Page 123 - Culture Society and the Media

INTRODUCTION 113
the other those who argue for the need to restrict and regulate this flow, in order
to counter situations of cultural dependency and to preserve the sovereignty of
weaker nations. Like most other debates among media scholars, the origins of
this debate are easily traceable to a neo-Weberian position on the one hand, and a
neo-Marxist position on the other. The author, however, is not content to adopt
one position or the other but examines both of them critically since, in his view,
many attempts at evaluating the role of the mass media in the process of cultural
dependency ‘tend to select or give undue weight to evidence which will support
a condemnatory attitude. A more fruitful line of investigation’, he argues, ‘may
be to review and evaluate the kinds of claims which some western consultants
originally made in support of harnessing the mass media to developmental
objectives.’ In other words, issues of policy should be judged by the
discrepancies, if any, between the promises and the consequences of such policies,
rather than on purely ideological grounds.