Page 193 - Culture Society and the Media

CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 183
skills; fourth, they could be harnessed to the task of rapid expansion of formal
education and improvement of educational attainment in schools.
In the early promotion of these benefits, at least two important general
obstacles to success were frequently overlooked. The first of these was the
culturally-bound model of development which characterized much of the
thinking about the role of the media. Rogers (1976) argued that economic growth
did not necessarily have to come about through industrialization. Development
was not adequately measured by such questionable devices as GNP, nor was it to
be equated with such features as capital-intensive technology or international
loans. The western model had failed to bring about the anticipated levels of
development in many countries, and even in the west the process of
industrialization had brought about grave problems (for example, environmental
pollution) as well as benefits. A second obstacle that was overlooked was the
wide range of factors that limited actual levels of government or private
commitment to development-related objectives. It was assumed either that the
mass media, of themselves, would bring about attitude changes conducive to the
requirements of a developing society, or that the formal objectives of
development were so obvious and so compelling that any right-minded media
organization or its government would not hesitate to harness the media to these
objectives. But left to themselves, established privately-owned media systems
had no motive to engage in development-type programming if profit was to be
made in other ways, and if production costs could be cut by reliance on cheap
imports of popular programming from western countries. Exposure to such
material might conceivably enhance individual empathy, which for Lerner
(1958) was a major prerequisite for the acceptance of other aspects of what, in
his view, constituted the modern society. But it could just as well breed a
consumer-oriented attitude inimical to the requirements of a developing society
(Wells, 1972). As for the role of governments, many studies suggested that these
were far more likely to intervene in media programming on matters that
concerned their own political security than on development-related issues, and that
rhetoric was rarely matched by the reality (for example, Barghouti, 1974 and
Hachten, 1975). Other relevant factors that were often overlooked included the
low pay and status of journalists in many countries, the vulnerability of media
systems to the bribery and corruption of political machines, the widespread
intolerance of media independence and initiative, and even the corrupt journalism
practices which in some countries took the form of blackmailing vulnerable news
‘sources’ (see, for example, Cole, 1975; Jones, 1979; Lent, 1978).

Breakdown of traditional values
In addition to these general obstacles to successful exploitation of the media for
developmental purposes, there were many further considerations specific to
particular claims. Take, first, the claim that the media could play an important
role in breaking down traditional values considered inimical to development.