Page 26 - Culture Society and the Media

16 CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA
Here, too, it is interesting to note the differences between the pluralist and the
Marxist analysis of this relationship. Pluralist analyses tend to emphasize the
mutual dependence between media professionals and the representatives or
spokesmen for other institutions. They argue that while the media are dependent
on the central institutions of society for their raw material, these institutions are
at the same time dependent on the media to communicate their viewpoints to the
public. The capacity of the media to ‘deliver’ large audiences provides them,
according to this analysis, with at least a semi-independent power base vis-à-vis
other power centres in society. The implication is not that an equality of power
obtains between the media and other powerful institutions, but rather that some
measure of independent power enters into the dealings of the media with these
institutions. Marxist analyses, on the other hand, regard media institutions as at
best ‘relatively’ and marginally autonomous. The media are regarded as being
locked into the power structure, and consequently as acting largely in tandem
with the dominant institutions in society. The media thus reproduce the viewpoints
of dominant institutions not as one among a number of alternative perspectives,
but as the central and ‘obvious’ or ‘natural’ perspective.
Thus, again, competing interpretations are provided by rival perspectives,
although the evidence deployed by both is similar. Questions about the power of
media institutions are, therefore, less likely to be resolved empirically, than to
generate further theoretical and ideological argument.

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES OF SOCIAL THEORY
In the preceding discussion, we have indicated some past shifts in the focus of
interest in media studies, from a primary concern with effects to a concern with
consequences which the operations of the media have for the shaping of the
message. In both these areas different questions have been raised and different
conclusions emerge when different theoretical frameworks are deployed. Such is
the case when attempts are made to describe and define, for example, the
media’s relationship to their contents. One of the key issues here revolves around
the degree to which the media are regarded as passive transmitters or active
interveners in the shaping of the message. Probably the most familiar of the
‘passive transmitter’ theories is the one which employs the metaphor of the
mirror to describe the role of the media in society. The notion that the media are
a ‘mirror to reality’ could be traced to different sources. On the one hand, it is a
reflection of the neutral stance implied in the concepts of objectivity and
impartiality embedded in the dominant professional ideology in the media. At the
same time it is rooted in a pluralist view of society, in which the media are seen
to provide a forum for contending social and political positions to parade their
wares and vie for public support. The media are thus expected to reflect a
multifaceted reality, as truthfully and objectively as possible, free from any bias,
especially the biases of the professionals engaged in recording and
reporting events in the outside world. This view is based on the notion that facts