It's too easy to control journalists - so we need to end media monopolies

The value of a diverse media lies not in education of people, but in maintaining diversity of world-view in society. Since news is easy to manipulate through soft censorship, media monopolies must be discouraged - because they threaten the social conflict on which meaningful democracy is based.

The Soviet states pulled out toenails in order to get people to say the right things. In Western media, however, a lot of journalists seem to say the "right" things in support of certain agendas without having to be threatened at all.

I will take it as fact that censorship still exists (I have a lot of time for Media Lens, for example) but the techniques are softer. Not always much softer, if stories I hear about the Maxwell years at the Mirror and Murdoch's reinvention of the Sun are anything to go by. But softer nonetheless.

I want to note that I don’t think soft censorship and media control are a conspiracy – at least, not quite. I don’t believe in a faceless cartel planning together to subvert the media. Nor do I believe the mass media designed to be vulnerable to control.

Nonetheless, I do think segments of the mass media are being used to propound a certain way of looking at the world, and I do believe mass media lends itself to certain kinds of control. This is because of the kind of thing the media is and how news production is structured.

The basic hierarchy relating to news in a newspaper starts at the bottom with reporters, who are answerable to the news editor, who is answerable to the Editor of the paper, who is answerable to the paper’s owner/s.

Editors are hired and fired for their ability to put together a paper that satisfies the owners (financially, ideologically, or both). News editors are hired and fired according to their ability to produce a news section which satisfies the editor. Reporters are hired and fired according to their ability to find stories and write them up in time.

In short, everyone is dependent on pleasing the editor in order to keep their jobs: the news editor puts together a news schedule which he thinks will keep the editor off his back; reporters write the stories with the slant necessary for them to keep the news editor happy.

Which stories are covered and the angle of coverage are therefore tightly controlled, in a way similar to what you would find in a company PR department. The difference is that in a PR department, employees knowingly submit to an explicit agenda – whereas in a newspaper the agenda is not often explicitly stated.

I guess the reason is that it suits the media owners to perpetuate the illusion that journalists are trustworthy. If media magnates were open about the control they are able to exercise, they might find it harder to get away with censoring and shaping what we read.

It’s probably worth digressing into the question of why journalists accept so much control - why the Pilgers and Monbiots of this world are exceptions in a mass of reporters who don’t speak out about the pressures on them to conform.

I don’t think it’s just the threat of losing their jobs which keeps journalists in line. To some extent, I think they willingly buy into the system – in fact, I don’t think they even realise they are being manipulated. (This might be heart of Maxwell’s and Murdoch’s legacies – they broke the popular media like you would break a horse. But more on that in future.)

The problem journalists have, which explains why they are so accepting of the status quo, is they are not only journalists but also members of the public. They get most of their information from the same sources as the public. They have been raised and live in the same culture as the public. They therefore have the same set of background beliefs and values which form the context in which they make judgements.

If the public’s world-view is tolerant of the mass media, then it is no surprise that journalists are also tolerant of the mass media: they have the same point of view.

The trouble the Soviet Union had with journalists came about precisely because there was a chasm between what the public and the journalists were supposed to say and what the journalists and public thought. The threat of violence had to be ever-present in order to ensure conformity. There is no such need in our system.

All this serves to emphasise why the media must not be controlled by a very few businessmen. If it is so controlled, then there will be only one value system dispensing information to the public.

Although there will be superficial differences between papers to appeal to their readership, the underlying values promoted by the papers will be the same. The large-scale coverage of major events will be the same, as the owners will have the same vested interests in them.

As a result, everyone will end up having fundamentally the same beliefs. The conflict between classes and political parties will be neutralised and replaced by a homogenous, business-centric world-view. We will all agree with each other on the important issues of major events - regardless of whether that viewpoint benefits us or not.

And there is the danger: the value of a free media lies not in its ability to educate people and keep them exposed to other points of view. In general, people have their points of view and read the papers they agree with. The value of a free media lies in keeping a diverse set of world-views in society, so that there is conflict between classes and political parties, so that concessions have to be made.

Without conflict there can be no democracy. If everyone thinks the same, it means only one viewpoint is having its way.

Although I don't believe that people are all that different, we do all come from different backgrounds and live in different economic and social strata. I therefore cannot believe that one viewpoint and one politics is able to serve us all.

Because we all have different interests, not all of which can be fulfilled completely and simultaneously, there must therefore be conflict in society - and this conflict must be resolved through compromise.

If there is no conflict and no act of compromise, entire social demographics must be buying into a system that does not serve their interests - as sure as if this is small landowners under communism, or the working classes under unregulated capitalism.

If we are unaware of what we need, I do not see how we can be happy or free. This is why the great victory of the tycoon - manipulation and control the system of distributing information to change the values of a reasonably free society – must not be allowed to happen. And the first step to that must be to prevent ownership of the media gathering in the hands of a few.

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