Page 57 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

VIII

The birth of mass communication as an American ideology of tech-
nological progress in the service of democracy occurred in an
atmosphere of industrial practices – vis-à-vis the demands of com-
mercial and military conflicts. It was accompanied by the rise of a
new social scientific curiosity about social control. Indeed, Gramsci’s
suggestion that social (or political) control is a matter of incorpo-
ration is reflected in earlier considerations of the power of public
opinion, or the role of the press, for instance, when censorship as a
common political practice was replaced by the use of persuasion
and co-optation that depended on the use of mass communication.
Thus, since the end of the nineteenth century there has been a
shift among newspapers from being a political institution – with a
peculiar, often personal, agenda, party loyalty, and individual editor-
ial leadership that signal partisanship and awareness of an anticipat-
ing, loyal readership – to a market orientation with the goal of
catering to a large and anonymous readership with diverse political
interests. In this change of character, mass communication took
advantage of the commodification or standardization of news and –
more generally – reflected the structural changes of industrialization
that would eventually lead to the consolidation and concentration
of ownership – not just of the press, but also of broadcasting and
film. As means of mass communication continued to be combined
in the hands of fewer owners – and few attempts have been made
recently to address the issues of one-newspaper towns, chain own-
ership, or broadcast networks and cross-ownership – one discovers
with Barzan and Sweeney (in Monopoly Capital ) that monopoly
rather than competition determines capitalism. Indeed, mass com-
munication thrives under conditions of industrialization.
Michael Schudson calls these developments the “antithesis of
association or community.”They narrow the potential of the public
sphere and strengthen the commitment to profitability and eco-
nomic survival. Consequently, a neglect of the community at large
at the expense of class differences, ethnic diversity, social conflict
resolution, and the potential for widespread participation in the
public discourse, creates a media system that is more committed to
private profitability than to public accountability.

45