Page 168 - Critical Political Economy of the Media
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Marketing communications and media 147
Baker (1994: 45–49) also offers a useful summary of factors that can affect the
extent of advertising’sinfluence within a given medium or firm. These include the
level and kind of economic dependence on advertising, whether widely distributed
amongst many advertisers or concentrated on individual advertisers or organised
groups. Another factor is the acceptability of advertising influence on content
decisions (and the ‘cost’ of public disapproval arising from knowledge of influence),
which varies according to the media format and type of enterprise. When this
‘cost’ is internalised by media managers and workers it is related to another key
factor, the influence of ‘professionalism’, which may act to resist advertiser
pressure. In addition, ‘accepted industry practice’ in the sector can in turn
influence the behaviour and demands of advertisers. Consumer identification
with the advertising and level of actual awareness of separation between adver-
tising and non-advertising content are other, increasingly significant factors.
Finally, Baker includes the implications of conglomeration, citing examples of
advertisers applying pressure on one part of the conglomerate’s business in order
to influence another.
The main factors affecting advertising influence on media can be summarised as:
1 levels of dependence on advertising finance and support
2 institutional traditions of specific parts of media and media–advertiser
relations
3 behaviour and influence of owners
4 professional norms of media workers and managers
5 formal regulations
6 self-regulation influenced by users (including anticipated consumer responses).
Five and six include the range of interests shaping the practices of firms and
regulators, variously stakeholders, policy networks and civil society. A common
theme of studies across media is that with increasing commercial pressures comes
increasing dependence on advertising and accommodation of advertiser interests.
However, this is always a dynamic process since there are various countervailing
forces to counter advertiser influence, and advertiser power is mitigated by the
unavoidable uncertainty of securing advertising effectiveness in any given
promotion (see McAllister 1996).
Institutionalised professional practices can limit advertiser influence. The
‘firewall’ separating ‘Church’ and ‘State’, that is separating editorial from
advertiser or corporate interests, are central tropes structuring debate about US
journalism (Bagdikian 1997). The firewall concept provides a normative standard
for critique while spotlighting profound economic, structural and behavioural
changes in journalistic media, especially news journalism. In his extensive parti-
cipant observation in the 1970s, Gans (1980) noted the strength of US news
journalists’ resentment of advertiser influence and their partial, institutionalised
insulation from such pressure. National news firms could limit advertiser inter-
ference by their ability to attract and substitute other advertisers (1980: 257, see