Page 171 - Culture Society and the Media

NEGOTIATION OF CONTROL IN THE MEDIA 161
However, Elliott argues, the end result—the media output—will only vary if the
response of the individual communicator is supported by the organizational
system in which the communicator is working.
A focus on the twin dilemmas posed by the professional pursuit of ‘creativity’
and ‘autonomy’ within an organizational context raises a further dimension or
set of tensions in relation to media production. This concerns the relative
importance of structural and of operational factors in the development of media
output. In a general sense, it should become clear that although structural
considerations partly, at least, determine both the nature of mass media
operations and the approaches adopted in their execution, in the main they
impinge more on the general organization of communicators’ activities than on
the day-to-day implementation of individuals’ roles. These are affected at least
as much by immediate, operational considerations as by their structural location
within the organization.

Creativity in an organizational context
The ‘mass’ character of mass communication presents the media organization
with its first all-pervasive dilemma: how can ‘mass media industries’ reconcile
the dictates of organizational efficiency—for example, towards regularity,
routine, control—with the commitment of individual ‘creators’ to their skills or
craft?

The real trouble is that the ‘industrial revolution’ in entertainment
inevitably revolutionizes the production as well as the distribution of art. It
must, for the output required is too great for individual craft creation; and
even plagiarism, in which the industry indulges on a scale undreamed of in
the previous history of mankind, implies some industrial processing.
(Newton, 1961)

This analogy with industrial organization is a prevalent one in the analysis of
mass media roles and production processes. Newton goes on to argue that the
impossibility of individual craft is paralleled by the organization of production
for quantity, speed and marketability, rather than for quality. Because of the
industrialized distribution system in the field of popular music, for example, and
its reliance on large audiences, the mass media can afford neither the
unreliability of the individual music creator nor the tastes of sophisticated
minorities. This, the argument goes, produces an inevitable drive towards
standardized, commercial, musical pap, which leads to a further worsening in
audience taste and the alienation of the professional musician. Other studies (for
example, Coser, 1965) have described alienation as a typical communicator
response, and pointed to the development of occupational ideologies and values
which dismiss general audiences as unappreciative ‘outsiders’.