Media Ownership and Control

80% of the media

• Rupert Murdoch (owner of News International)

• Richard Desmond (who was the owner of the Express)

• Viscount Rothermere (owner of the Mail).

• And the two Barclay Brothers (owners of the Telegraph)

until recently, what per cent of the media did particular billionaires own? name the billionaires.

he is a newspaper publisher and founded the global company News Corporation. his newspaper, The Sun and company News UK dominates 26% of Britain’s Market Share

who is Rupert Murdock? AO2

Billionaires are beginning to dominate and acquire new and mainstream media even further.

• Elon Musk acquired Twitter in 2022

• Jeff Bezos the Washington Post in 2013.

how are billionaires influencing the media?

Takeover at a different stage of media. E.g. Sony buying Playstation Studios

vertical integration definition

Takeover at the same level. E.g. Facebook acquiring Instagram

horizontal integration

Few and fewer large companies increasingly own what we see, hear and read

Williams

Concentration of media ownership is concerning.

• Democracy will suffer as some points of view are silenced

• Abuse of power by the elite will go unnoticed

Doyle

Owners directly control and manipulate the content and audiences, to protect their profits and spread the dominant ideology. 

Media editors and managers have little choice but to run the media within the boundaries set by the owner. This approach sees audiences as passive - a mass of easily manipulated, unthinking and uncritical robots.

what is Marxist perspectives on the ownership of media?

• False consciousness - the working class are misled to accept and internalise values that serve the interests of the ruling class, reinforced by the media's ownership and control by capitalist elites.

• Therefore, the audience is weak, media is strong

what are the key ideas of Marxist theory?

Mass media creates a bland popular culture full of sport, consumerism, fashion etc. This prevents critical thinking and the realisation from the masses that they are being exploited.

Adorno

50 companies controlled the output of news in the USA In 1983.

However, 90% of the USA media was controlled by 22 companies in 2022.

Bagdikian

British newspapers are controlled by an ever-falling number of companies.

Curran

• Not everyone responds to media in the same way - new media suggests that people are more active. Media can be polysemic - have different meanings to different audiences.
  

• Not all media owners are ruling class, or in support of it. Ken Loach creates anti-establishment movies, stressing the plight of the working class (e.g. I, Daniel Blake)
  

• Many Pluralists believe that media bosses are too busy with money to care about the messages that their media channels distribute. (Though Elon Musk’s involvement in X would counter this)

what are the criticisms of Marxist theory?

Journalists have more freedom than traditional Marxists suggest, and the media agenda is not directly controlled by owners. 

However, most journalists share the same beliefs as media owners, with over 50% of those employed in the UK mainstream media coming from Private School backgrounds.

what is Neo-Marxism?

• Cultural Hegemony  

• gatekeeping and agenda setting tend to result in issues which are harmful to the elite being kept out of the media, thus reinforcing the dominant ideology.

what are the key ideas of Neo-Marxism?

• The choice of the BBC to avoid reporting the cost of the Queen’s funeral.

• The reporting of immigration figures that don’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants etc. (e.g. GB News)

• The reporting of rail strikes - vilification of Mick Lynch

what are examples of gatekeeping according to the Neo-Marxist approach?

Journalists are reluctant to risk their careers and so do not publish news that might prove harmful to their owners.

Miliband

Cultural hegemony -  society’s shared values lead to the limited media agenda - the purpose is to maintain the status quo, which ultimately keeps the rich in power.

Gramsci

• Pluralists point out that the audience are active and are not swayed by the dominant ideology.
  

• Traditional Marxists say that this approach doesn’t take full account of the power to hire and fire. They believe that journalists don’t have the freedom that neo-Marxists claim.
  

• New media makes this idea less relevant - it is hard to maintain a ‘dominant ideology’

what are the criticisms of neo-Marxist theories?

• There are a wide variety of media owners and a wide variety of media sources. All interest groups can access platforms to express their views within democratic societies like the UK.

• Consumers have choices over which media they access and choose to consume - technically, this means they have more power than the producers of media.

• The New Media widens the ability of Consumers to become Prosumers. New Media reflects the views of wider society, not the dominant ideology.

what is the pluralist approach?

In the UK, Public Service Broadcasters such as Channel 4 and the BBC have duties to inform and educate. This helps maintain impartiality.
#metoo and #BLM are examples of how the dominant ideology has been challenged by ordinary people who create media.

key ideas of the pluralist approach - AO2

1988 - 4 TV channels in the UK - now hundreds. No internet - now billions of online sources.

Peake

We must maintain the free press. You do not need to ban newspapers like the Daily Mail, you just don’t buy them if you don’t like them. It is important that all voices are heard. The Mail brought about the Stephen Lawrence enquiry, which would never have been expected.

Ian Hislop

It is not true that media moguls interfere in the day-to-day running of their media empires. They are more interested in making money than shaping ideology.

Whale

• Davies argues that journalists and editors are not the neutral and impartial professionals that pluralists imagine. They rarely fact check (e.g. Hillsborough - The Sun - Kelvin MacKenzie)

• Curran argues that even though media moguls may not interfere day-to-day , they employ like-minded editors and journalists to get their points across.

• Feminists criticise pluralism as they say that the range of female voices across the media is far too narrow and doesn’t reflect society.

what are the criticisms of the Pluralist approach?

• Postmodern societies are media-saturated and impacted by globalisation - this creates more consumer choice. 

• In post-modern societies, there is no such thing as an absolute truth – people become cynical. Therefore, sociologists can no longer claim that owners, editors and journalists influence audiences.

The distinction between producers and consumers is no longer clear-cut. Blogging, TikTok etc, mean that ‘unknown individuals’ quickly become active media producers with large followings.

what is the postmodernist approach to the media?

Audiences become so immersed in media that they find it hard to distinguish between real-life and ‘hyper-reality’ (e.g. mourning Princess Diana)

Baudrillard

Participatory culture. People are no longer just mindless consumers or social misfits. They are media producers who care about what their friends and ‘fans’ think.

Jenkins

The greater access to media that people have in the modern world, means that the meta-narratives of the rich and powerful are now challenged and often rejected.

Levene

• Postmodernists exaggerate the impact of the ‘information explosion’ on ordinary people’s capacity to bring about change. The evidence actually suggests that media saturation has produced passive participation in a mass culture in which more choice means more of the same

• Postmodernists fail to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence for the existence of structural inequalities in wealth and power relations, which makes it difficult for any powerless group, whatever access they may have to the media, to bring about any meaningful change in their everyday lives.

what are the criticisms of postmodern theory?