Page 151 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 141
Making money is not at all incompatible with indoctrination…the purpose
of the ‘entertainment’ industry, in its various forms, may be profit; but the
content of its output is not by any means free from ideological
connotations of a more or less definite kind. (Miliband, 1973, p. 202)

This version avoids slipping into a conspiratorial view of the capitalist class as a
tightly-knit group of ideologically motivated men. ‘No evil-minded capitalistic
plotters need be assumed, because the production of ideology is seen as the more
or less automatic outcome of the normal, regular processes by which commercial
mass communications work in a capitalist system’ (Connell, 1977, p. 195).
Nevertheless, it remains tied to an action approach, which as Nicos Poulantzas
has forcefully pointed out, ultimately identifies the origins of social action with
the interests and motivations of the actors involved, operating either individually
or collectively (Poulantzas, 1969).
In contrast, structuralist approaches shift the emphasis from action to context,
from power to determination. Although recent neo-Marxist political economies of
communications have also focused on the pursuit of profit they have
concentrated on the ways that this is shaped and directed by the underlying logic
of the capitalist system rather than on the identity, motivations and activities of
the actors involved.

Demands and determinations

As we noted earlier, commentators differ fundamentally in the way they
characterize the external constraints on corporate activity. Opponents of Marxism
maintain that the range and content of cultural productions is ultimately
determined by the wants and wishes of audiences. If certain values or views of
the world are missing or poorly represented in the popular media, they argue, it
is primarily because there is no effective demand for them. Hence, this notion of
‘consumer sovereignty’ focuses on the spheres of exchange and consumption and
the operations of the market. In contrast ‘theorists of capitalism’ start with the
organization of production and the way it is shaped by the prior distribution of
property and wealth. They see the structure of capital as determining production
in a variety of ways and at a variety of levels.
First of all, they point out that the escalating costs of entering the major mass
media markets means that they are only effectively open to those with
substantial capital. As a result, the enterprises that survive and prosper will
‘largely belong to those least likely to criticize the prevailing distribution of
wealth and power’ while ‘those most likely to challenge these arrangements’ will
be ‘unable to command the resources needed for effective communication to a
broad audience’ (Murdock and Golding, 1977, p. 37). This argument has also
found supporters outside the ranks of ‘theorists of capitalism’. After reviewing
the evidence on newspaper costs, for example, the last Royal Commission on the
Press concluded that although ‘anyone is free to start a national daily newspaper,