Page 221 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

200 Interventions and change

demonstration of reliability, objectivity, independence and diversity’ (2006: 97).
McNair (2006: 94) concludes:

When … it is recognised that capitalism is here to stay, and that the critical
task is to reform and humanise rather than replace it, the capacity of the
media to channel dissidence and diversity becomes a valuable political tool
in the progressive project.

To summarise an opposing, radical perspective, Robert Entman and Clay
Steinman (2008: 12) argue:

We see the dialectic of resistance and hegemonic power as largely unaf-
fected by ICT at the start of the new millennium, in part because of the
wide availability of these communication resources, and in part because the
structures of inequality … remain largely in place.
Fiscal and physical necessities continue to exert their traditional constraints
on political consciousness-raising and activism … The limits of time and
energy, the need to work ever more hours to support households and still
spend quality time with children, friends, parents, and relatives – especially
for women who work the double-shift of full-time work and most household
care – puts a premium on relaxing rather than agitating for solutions to
global warming, heterosexism, inequality, militarism, and racism.
Meanwhile, powerful institutionalized interests fund full-time advocates and
communication campaigns; entrenched interests do not have to rely on
voluntarism. This imbalance gives the lie to celebratory democratic theory.
The very forces that make life so hard for so many people have legions of
spokespeople whose jobs depend on promoting corporate and to a lesser
extent bureaucratic interests in a disciplined way to dominate public policy
discussions.

Here, the emphasis is on the structured imbalance of communication resources
between those serving power holders and those of civil society interests. Close to
Habermas’s pessimistic account of refeudalisation of the public sphere, the focus
is on public relations serving corporate and elite interests to shape awareness and
discussion of public policy. These alternative perspectives do not address the
same ground and it is possible to combine them. The reach of well-crafted filmic
essays such as Capitalism: A Love Story becomes even more important to lift spirits,
provide collective points of reference for debate, nurture counter-hegemonic
values and analysis, blend politics and entertainment. What they do highlight are
different assessments of the suitability of capitalism to serve democracy. Capitalist
markets do circulate diverse content. The radical paradigm does not seek to deny
or minimise the presence of such diversity, including radical content. It fully
shares the celebration. The corollary, though, is that CPE insists on highlighting