Page 190 - Culture Society and the Media

180 CULTURAL DEPENDENCY AND THE MASS MEDIA
tendency on the part of some critics of cultural imperialism to employ the terms
‘authentic’ or ‘traditional’ in respect to local culture in a manner similar to the
frequent use of the term ‘community’ in some western countries, that is, with
mythological, ‘gemeinschaft’ connotations of cosy togetherness.
It is also true that resistance to inter-cultural media penetration can at times be
expensive. For a nation that is committed to television, a decision to reduce
dependence on cheap programme imports may well require a much heavier
outlay on expensive home productions which, because of poor facilities or
inexperience, may seem to lack some of the polished gloss of western soap opera.
But the decision to restrict television time, or even do without television, is still
available, even if politically difficult. Resources for indigenous media
development may be affected by the availability of international advertising.
Even where there is no direct restriction on such advertising, however, its
availability can be reduced indirectly by policies such as import restriction or
nationalization. In Guyana, for instance, where such policies were adopted in the
1970s, the proportion of total media advertising accounted for by non-local
advertisers declined from 70 per cent to 10 per cent in the period 1964–76, and
this was responsible in part for a deterioration of programme standards, a
reduction in newspaper titles and cancellation of plans for expansion of regional
broadcast stations (Sanders, 1978).
There can be no adequate evaluation of inter-cultural media penetration which
does not take into full account the variability of mass media policies adopted by
individual governments. The infrastructure of global communication may be
very much the development of, and in the control of, the super-powers. But it
does not necessarily determine what happens within particular nations. Nor is it
free of internal strains: many western multinational corporations are in
competition with one another; there are political and economic conflicts between
the more affluent nations; and smaller nations have found ways and means of
bringing collective pressure to bear on the more powerful nations.
The danger of assuming a simple one-way responsibility for the shortcomings
of the international communication system is illustrated by the case of the major
western news agencies, which are frequently accused of ethnocentricity in their
handling of news coverage on which most ThirdWorld nations rely. Such
criticism tends to underestimate the extent to which the agencies have
regionalized their services, the increase over time in the overall volume of news
which they provide, and the problems inherent in defining what in fact
constitutes adequate regionalization. The major agencies are heavily dependent
on the output of national news agencies and the national media, partly because
their resources are in many areas thinly spread, and partly because more and
more restrictions are imposed upon the news-gathering activities of foreign
newsmen. Of equal importance is the willingness of many non-western media to
depend on western agency coverage even where alternative courses of action are
available. Matta (1979) has demonstrated the reluctance of élite Latin American
media to provide independent coverage not only of world news but of