“There has been continued tension between the BBC and the government of the day because of the expectations of governments, whether Conservative or Labour, that the BBC, as a national organisation should support uncritically and without reservation the governments policies.”
(O’Sullivan, Dutton and Rayner, Studying the Media, (pg 51))
This tension has emerged due to the coverage of ‘wars’ between Britain and other countries, by the BBC. They believe that they should be free to report in their own ‘balanced’ way. However, the BBC has always been dependent on the Government to provide the license fee it uses to fund the station, and decide its board of governors.
The government’s relationship with media conglomerates is a very tricky situation. It is almost as though government officials are scared to say anything bad about any of the national press, because they are scared they will then personally receive bad press. At the same time, a lot of the media companies have to pick what side of the government they would like to support as it does affect their news stories. For example, when Tony Blair was in the general election for Labour Prime minister. Suddenly, The Sun newspaper did a complete U-turn and started to support labour instead of the conservative party that it had supported for over 10years. The power relations between the two are really hard to work out because of this fear factor by the government, and the contributions from the media companies to support a political party.
The Broadcasting Act of 1990, and the publication of a paper on media ownership – ‘were concerned to ensure a plurality of sources of information and opinion and a plurality of editorial control over them. To protect plurality, it was proposed to regulate the media by ownership restrictions.’ (Price. S, Media Studies. Pg. 300) Due to the excessive ‘power’ big conglomerate companies seem to be holding, it was time to make the market more ‘free’, and stop these companies collecting any more media institutions or industries. This is not purely a problem within the U.K.; it is a Global problem that nationalists and capitalists are having great conflicts over.
“It is Sony’s philosophy that global corporations have a responsibility to participate actively in the countries in which they operate, a philosophy of global socialisation. This means thinking globally whilst acting locally.”
(Sony, USA)
Media companies throughout the world are buying each other out. They can then become bigger companies and have more power. Sony of Japan now own CBS records and Columbia Pictures, and the Bertelsman company of Germany, own RCA records and Doubleday books as well as a major domestic chain of newspapers and magazines.
The most well-known media company in England is News International. News international is part of a much bigger media company, News Corporation. The media giant, Rupert Murdoch, owns this world-wide company. Some of the companies within his International company are:
-
20th Century Fox * New York post * TV Guide * Fox Television * - all USA companies,
- BskyB * News International * - UK companies
- Vox (TV & satellite) – Germany companies
- Channel7 * Major Australian Press interests * - Australia companies
- Harper Collins * Delphi On-line Internet* - USA/UK companies.
(List compiled in Media student’s Book. Pg. 276)
News International in England is responsible for The Sun, The News of the World and the Times newspaper group. The Sun is the most successful newspaper in England and because of its huge readership (over 4million) it can help support other members of the News Corporation group. An example of this is, the troubles that the Times newspaper is having. The Sun’s capital helps the paper to carry on although; it only helps so that it can keep readers from going to a different newspaper.
“We must always be concerned if one organisation has a very large slice of the market and therefore has the potential to exert some control on how the market operates.”
(Branston. G, Stafford. R, The Media Students Handbook Pg. 282)
How much power and influence News Corporation has over its audience is something that proves impossible to read or judge. However, the corporation is not shy about letting its opinions be known to its readers. The sun is probably best known for this, as some of their headlines have asked the country to decide one way or another on a particular news interest story. An Example of this, is when it wanted the whole country to send petitions into Downing Street to make ‘Sarah’s Law’ happen. This still hasn’t happened, but it is something that the newspaper keeps on reiterating to the country and making it aware that it hasn’t happened.
They never ask directly for an opinion from their readers, but it is implied that their newspaper has a national voice, that the country agrees with. This maybe considered as power and influence, but if The Sun has so many readers, maybe it is just agreeing with the public and not exerting any power or influence.
News Corporation also own 20th century Fox, which advertise all of their films in other news Corporation interests. Amazingly the films are all given great reviews whilst other films don’t fair so well.
“Cultural production is also strongly influenced by commercial strategies built around ‘synergies’ which exploit the overlaps between the company’s media interests…The effect is to reduce the diversity of cultural goods in circulation.”
(Curran. J, Gurevitch. M, Mass Media and Society. Pg. 23)
Even though News international seems to hold such a big position in the UK, it is just a local player, and not yet the biggest global player. Due to all of the government’s regulations on holding too much of the market place, it will probably not get much bigger in the UK. It holds an oligopoly position, and over years this position will great greater as smaller companies will not be able to compete against these giants.
If the country were to consider media ownership regulation, it would be important for the government to examine what is meant by the term pluralism.
“Restricting the influence of any one organisation, guaranteeing access and fostering diversity of content”
(The Cross Media Revolution. Pg. 70)
Knowing why pluralism is important is probably the logistics to regulating media ownership. To regulate media ownership, will mean restricting the power and influence that they hold. To do this, the government would have to measure the market share, and decide what was influencing the country or not. This would take the same preference of fostering the diversity of content. It would also mean that smaller companies should be given the chance of making a go of their media communication, instead of the bigger companies swallowing them up. This would be guaranteeing the access that is needed to achieve pluralism.
Problems do lie within regulating media ownership; it would have to be decided if it just applies to this country? Because if it does, maybe companies can use profits from oversees companies to help them make a bigger company here. Also what about the existing companies that already own a lot of the media market (like News International), would their companies have to be sold off? To answer this it would be important for the government to set limits to each company and if a company has already succeeded this limit, they will have to be dealt with like all of the other companies, and sell their stock.
“Excessive influence is bad, whether it is concentrated locally or by medium of transmission.”
(Cross Media revolution, Pg. 70)
In conclusion, the ‘shifting process’ of power and influence from the government to media conglomerates, has been developing for a long period of time. This is mainly due to the popularity of the media and the way it seems to carry the nation’s voice. In a recent game-show (Big Brother), more people voted for the winner than they did in the last general election for the winning Labour party. However, the media may hold a lot of influence but it is the government that creates laws. This unimaginable power the government holds, outweighs all the money and ownership media companies hold. In the future, this may change and the public may revolt against the government, but this seems highly unlikely, as it is the public that have voted the government into power in the first place. So it maybe, is the public with all the power after all. It will be the government’s decision on whether or not to put tighter regulations onto the companies, but it is something that will probably take the government a long time to decide as they worry about the backlash from media companies.
John Keane doesn’t actually make the suggestion that, there is a shifting process, the quote, is in fact;
“Some analysts and commentators are concerned about developments as they fear that power and influence are shifting away from elected national governments towards un-elected supernational bodies.”
(John Keane. Media and Democracy 1991.)
These analysts and commentators are in fact looking at what is going on at the moment between the two bodies and then fearing the outcome. To fear this shift, makes it believable that the shift cannot be a good thing due to how much power the un-elected supernational bodies will have. Yet, with everything that has been examined in this essay, nowhere is there proof that the media companies do in fact influence us, they may have power of deciding what we see or hear.
It would be very important to complete a piece of research examining how much power the media companies have, and then if possible comparing it with the government’s power. To do this a referendum might be needed, but again, it is of general opinion that the government are quite stable and it is the media companies that can’t decide which way they are going.