Page 47 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

36 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

interpretations have taken a number of divergent forms. But traditional
marxism offers an understanding of the capitalist media that is at odds
with the radical democratic approach. According to old-style marxism,
the liberal concept of the public sphere is a chimera, disguising the
reality of bourgeois domination. The media are agencies of class control
since they are owned by the bourgeoisie or are subject to its ideological
hegemony. Indeed, the media should be viewed as an ideological
apparatus of the state—the ideational counterpart to the repressive
apparatus of the police, judiciary and armed forces through which the
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ruling order is ultimately sustained. The view that the media can be
‘reformed’ is dismissed as naïve. Significant changes in the media can
only be effected through the socialist transformation of society.
This is opposed by a radical democratic view which offers a different
understanding of the relationship of the media to power structures in
society. Radical democrats usually argue that journalists have
sometimes a considerable degree of day-to-day autonomy, particularly
in broadcasting corporations which have won a measure of autonomy
from government and in commercial media with dispersed
shareholdings, where there is no dominant owner. This relative
autonomy enables journalists to respond to a variety of influences—a
change in the general climate of opinion, a shift in the milieux in which
journalists move, the recomposition of accredited sources (due to, for
example, a change of government), the emergence of new market trends
calling for a competitive response. These responses cannot be
automatically dismissed as acts of repressive incorporation in which
elements of popular consciousness are selectively assimilated in ways
that leave the dominant ideology essentially unchanged. This familiar
argument is usually based on a conception of the dominant ideology as
a monolithic and faithful rationalization of dominant material interests.
This generally overstates the homology between ideas and economic
interests, the internal consistency of dominant discourses, the
homogeneity of dominant interests and the extent of ideological
domination of subordinate classes.
The radical democratic approach is also grounded in a different
understanding of the wider environment in which media organizations
operate. This is a subject on which it is difficult to generalize since
circumstances vary considerably from one country to another, and from
one period to another. But in general radical democratic analysis tends
to argue that acceptance of the social order in Europe is based on
pragmatic rather than ideological consent; that basic antagonisms
persist, which generate opposition to the hierarchy of power; and that,