIDS are heard. The human face of the pandemic should be shown.
5) Journalists should hold the powerful to account in their handling of the pandemic.
6) Independence means keeping all interest groups - government, pharmaceutical industry and advocacy groups – at arm’s length, and avoiding any perception of a conflict of interest.
7) Discrimination, prejudice and stigma are very harmful, and journalists should avoid fuelling them.
Particular care should be taken not to use language that reinforces stereotypes.
8) Journalists should respect the rights of people with HIV and AIDS. Vulnerable people like children and those not used to the media should be treated with particular care. Journalists should seek their informed consent before intruding on their privacy. Only in cases where the public interest is strong and clear can somebody’s HIV status be reported against their wishes. Any undertakings given must be kept.
Dangerous misconceptions should be debunked, and any claims of cures or treatments should be reported with due scepticism.
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DEONTOLOGICAL THEORIES
The five moral philosophies undergirding present day journalism ethics were singled as including the following: Christians (1983:9) identifies five ethical principles which have historically provided guidance on moral decisions. These are:
Aristotle’s Golden Mean: This principle rests on the assumption that virtue lies between two extremes.
Thus, a morally upright journalist is neither the one who is a coward nor bashful. Aristotle emphasises moderation for the appropriate actions.
Emmanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative (Deontology): “Act on that maximum by which you will to become a universal law”. This principle emphasises that ‘what is right is right and must be done even under the most extreme conditions’ (Christians, 1983:11). If, for example, a journalist is convinced that publishing a particular story is the right thing then he or she must go ahead and damn the consequences.
Mills Principle of Utility: (Teleology) is predicted on the philosophy that man must ‘seek greatest happiness for the greatest number’. In other words, what is right is that which pleases the greatest number of people in a nation. Christians observes that this ethical view is widespread in American society which is characterised by hedonism – the perpetual search for pleasure.
Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance: (Contractualism) ‘Justice emerges when negotiating without social differentiation’. This principle rests on Rawl’s principle that fairness is a fundamental tenet of justice. In a sense, justice is viewed as a ‘cloistered virtue’ which is blind to social status, colour or creed. All people must be treated fairly without fear or favour. Being morally blind means that the media do not treat the powerful in society as sacred cows. All creatures, great and small ought to be subjected to the same moral standards.
The Judeo-Christian-Persons as Ends: This “love your neighbour as yourself” principle views all human beings as standing under one moral virtue. Love is viewed as more than a raw principle, stern and unconditional (Christians, 1983:16). The unconditional love due to humanity makes it immoral for anyone to use human beings for the purpose of achieving certain ends. Loving one’s neighbour is a practical action that entails helping those who need help such as the weak, the poor, orphans, widows, aliens, the disenfranchised and the downtrodden in society. This principle exhorts media practitioners to use their privilege to highlight the plight of the poor and needy in society.
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It is unanimously agreed that children must be protected. They are innocent, vulnerable and at most ignorant of the workings and oppressions of the media. Any professional journalist must seek consent of the guardian of the child before soliciting information. Even in a school set up, administrators must refer the issue to the parents or carers before proceeding with interviewing, photographing etc. Different countries have different laws on who is a child. Names of minors/children implicated in crimes must not be disclosed except in extra-ordinary situations.
However journalism ethics on reporting children sometimes are dicey issue in complex situations where the child is a perpetrator of crime. Another issue relates to reporting on HIV and Aids and People living with
HIV and Aids (PLWHAs). It has been noted that some reportage promotes stigmatisation against PLWHAs and perpetuates discriminatory practices. Journalists must desist from perpetrating ‘victimhood’ stereotypes. The issue of covering faces of photographed people in the media is described as equally unethical in so far at it can allow people to identify the person by association.
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► Relevant Web Sites www.icahdq.org – International Communication Association, with links to research in the mass communication division www.gsu-edu/~wwwcom/content – Academic site devoted to content analysis of media messages ct.oupjournals.org/ – Communication Theory journal
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