Page 24 - Culture Society and the Media

14 CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA
channel through which organizational controls can be brought to bear on the
output of the media. Studies of the political economy of media organizations
must therefore be closely related to, and supplemented by, analyses of the
professional ideologies and practices found in these organizations.

Professional ideologies and work practices

Studies of the beliefs, values and work procedures of media professionals have
their theoretical roots in the sociology of the professions. Early studies of
professionalism in the media raised the question whether those employed in the
media deserved the accolade of being described as a profession. The search for
an answer was based on examining whether media occupations possessed the
attributes of professionalism, which have defined the classic professions, such as
medicine and the law. One of the attributes of professionalism has been the
development of a professional ethos or ideology which defined the beliefs and
values of the profession, laid down guidelines for accepted and proper
professional behaviour and served to legitimate the profession’s sources of
control and its insistence on the right to regulate and control itself and its
members. Examinations of professionalism in media occupations, particularly in
journalism, identified a strong claim for professional autonomy, derived from the
democratic tenets of freedom of expression and ‘the public’s right to know’. In
addition, media professional ideology developed a commitment to values such as
objectivity, impartiality, and fairness.
Academic discussions of the ideologies of media professionals reveal the
diametrically opposed conclusions which might be reached when the same body
of evidence is looked at from competing theoretical perspectives. A strict
pluralist interpretation would accept that media professionals’ claims to autonomy
and their commitment to the principles of objectivity and impartiality indeed
operate as guidelines for their work practices and as regulators of their
professional conduct. It would, therefore, see ultimate control of the production
process in the media as resting in the hands of the professionals responsible for
it, in spite of the variety of pressures and influences to which they may be
subjected. Some Marxist interpretations, on the other hand, challenge the validity
of the claims by media personnel and dismiss the notions of objective and
impartial work practices as, at best, limited and societal, masking the
professionals’ subservience to the dominant ideology. Control of the production
process by media professionals is confined, in this view, to the production of
messages whose meanings are primarily determined elsewhere within the
dominant culture.
The polarity of these interpretations allows ample space for intermediate
positions. Thus some proponents of the pluralist approach acknowledge the
limitations on the autonomy of media professionals, and concede that the
prevailing socio-political consensus defines the boundaries and constrains the
space within which media professionals can be impartial. Similarly, some