In What Ways Are the Media Political - Essay Example

In What Ways Are the Media Political? There exists a symbiotic relationship between politics and the media with favors and patronage extended to each other and feeding off each other. Though this is not visible in the case of democratic societies, nonetheless the associations between the two are strong. Media conglomerates contribute heavily to political parties and are in turn rewarded with prime time ads in times of election campaigns. Considering the fact that in the US, it is a never ending campaign season with some election or the other happening all the time, the nexus between the political parties and the media is profitable indeed. The contention of this paper is that the very entity on which the responsibility of channeling the sentiments of the public towards productive purposes rests is abetting and aiding in fuelling these sentiments towards negativity and introducing an element of bias in its reporting. According to Hal and others, they have described a chain of these events as a crisis in the ideological system of the British society (S Hall et al, 1978) We have seen the press and the candidates involved in a continuous blame game for voter’s dissatisfaction, while the most powerful lobbying interest are the media companies who manipulate the public opinion in favor of legislation that is beneficial to the special interest groups on whom they rely for support while not disclosing to the public their hidden agenda in doing so. Further, while ostensibly promoting transparency through promoting efforts at disclosure of information, they nonetheless resort to infotainment or entertainment as information ensuring that their programs are often fit only for mass consumption and not intellectual in content. This is particularly the case with the Television medium where manipulation of images is routine and the viewer is bombarded with repeated sequences of images slanted in such a way as to “dumb down” the overall content being presented. However, newspapers and the internet are not free of this either. With the rise of tabloid journalism, newspapers have deserted informed and reasoned analysis in favor of pithy expressions and the websites of the prominent media outlets are so cluttered with ads that it is impossible to make out whether they are selling products or displaying news. The fascination with the private lives of the politicians and celebrities crowds out the news and features that have more depth than the average fare dished out by the news cycles. A case in point is the saturation coverage of the death of Michael Jackson that provided salacious details of his private life and untimely death without any informed debate on his contribution to pop music or his legacy as one of the most successful entertainers of all time. If we focus on the political aspect of the coverage, most of the news is a parroting of lines spoon fed by the government without independent reporting and coverage. A case in point is the way in which the US presidential election of 2000 was covered by the media. Ultimately the political discourse is changed through a quasi Darwinian process where the political reporting, media scandals and other form of politics, expressed as mere entertainment outweigh the important policy discussion and political information and weeds out the real political issues, thus transforming the entire face of transparent political coverage (Balkin, 1998) . In this way the goals of political transparency by the media are defeated by the actions of media like uncovering secrets of politicians, proliferating information and holding them responsible for their acts which are unrelated to politics. The media have increasingly become political since the 1980’s. As we have blue states and red states, there are media conglomerates that are identified with a particular party and brand of politics. This became apparent in the selling of the Iraq war to the American public through a concerted effort at putting a “spin” on the facts and doctoring the message in such a way as to make the decision to go to war on otherwise flimsy grounds palatable to the general public (Hubris, 2007). The first kind is the informational transparency in which includes access and disclosure of government information and reasons for government actions. Then we have participatory transparency, which is the second kind of transparency which can be defined as access to participate in the political space by fair and transparent means without special interests putting one of their own. Lastly we have the accountability transparency; this third type of media transparency gives media the power to hold government officials accountable for any violation of law or in the case of acting against public interest, either through public opinion or by the legal system (Tumber, 1999). Ideally, or at least in theory, the transparency in the political system can be achieved in all three respects by the media, that is media can make political information available to the public, enable them to participate in certain political decision and lastly hold the government responsible for any unlawful acts (Balkin, 1998). The reality however, deviates largely from the theory. In reality, manipulation of mass media and is done by use of rhetorical devices and programs that aim at the baser emotions and hence the media is used to further the aims of the political establishment. The way in which the news is slanted defeats the underlying purpose of political transparency and creating one which is obscured, obfuscated and presents a picture painted with manufactured political realities , hiding important information and frustrating political accountability (Fishman,1978). Today, as most of us would agree the absence of media coverage of important policy debates and of issues concerning attempts at transparency can make political transparency very difficult, or the right way to put it would be that it would make it virtually impossible. It is fairly obvious that transparency is the opposite of secrecy and hence the media has a role to play in bringing up issues that are covered up or hidden behind layers of official sounding language that obscures rather than reveals the true purpose of legislation. Unfortunately, the media abets the government in continuing with this charade with the result that the media has become a tool of the government instead of a vehicle for independent reporting and objective assessment of governmental policies. One of the major differences between politicians and journalist regarding the role they play in influencing different entities is that politicians are biased towards a party, and are very overt about their biasness and the ideologies of that political party. Hence it is important for the public to develop sharp bias detecting skills when being exposed to different views of the media and detect whether the information provided is true, fallacious or unfair. Certain types of that influence what the media or the journalists present to us are commercial bias, mass media is not all about objectivity, we must also remember that media are also a huge money making business and would be more willingly to report materials that create conflicts and scandals which generates larger amount if audience, as compared to news about harmony which is comparatively boring. Hence the more spiced up a story is, the more advertisements a media channel can get and greater is the amount of money it earns (Artz et al, 2003) According to a prominent website, “It is due to this objective that, as we have also mentioned earlier that media tends to report about political secrets and scandals while drawing out the attention of more important but boring policy related questions” (Rhetorica, 2008). Then we also have the visual bias, media, especially news papers and television are greatly biased towards the visual depiction associated with news (why? Use theory to explain news processes). This implies that news, even though legitimate but with little visual depiction is unlikely to get much of media’s attention. A prime example of this bias can be seen in politics, where policy, a more important angle of politics cannot be photographed and hence we have seen that it gets little attention. The last bias we are going to mention here, which is related to “political” role of media is Fairness bias. As one of the demands of ethical journalist practice is the editors and reporters should be fair. As a result of this bias, an illusion is created by the media that the game of politics is never cooperative. For example even if a politician announces a positive achievement, the media runs to the other party , and ask another politician in order to get a negative response on it, again compelled by this bias to be fair to the other politician, with no need whatsoever to do so (Rhetorica, 2008). Our free press should be “democracy’s immune system against...gross errors of fact and understanding” (Gore 26, 2005), but we know that its oligarchic ownership structure prevents the meaningful competition essential to effectiveness. As Al Gore succinctly puts it, “As long as individual citizens are not able to use logic and reason as the instruments with which they can dissect and meticulously examine ideas, opinions, policies and laws, corrupt forces will shape those policies and laws instead. It is the public’s lack of participation that empowers its abusers” (Gore 77, 2005). As well, in a “free” economic market the consumer is assumed to be acting rationally. We know this to be falseOne of the examples of how political media has affected the public in United Kingdom can be seen from the assertion of former reporter John Cole, former political editor of BBC news, his view on the impact of media on public, UK politics in particular, is that “there appears to be an increasing degree of cynicism in the way the media is treating politics, which certainly goes beyond journalist skepticism” (Stone-Lee, 2003). He also suggested that despite of increasing journalistic opinions to politics being broadcasted today, public interest is also harmed by the vicious work cycle and is vexing both politicians and broadcasters alike. He further asserts that this cynical approach towards politics is one of the reasons of low turnout in the previous elections, as people don’t know any more what they are really voting for (Stone-Lee, 2003). A case in point is the recent US presidential election where there was a concerted effort by Obama’s campaign team to mobilize voters to go out and vote. As the previous example showed, there is an overriding cynicism that has set in among the public due to the political nature of media and the belief that “nothing changes”. Hence, as the Obama team proved, online media can be made partners in a grassroots mobilisation that brings out the voters. Another example is presented to make the topic under discussion more lucid is the report by the media after one of the foiled terror plots by Britain in August 2006. However, the media clearly omitted the fact that both these governments have in reality failed to protect the citizens if United States and Britain from the occurrence of such attacks. If these important issues of failure of governments regarding protection against terrorism were highlighted it would have had an opposite effect on popularity polls. Hence, we can see the effect of politically biased media, who influenced (as CNN claims), the popularity polls in favor of Bush rather than highlighting the vulnerability of U.S and Britain towards such attacks due to weak aviation security. One of the most dominant medium of our age that simulates transparency is television, as it is regarded as of the leading communications mediums. In order to understand this link of television and political haziness we must be clear about the way in which television shapes our thoughts or influences our decisions. The general public uses television as the primary means of getting information about politics and staying up to date on current events. Hence we see things the television allows us to see and comprehend them in ways as portrayed by the media, also a further act on part of the media. The television networks often claim that what they show on TV is what the audience wants and they flaunt ratings and other statistics to show that viewers prefer a certain kind of reporting and news that includes shows that aim to titillate rather than inform. However, what has to be borne in mind is that the medium of Television lends itself to pithy sound bytes that register as blips on the consciousness of the viewers without leaving any lasting impression. The media reports through television in turn tend to operate according to the Darwinian Process, where only the more entertaining news survives, in any subject, be it law politics or even public events, while the less entertaining or more serious news is weeded out. The editorial process has also been skewed by the fact that at large companies, decisions about what to publish are made not by editors but by so-called publishing committees, in which the financial and marketing people play a pivotal role (Chomsky, 1995). This implies that television tends to emphasize those issue which concern political conflicts and covers those issues which involve the personal celebrity of the political participants. Overtime this approach makes the media focus more on political viability ways of securing a political advantage against the other party and less on substantive issues of policy. On one side coverage of backstage events, the political maneuvering, and news about how politicians are trying to win a competitive edge over others does provide a type of transparency to the viewers as they provide an inside account of political strategies. One the other hand, given the constraints of limited time and attention span of the public, these stories eventually cloud the policy debates. As was pointed out in previous sections, the media often portrays itself as a purveyor of common good as it specifically relates to what the viewers want. They flaunt the ratings for the programmes as an excuse to air content directed at the Lowest Common Denominator of public taste. However, the point needs to be made that there can be a provision for important policy debates aired at slots other than the prime time and gauge the viewer’s response. Indeed , television has become an important medium to control and influence public decisions, and because politicians understand this important linkage, they also play an important role in spinning the reality on television and their political image increasingly come to conform to political coverage as portrayed by the television. It is due to this reason that we refer the political influence of media as mere self fulfilling representation (Balkin, 1998). Another effective method of simulating political transparency is through media events. These media events are of two types, and are specially organized by the political parties to be covered by mass media. One , in which politicians are shown to be deliberating over the concerns of public police and the second category is the one in which politicians try to portray ostensibly intimate moments by participating in social events along with their families. The former class of events are crafted to look ‘governmental” and the latter are crafted to look “spontaneous’. In reality, these are patently contrived events aimed at generating viewers for the network and garnering ad revenue. Lost in this charade of “non-news” is authentic reporting and obscuring the real issues in the process of self aggrandizement and self promotion at the expense of real reporting. The need for filtering, both on the part of media and that of the audience furthers enhances the power of media. As politicians provide the media with off the rack press releases and stages events, the politicians provide media with “good television”. This entire process functions like Gresham’s Law (Britannica Online, 2008), as the attempt to present the media with deliberately manufactured, readymade and viewable forms of political entertainment, which cheap to cover, very easy to broadcast, and chop up for smaller news broadcasts as compared to developing their own programs on the same subject. Hence, the other forms of coverage including accountability, participation goals etc are driven out (Prior, 2007). For all of the above reasons, different forms of media can to manipulation of politics, despite the fact that the audiences may be aware of such behavior. Moving on to another example in order to elaborate on the effects of political media, recently in September 2008, Sky news was asked by a lobby of journalist to rate the politicians in the manner of card games. At the Labour Party conference in Manchester, 30 of the Britain’s Politicians were ranked on the “Politico Top Trump” based on their Google hits etc (Johann, 2008). The point here is that media events such as these are pure forms of entertainment for the public to boost up the popularity of politicians with no effort of their own. According to a study of the Ukraine media concerning its political crisis of 2000-2001, a strong ideological influence was found in the way news was framed by the Ukrainian media and this in turn had an effect on the pattern of deliberation. The two different types of frames used by the media were concealed attempts to manipulation of the public. It was also found that one of the dominant devices used by the media during this political crisis was deception and metaphors (Hallahan, 2003). Moving away from media events and television, another aspect to look at ways that media tends to be “political” is when big media firms like Walt Disney and Time Warner contribute huge sums of money to the election campaigns of Senators and Congressmen as a means of buying their way into the political process. (Backup) According to a report released in 2000, these media companies have pumped in around $75 million in to the coffers of politicians and federal candidates since 2003, also known as “soft money” contributions” (Cook, 1998). Jeff Cohen, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) founder, asserts that while the current corrupt system of media financing benefits many industries, like tobacco, media is the only one which is directly benefited and this shows self censorship of journalists and the media political role (Dichter, 1997). The exposure of past or recent political or personal secrets of the politicians is embedded in the culture of mass media who aims at digging into one big story to the next bigger one. Politics, of any country is full of such scandals, be it the Clinton and Lewinsky scandal. However, when a scandal revolves around a political figure, the media act like a mirror which reveals tons of information, which the most of the times are misdeed. This culture for political accountability, spawns auxiliary discussions, but not necessarily leads us to a proper understanding of government working or accountability of government officials. Yet again we see the Darwinian process at work. The more devoted to the media scandals, as they serve as forms of entertainment for the public, the lesser time is given to the real policy issues. Hence we see that the cultural aspect of mass media does play a role in influencing the political decisions. Conclusion The ways in which different media can served to be political have been illustrated above. In my opinion these are mere deficiencies of the democratic system and more should be done to firstly understand their operating structure and then try to supplement them with something better and more constructive, preserving the values of transparent media, information and accountability. Unfortunately nowadays media cannot survive without politics and vice versa. 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