Page 164 - Culture Society and the Media

154 CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA
Office—as just one combination of forces which led to widespread support for
monopoly:

Had the Labour Party been in power at the time of the formation of the
BBC; had independent broadcasting systems not been associated in the
minds of the Press with commercial broadcasting and finance by means of
advertisements; had another department, say the Board of Trade, been
responsible for broadcasting policy; had the views of the first chief
executive of the BBC been like those of the second; with this combination
of circumstances, there would be no reason to suppose that such a
formidable body of support for a monopoly of broadcasting would ever
have arisen. (Coase, 1950, p. 195)

Given the context in which it emerged, it is difficult to accept the Reithian
concept of monopolistic control as a ‘brute force’ either in preserving
organizational autonomy or in fostering a particular approach to programming.
Rather, supported by the governing party, the bureaucracy and the other media,
the form and output of the organization reflected the social forces which had
brought it into being. Subsequent changes in the arrangement of those forces
(beginning after World War II) were fed into parallel changes in the structure of
British broadcasting and its programming.
The diffuse nature of the social controls within which the media are rooted
make those controls no less influential, however. From this perspective, the
limits to organizational and individual communicator autonomy are well-
defined. For example, the development of distinguishing organizational codes,
practices and rituals within media institutions may well be professional
responses to the tensions involved in finding the boundaries of institutional
autonomy. But in the sense that they arise within organizational contexts pre-
defined by the wider socio-political environment, such responses remain
fundamentally limited and even ambiguous as a means of tension resolution.
Two of the most important sources of external constraint on media organizations
derive from the commercial and political environments in which they operate.

The commercial context of control

The early development of broadcasting in Britain illustrates the complexity of
the external forces which shape and constrain mass media organizations, and the
dynamic nature of the relationship in which the organization draws on,
incorporates and transforms prevailing social attitudes before transmitting them
again according to its own formula. In this light definitions of the media as either
‘the tools of government’ or ‘the fourth estate’ become untenable. What can be
said is that the mass’ media arise from, reflect, may reinforce or even change
prevalent social hierarchies, but that the strength and direction of this
relationship will vary greatly according to specific historical and social contexts.