Page 67 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

46 Mapping approaches and themes

media comprise numerous independent entities that operate on the basis of
common outlooks, incentives and pressures from the market, government and
internal organizational forces’. Yet, their account presumes a homology and fit
between capitalist enterprises, state and parties, and mainstream media that are
theoretically weak and empirically challenged. The PM is not conspiratorial, as
some critics allege, yet it assumes that the most important influences on media
all flow in one direction, towards supporting the status quo (Eldridge 1993;
Schudson 2005; Curran 2002: 148), a deficiency acknowledged by Herman
(1999). There is a further criticism which indicates important divisions within the
radical tradition. Herman and Chomsky’s account is dismissive of media work and
workers. The vast majority accommodate to system requirements while a small
minority challenge the status quo but are variously punished and marginalised
for doing so. The process of filtration allows little consideration of agency or
initiative on the part of media workers. By contrast, engaging with the organi-
sation of media workers, their reflexivity on their own practice, and the tensions
between creativity, autonomy, professionalism and control is the starting point
for a radical media sociology that reintegrates aspects of the liberal–radical
divide (Goldsmiths Media Group 2000; Hesmondhalgh 2010, 2013)
The propaganda model and similar accounts of the strategic use of power by
political or corporate elites tend to underestimate contradictions in the system and
the contending influences that help to explain the diversity or ‘contradictions’ of
content and output (Murdock and Golding 2005: 74). Herman and Chomsky
argued that beyond the main ‘filters’ were ‘secondary effects’, some of which
support propagandist purposes while others, such as the professional integrity of
journalists, could be countervailing influences. The revising tradition of critical
scholarship goes further in identifying the range of contradictory forces that the
media are subject to in capitalist democracies.

Contemporary radical functionalism

Work within a radical functionalist tradition includes that of the campaign group
Media Lens, who apply the propaganda model to UK media. A central claim in
David Edwards and David Cromwell’s book, Guardians of Power: The Myth of the
Liberal Media, is that ‘the corporate mass media – not just the right-wing Tory
press, but also the most highly respected “liberal” media-broadcasters like the
BBC, and newspapers like the Guardian,the Observer and the Independent – constitute
a propaganda system for elite interests’ (Edwards and Cromwell 2006: 2). In
fact, central to their claim of a systematic distorting lens is that faith in ‘liberal’
media to carry alternative perspectives is misplaced. The media function to
maintain deception; elites require manipulation in order to mobilise public opinion
behind actions such as the wars in Iraq, and ‘humanitarian’ interventions such as
US–NATO military action in the Balkans in the 1990s. Guardians of Power
amasses evidence to support the thesis of a compliant media that ‘over-
whelmingly promotes the views and interest of established power’ (Edwards and