duretti
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... as espoused by noam chomsky and edward herman in "manufactuing consent".
In a very aberviated form, goes as follows:
1. The mass media in capitalist nations consists of relatively few, large corporations interlinked into fewer and larger conglomerates. These act in the same way as any other corporation - ruthlessly maximising profit.
2. In terms of content, what maximises profit is a strong systematic bias in favour of the establishment (government/big business/capitalist ideology). This is for the following reasons
2.a) The advertising licence to do business. The vast majority of income for media corporations comes from advertisers. Advertisers will obviously pay more for media sold to audiences more likely to buy their products. Content determines audience. Tomes could be written on which slant on news content will be most competitive, but pro-business/consumerism/capitalism and not too complex are key features.
2.b) Government sources. Governments spend huge amounts of taxpayers money to present their view of the world to the media in an easy to use format. Essentially coppying this tends to incur much lower costs than sourcing your own information, and as such, this is the competitive strategy.
2.c) Flak. Negative responses from lobby groups can be expensive to deal with (make no mistake, government and business lobbies are by far the largest and best funded) and as such, a competitive enteprise will seek to avoid them.
2.d) Reinforcing Ideology. Espousing a well known position takes less print space/air time than espousing a less well known one (to the same standard). As such defending existing positions is the cheaper and most competitive option.
3. Thus the invisible hand of the market ensures a systematic pro establishment bias across all sections of the media.
Was wondering if anyone knew a decent rebuttal?
Note: I have provided an extreemely abridged version. Please have some knowledge of the topic before bashing. Also, no ad hominems. Peace.
In a very aberviated form, goes as follows:
1. The mass media in capitalist nations consists of relatively few, large corporations interlinked into fewer and larger conglomerates. These act in the same way as any other corporation - ruthlessly maximising profit.
2. In terms of content, what maximises profit is a strong systematic bias in favour of the establishment (government/big business/capitalist ideology). This is for the following reasons
2.a) The advertising licence to do business. The vast majority of income for media corporations comes from advertisers. Advertisers will obviously pay more for media sold to audiences more likely to buy their products. Content determines audience. Tomes could be written on which slant on news content will be most competitive, but pro-business/consumerism/capitalism and not too complex are key features.
2.b) Government sources. Governments spend huge amounts of taxpayers money to present their view of the world to the media in an easy to use format. Essentially coppying this tends to incur much lower costs than sourcing your own information, and as such, this is the competitive strategy.
2.c) Flak. Negative responses from lobby groups can be expensive to deal with (make no mistake, government and business lobbies are by far the largest and best funded) and as such, a competitive enteprise will seek to avoid them.
2.d) Reinforcing Ideology. Espousing a well known position takes less print space/air time than espousing a less well known one (to the same standard). As such defending existing positions is the cheaper and most competitive option.
3. Thus the invisible hand of the market ensures a systematic pro establishment bias across all sections of the media.
Was wondering if anyone knew a decent rebuttal?
Note: I have provided an extreemely abridged version. Please have some knowledge of the topic before bashing. Also, no ad hominems. Peace.
