Page 159 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

138 Critical investigations in political economy

Political economists insist on the need to examine interrelationships between
corporate media, ad agencies and big business. The tobacco giant Philip Morris,
for instance, held seats on News Corporation’s board, while Rupert Murdoch
remained on the Philip Morris board for twelve years. Pfizer, the pharmaceutical
giant, had directors on the boards of Time Warner, Viacom and Dow Jones.
Such corporate interlocks indicate the ‘continuing symbiotic relationship
between news, advertisers, and advertising’ (Bettig and Hall 2012: 165;
Bagdikian 2004). The ways in which executive boards influence operations and
editorial decisions require situated analysis, yet the corporate integration
of advertising and media raises profound issues for democracy, media and culture
about the powers of commercial speech. The interrelationship between TNCs
active in marketing communications and media with the corporate funding of
political parties is examined by Mullen (2013: 181), who argues that such
alliances ‘blur the distinction between political advertising (i.e. persuasion) and
PR (i.e. propaganda)’. Communications TNCs such as Aegis, Omnicom, WPP,
Havas and Interpublic colonise media and political systems across the world
(Sussman 2011).

MEDIA AND ADVERTISING

The most distinctive contribution of CPE analysis of advertising, I wish to argue,
has concerned the implications of media dependence on advertising finance and
advertiser influence on media. There are critical concerns about the increasing
amount of advertising carried, the placement of advertising, invasiveness and
reach, but a core critique has concerned the influence of advertising on
non-advertising content. Privately owned commercial media that depend on
advertising revenue must compete for advertiser attention, and must serve
advertiser interests if they are to prosper, critics argue (Herman and McChesney
1997: 6–7). This section traces some of the classical perspectives and issues
before examining how far changing media and advertising relationships require
these to be revised.

Dallas Smythe and the audience commodity
The pioneer CPE scholar Dallas Smythe established a distinctive theory of
media and advertising focused on the creation of audiences as commodities
(1977). Smythe’s analysis was advanced as part of a wider effort to develop a
materialist analysis of communications. Critical scholarship, he argued, had been
too focused on content and ideological effects, instead of addressing the economic
role of mass media in advanced capitalism. For Smythe this was the ‘blindspot’ in
the Western Marxist tradition, whereby an overriding focus on the production of
ideological meaning ignored the production of surplus value for capital. Critical
researchers were investigating ‘secondary effects’, at best, and ignoring the primary