Page 222 - Culture Society and the Media

212 COMMUNICATIONS, POWER AND SOCIAL ORDER
inevitably detract from political loyalties based on class affiliations and political
principle.
This anti-partisan bias of the media is the consequence of a number of
converging influences (12) . Perhaps the most important of these is a rationalistic,
anti-partisan political tradition that has long been particularly pervasive amongst
the professional middle class. As Reith, the founder of the BBC (and former
engineer) wrote, for instance, in his diary: ‘I reflect sometimes on “politics”. The
whole horrid technique should be abolished. Government of a country is a matter
of policy and proper administration, in other words efficiency’ (Reith, 11 October
1932). The view that rational, non-party criteria interpreted by disinterested
professionals should determine government has a natural attraction: it legitimizes
the claim of the professional middle class to stand above sectional interest, to
define the public interest, to speak on behalf of us all. A technocratic perspective
of politics has thus come to be expressed through the media partly because it is
an expression of a more generalized ideology widely diffused within the
intermediate strata, of which professional communicators are a part, which
legitimizes the prestige, power and status accorded to the professions.
The detachment of the media from the political parties has had only a partially
destabilizing effect on the political system. The mass media continue to provide
positive support for the principles of representative democracy; they confer
legitimacy on the political parties by giving prominence to the parliamentary and
party political process; and the publicity they give to elections is of crucial
importance in assisting the political parties to mobilize their supporters to the
polls. But the commercialization of the press, the rise of TV as a bi-partisan
political medium of communication, and the anti-partisan bias that characterizes
some media political coverage, have all contributed to the marked decline of
party loyalties and the increase in electoral volatility during the last two decades
(13) . In eroding popular support for the political parties, the media are eroding the
basis of Britain’s stable political system during the period of mass democracy (14) .

THE DISPLACEMENT OF MEDIATING AGENCIES
The introduction of new techniques of mass communication has tended to
undermine the prestige and influence of established mediating organizations and
groups. By providing new channels of communication, by-passing established
mediating agencies, new media have also posed a serious threat to the stable,
hierarchical control of social knowledge. The best illustration of this process of
displacement, and attendant social dislocation, is provided by the rise of the book
in late medieval and early modern Europe.
From the thirteenth century onwards, paper rapidly displaced parchment as the
principal raw material of books, thereby making the preparation of manuscripts
cheaper, simpler and faster. This important innovation was accompanied by a
massive increase in the number of people (mostly women) engaged in the
copying of books, with the development of commercial and university scriptoria,