Page 211 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

190 Critical investigations in political economy

regulatory arrangements against market innovation. The promotion of dereg-
ulation from regulators was a factor in contradicting predictions of statist
conservatism. The assumption that state bureaucrats would seek to enhance their
power and status by increasing the size of their budgets was at odds with
evidence of active engagement in deregulation, for instance in the FCC and
Ofcom.
The significant political roles played by actors with key economic interests in
‘deregulation’ policies have been examined in accounts of UK and European
policy (Humphreys 1996; Freedman 2008). Companies have supported formidable
trade associations such as the National Broadcasters Association and Motion
Picture Association of America, or sometimes short-lived tactical alliances for
lobbying. There are usually tensions between competing interests that render such
combinations dynamic, if not unstable. Yet there has been significantly increased
investment by corporations in trade associations. One coalition, the International
Communications Round Table (ICRT), represents twenty-five leading media,
computer and communications companies, including Time Warner, Walt
Disney, News Corporation, Reed Elsevier, Sony Entertainment, Bertelsmann,
Philips, Siemens and Microsoft. This grouping urged revision of the 1997 Tele-
vision Directive, opposing EU quotas as no longer viable or justifiable in a
global, technologically converging environment. There has continued to be
extensive lobbying of Brussels by national and transnational industry interests
(Sarikakis 2004; Harcourt 2005), joined by Facebook and other digital giants such
as Google, who spent $5 million lobbying Congress in the first quarter of 2012
alone (McChesney 2013: 144). Such corporate interests are far from unopposed
by media reform lobbies (discussed below), yet the disparity in resources tends to
be enormous. The US corporate interests seeking copyright extension and
enforcement outspent public domain and fair use advocates by an estimated
1,300-to-1 ratio on lobbying and public relations (McChesney 2013: 92).

Media reform
There have been two principal alternatives for those who came to a radical and
critical view of mass media: establish alternative communications or advocate
and agitate to change the organisation of the media, through policy change.
These paths have been richly interlocked in radical media history, as well as
prompting sometimes bitter debates over where and how political energy should
be invested. More constructively, radicals have advanced the right to commu-
nication as a central demand. This includes freedom of expression but seeks to
balance the libertarian and free-market emphasis on the property rights of pro-
viders, with the rights of everyone to enjoy access to communications. This
articulates obligations for democratic states to ensure the conditions for com-
munication rights to be realised. In turn, this supports state intervention to tackle
and counter market failure and provide the resources and arrangements for
media pluralism and diversity to be strengthened.