Ownership and control

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Alicia

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'Five billionaires own 80% of the media' - These are supposedly Rupert Murdoch, Richard Desmond, Viscount Rothermere and the Barclay brothers.
A very small number of corporations own the bulk of media companies:
News UK (owned by Rupert Murdoch), the Daily Mail and General Trust (run by Viscount Rothermere) and Reach PLC (formerly Trinity Mirror, whose CEO is Simon Fox and who have now bought the Express) own over 70% of the newspaper market in the UK.
Even regional newspapers are now owned by a small number of newspaper groups, rather than run locally and independently.
Other media ownership:
Disney and online communication (such as Facebook and YouTube).
YouTube is owned by Google.
There are also a couple of important public service organisations. By far the largest is the state broadcaster, the BBC.
There is also Channel 4 which is also publicly owned, but there are regular discussions about privatising it.
While it is possible to overstate the power of these media moguls in the UK, after all newspaper sales have been falling rapidly for many years, and many more people get their news from the BBC, their dominance of the newspaper market is undeniable.
Media mogul: Refers to an individual who owns a significant share of a media company, arguably providing them with significant control over that company’s media content. For example Rupert Murdoch owns a number of newspapers and TV broadcasting companies around the world.
Curran (2003) points out that it has always been owned by very few people: in 1937 four men owned approximately half of all newspapers sold nationwide (including local newspapers).
Bagdikian described the concentration of media ownership as the ‘Lords of the Global Village’, which has existed for over 25 years. These ‘Lords’ control every step in the information, creation and distribution process.
Features of media ownership:
Horizontal integration
Media convergence
Global conglomerates
Concentration of ownership
Vertical integration
Synergy
Horizontal integration: When a media company will expand, often by buying/merging with competitors in a similar section of the market to them.
Media Convergence: Different media companies join with others to offer a product or service. For example, Microsoft windows operating system used by Samsung products.
Global Conglomerates: Companies that consist of a lot of different businesses/interests that may operate on an international level.
Vertical integration: Concentration of ownership in a single medium. E.G. a film company that owns a cinema chain.
Synergy: Media companies produce, promote and sell a product in a variety of forms - e.g. a film, soundtrack and video game for a superhero
The ownership of the mass media is concentrated in the hands of a few large companies, that have the ability to control what people have access to. It has been argued that the media have an ideological role to spread the dominant hegemonic ideology of the ruling class, which encourages individuals to accept the inequality of society, according to Marxists. However, pluralists argue media content is not driven by a dominant ideology, but instead is driven by consumer interest.
Traditional Marxists:
Argue that those who own the media also control it.
The media is owned by members of the bourgeoisie
They argue that these bourgeois owners instruct editors and journalists to put across particular messages to the audience.
These messages spread the dominant ideology which seeks to justify the power and privilege of the bourgeoisie.
Through this, the media is able to contribute towards creating a false class consciousness
This idea of direct control by owners is sometimes described as the manipulative/instrumental approach
Ralph Miliband argued that the editors and journalists in newspapers and other media organisations depend on the owners for their jobs and therefore will not use any apparent autonomy they may have to resist the dissemination of bourgeois ideology.
Direct interference with the content of the media:
Richard Desmond, former owner of the Express regularly visited the newspaper offices making clear demand of what should be included.
Rupert Murdoch claims he only took large, long-term decisions (such as which party the paper would support at a general election) former editors of his have suggested a much more hands-on approach.
Andrew Neil, has says that Murdoch was the “editor in chief” of the Sun and he did make direct interventions.
Curran (2003):
Found lots of evidence of owners directly manipulating media content.
In the middle of the 20th century, “press barons” were quite open about their propagandist role, and also that there have always been a lot more Conservative-supporting newspapers than those critical of that party, which reflects them serving the interests of their wealthy owners.
He argues that in the later 20th century and today owners are, even more interventionist, with again Rupert Murdoch being the obvious example.
Politicians clearly believe media moguls to have a great deal of control over media content because they try to get on the right side of them.
Tony Blair famously flew to Australia to meet with Rupert Murdoch and was rewarded with the support of the Sun.
David Cameron repeated this with the same outcome.
Criticism of traditional Marxist theories:
Neo-Marxists point out that the bourgeois owners of media companies do not have time to micro-manage media content.
Traditional Marxists suggest the owners have a clear political view and a clear set of economic interests and ensure that their media companies project those views and disseminates an ideology that supports their interests but in reality, owners can have so many business interests that they can really only control the big picture, leaving real control of media content down to editors.
Even the editors of large publications or programmes cannot control everything and give some autonomy to their journalists.
Criticism of traditional Marxist theories:
Pluralists argue that proprietors are predominantly businessmen, not editors.
James Whale (1997) argues that “media moguls” are busy dealing with global business matters, not what story to run in a particular national newspaper.
Why would you own a newspaper if not to try and put across your opinions? Pluralists have a clear response to that: to sell them and make lots of money. If the aim of media owners is to make money, then their interest in the content of the media does not relate to ideology or politics but to the more basic question of what will sell.
Criticism of Traditional Marxist theories:
Curran, whose research provides some evidence to support the Marxist perspective, argues that Rupert Murdoch’s interventions in his publications are more based on commercial needs and sales than being part of the ideological state apparatus.
Neo-Marxist view:
Agree with Marxists that the role of much of the media is the dissemination of bourgeois messages and ideology.
However, they argue that this is because the editors and many of the journalists come from privileged backgrounds too, and they were employed by the owners or the company who generally choose to employ people whose opinions and values are a good fit with their own.
Therefore there is no need to micromanage an organisation: it will put across the ideology of the owner because that ideology is shared by most of the journalists and editors.
The Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) found that, in the 1970s, the vast majority of journalists working in the national media were white, middle-class (usually upper middle-class) men.
Neo-Marxists theories:
Journalists and editors are not necessarily consciously disseminating the dominant ideology, in order to create false class consciousness.
The ruling-class have established what Gramsci calls hegemony. Through this process, bourgeois ideology becomes viewed as common sense.
This hegemonic approach contrasts with the traditional Marxist manipulative/instrumental approach.
Neo-Marxist Evaluation:
Traditional Marxists would question the idea that journalists themselves necessarily share the rightwing views of their owners.
The left-wing Labour MP, Dennis Skinner, tells a story about marching with striking miners through London and journalists at the Daily Express cheering them on from their office windows, despite the newspaper regularly printing articles attacking the miners’ union leaders and strikes.
This, therefore suggests the more traditional Marxist approach – the owners forcing their agenda onto the journalists and therefore onto the audience – may be more accurate.
James Whale (1997) would argues that the views and approaches contained within mainstream media is not a result of the social background of editors, but instead a result of the market demands of the audience. If some values are more prevalent in the media than others, it is because those are the ones that audiences demand.
Pluralists dismiss the idea that the media moguls and press barons control media content. They argue that editors and journalists are professionals with ethics and integrity who would not allow themselves to be manipulated by owners in the way suggested by Marxists and neo-Marxists.
Pluralist Views:
The concentration of media ownership is not a sinister ideological plot, but rational economics.
Companies want to maximize profits and minimize costs, and the formation of conglomerates, horizontal and vertical integration and globalization of media companies facilitates this.
They do not see such developments as cultural imperialism or capitalist dominance, but as the functioning of the free market.
They would, however, be concerned, if such developments led to a complete monopoly: their theory depends on there being genuine choice for consumers.
Pluralists point out that the audience has a lot of choice in terms of what it wants to consume, particularly today with new media providing a very wide range of different viewpoints and approaches.
Barnett and Weymour point out that, despite there being hundreds of television channels, there is not really an offer of greater choice: there is just lots of the same thing. The same is true, to a lesser extent, with newspapers, with most popular papers holding similar positions and transmitting similar values.
Davies (2008) argues that in contemporary society it is harder for journalists and editors to be the neutral reliable professionals that pluralists imagine. However, while a lot of output might lack fact-checking and in fact reveal bias, there is still choice and audiences can pick the media they prefer.
Postmodernists argue that significant changes in the nature of society – the move from modernity to postmodernity – have fundamentally changed the nature of ownership and control. They argue that it is, today, impossible to argue that owners or editors control the media
Post-modernist views:
The extent of choice that the audience has over the media they wish to consume is greater than ever.
Media saturation makes it impossible for individual owners or editors to control what is out there.
It is uncontrollable. The audience is the group who has the most control over media as they have some freedom to choose which media they consume.
Baudrillard suggests that media saturation is such that we increasingly cannot distinguish between real life and a media version of real life (what he calls hyperreality).
Levene argues that ownership of the media is not concentrated but rather fluid.
That there is so much media, and the gap between producer and audience has been so eroded, that people can easily reject any hegemonic messages from the powerful and create their own narratives instead. People can use social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to put across their own narratives.
Professional journalists and editors will often construct articles entirely from messages on Twitter, or online comments: the audience making their own narratives and subsequently influencing “official” narratives.
Postmodernist criticism:
Levene is too optimistic about the ability of audience members to control the narrative and bring about change.
Ultimately whether they break through into general consciousness is still down to whether mass media editors and journalists choose to report on it or not.
Otherwise such messages often exist in a social media bubble where messages appear to be “liked” and “shared” very widely, but they are largely circulated among a self-selecting community who already agree with each other.
In the UK, there are parts of our media that are not owned by private companies or media moguls but are instead owned by the government.
These are the BBC and Channel 4.
While Channel 4 still generates its revenue from selling advertising (and is therefore clearly subject to commercial pressures from advertisers) the BBC is funded by the license fee.
Everyone who owns a television in the UK, or watches live broadcasts on the BBC’s “on demand” service iPlayer, on a computer or other device, must purchase a TV License.
While the organisation is state owned, the government keeps it at arm’s length.