Page 17 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

belong to corporations as legal persons, the result offers extraordi-
nary protection to commercial interests, which are charged with
acting in a socially responsible way under the protective cover of
the constitution. In fact, over the years, a socially and politically
motivated protection of mass communication (or free speech) – per
tradition – has become the responsibility of economic interests,
which have used the process of mass communication to construct
a market-oriented version of democracy in action. As commercial
interests in mass communication have become stronger and more
pervasive throughout modern society, political authority has been
absorbed by economic power. Under an ideological and institutional
umbrella of democratic conventions, mass communication has
been reconfigured to respond to commercial concerns in ways in
which economic capital helps shape and reinforce the social and
political will of society – all the while being strengthened by
enormous profit margins, especially during the latter part of the
twentieth century. In other words, capitalism prevails under the
guarantees of the state, or, as Fernand Braudel once observed,
capitalism only triumphs when identified with the state, indeed,
when it is the state.
As a result, the mass production of information and entertain-
ment – supported by an authoritative, economic interest in public
responses to commercial or political appeals throughout most of the
last century – has steadily eroded the give and take of participatory
communication. Indeed, the past century is marked by an increas-
ingly complex and desperate struggle between individuals and insti-
tutions over social, political, and economic forms of existence on
the territory of communication.Who speaks, where and when, and
under what social or political constraints, have become important
questions, since an individual shouting into the wind or the specter
of town-hall meetings are no match for sophisticated technologies
of mass communication.
Even access to the means of mass communication, such as local
cable television, broadcasting, or print journalism, is insufficient to
offset the relentless pursuit of centralized, institutional media power
that has affected the realm of personal and social communication
and shapes the imagery of a world outside individual experiences.
As a result of these developments, mediated realities have given rise

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