Page 23 - Culture Society and the Media

THEORETICAL APPROACHES 13
the interaction is not random, nor is power equally distributed amongst the
occupants of different organizational positions. Rather, power and control are
structured along the lines of the organizational hierarchy. But according to these
studies, control in media organizations was not exerted directly or crudely. It
depended on social control via informal channels more than on direct control via
formal channels. The mechanisms of social control were embedded in the
provision (or withholding) of organizational and professional rewards to
members of the organization. They ensured the consistency of media outputs and,
more important, they produced conformity by media personnel to the overall
goals, policies and ‘editorial lines’ of the organizations for which they worked.
Control, thus, is exerted from the organizational top downwards, both through
formal and informal channels. It functions, however, not in a coercive fashion,
but through the acceptance by occupants of the lower echelons of the legitimacy
of the authority of those occupying the top positions in the organization. The
conclusion which these studies reach then, is that the power of the media is
located at the top of the hierarchy of media organizations.

The political economy of media institutions

Resembling the preceding strand in its focus of interest, but diametrically
opposed to it, is the perspective which searches for the answers to the question of
the power of the media in the analysis of their structures of ownership and control.
Adopting a fundamentalist-Marxist approach, studies conducted in this vein have
been based on the assumption that the dynamics of the ‘culture-producing
industries’ can be understood primarily in terms of their economic determination
(Murdock and Golding, 1977; Curran and Seaton, 1981). Thus, the contents of
the media and the meanings carried by their messages are according to this view
primarily determined by the economic base of the organizations in which they
are produced. Commercial media organizations must cater to the needs of
advertisers and produce audience-maximizing products (hence the heavy doses
of sex-and-violence content) while those media institutions whose revenues are
controlled by the dominant political institutions or by the state gravitate towards
a middle ground, or towards the heartland of the prevailing consensus (Elliott,
1977).
The precise mechanisms and processes whereby ownership of the media or
control of their economics are translated into controls over the message are,
according to the proponents of this approach, rather complex and often
problematic. (See Murdock’s article in this book). The workings of these
controls are not easy to demonstrate—or to examine empirically. The evidence
quite often is circumstantial and is derived from the ‘fit’ between the ideology
implicit in the message and the interests of those in control. The links between the
economic determinants of the media on the one hand and the contents of the media
on the other must, according to this analysis, be sought in the professional
ideologies and the work practices of media professionals, since these are the only