Page 11 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Foreword

James Curran

There is considerable uncertainty about what the study of media political economy
1
entails. Seeking illumination, I picked up a copy of Vincent Mosco’s The Political
Economy of Communication (1996), which is presented by its publisher, Sage, as ‘the
definitive critical overview of the discipline’ (back cover).
To my surprise, I found that this book had nothing to say about the influence of
advertising on the media. Advertising is a major source of funding for commercial
media, so presumably it is worth investigating whether this influences directly or
indirectly what is produced. But all I discovered from Mosco’s vade mecum is that
advertisers encourage media to reach ‘audiences and deliver them to advertisers’
(Mosco 1996: 148). Whether this has any consequences for the media is left
unexplored. 2
Another perplexing thing I discovered from this authoritative introduction is that
media political economy seemingly has nothing to say also about the effects of
public ownership. Thus, whether public ownership of television channels leads to
state control and sterile content, or the representation of diverse viewpoints and
creative innovation, or makes no difference at all, are not questions that this
definitive guide even considers.
Still more surprisingly, Mosco offers no clear insight into whether private
shareholders – and those they appoint in senior positions – strongly influence
private media, or whether controllers merely defer to the ‘sovereign’ consumer;
and whether this varies in different contexts. His discussion laps at the edges of
this issue without really engaging with it.
Instead, discussion of media ownership focuses primarily on one thing: media
concentration. We are told, in great detail, that there has been a tendency
towards media concentration; that it takes different forms; and that it can be
measured differently. But in response to the obvious question – why does this
matter? – Mosco’s ‘definitive, critical overview of the discipline’ offers no clear
answer, or indeed clear set of alternative answers.
At this point, it is difficult to suppress a feeling of impatience. If political
economy has little to say, concretely, about the influence of advertising and
ownership on the content and role of the media, what has it to say about anything?
The answer, to judge from this much admired book, is: a lot about a lot of