Page 218 - Culture Society and the Media

208 COMMUNICATIONS, POWER AND SOCIAL ORDER
Baldwin’s next ministry as a condition of his continued support was repudiated
by Baldwin in a famous speech as ‘a preposterous and insolent demand’ in 1931,
the limitations of press power were publicly proclaimed. The point was rammed
home a few weeks later when the official Conservative candidate loyal to
Baldwin defeated an independent conservative backed by both Rothermere and
Beaverbrook in the celebrated St. George’s Westminster by-election. The press
magnates’ ability to address a mass following, based on a cash nexus, proved no
match for a party machine, manned only by a relatively small number of activists
but able to invoke deeply-held and stable political loyalties.
The contrast between the extensive secular power exercised by the papacy in
the central middle ages and the more limited influence of the press barons
reflects a number of more important differences. The papacy sought to exercise a
universal sovereignty, whereas the ambitions of the press magnates were more
modest. The papacy developed a powerful ideological programme that
legitimized its claim to divine-right monarchy: the press barons articulated a
more defensive ‘fourth estate’ ideology that sought merely to legitimize their
place within the constitution (for example, Northcliffe, 1922; Beaverbrook,
1925). The papacy successfully dominated for a time all the principal institutions
of ideological production and imposed a construction of reality that legitimized
its supremacy. In contrast, the press barons merely amplified systems of
representation furnished by others (politicians, civil servants, judges, the armed
forces and so on) that legitimized a power structure of which they were only a
constituent element. Furthermore, they were unable to impose even a uniform
inflexion of these dominant systems of representation. Their control over the
press itself was incomplete; they did not always share the same political
objectives; and they had little influence over other agencies of mass
communication—books, films, radio, and later television. And by comparison
with the papacy, they were faced with a much more unified power-bloc, offering
few opportunities for them to play off rival factions in order to build up their own
power.

THE DESTABILIZATION OF POWER STRUGGLES
The rise of a new élite, linked to the development of new communications, has
tended to destabilize the power structure by generating or exacerbating tensions
and rivalries within it. This will be illustrated by examining the conflicts
exacerbated by the papacy in the middle ages and by the effect of the modern mass
media on the development of the British political system.
The extension of the Catholic Church throughout Europe created, in one
sense, a new element of instability in medieval society. As we have seen, the
papacy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy sought to regulate social knowledge
through its control over medieval communications in order to appropriate some
of the power and authority exercised by the traditional leaders of feudal society.
This process of aggrandisement was made more disruptive by the fact that the