Assess the Pluralist theory of the media and ownership

mass audience, and thus owes a duty to the people.  Marxists on the other hand would argue that the media constructs desires and creates social reality.  In other words it is a sculptor of a worldview and distorts social reality which is based on exploitation of a powerless majority, thus it is an ideological tool of the powerful bourgeoisie and reflects their interests.  Over eighty percent of the media is owned by Trans National Corporations.  But does ownership have any effect on the media coordinators? According to pluralists the answer is simply no.  They back this by highlighting the fact that power is dispersed within society and that different pressure and interest groups all influence the media, which reacts accordingly.  For instance Green Peace; an interest group can easily be identified as an influencer in media response.  Pluralists also share the view that media content is reflective of the audiences interests, an example of this is how coverage of ‘immigrants’ is often very negative in ‘The Sun’, a tabloid newspaper.  Pluralists feel that media is responsive to both market and public demand.  The audience is a dictator in terms of what it wants in media content.  Burnham argued that the mergers and takeovers are irrelevant due to the emergence of Joint Stock Companies.  His ‘managerial thesis’ also recognised that ownership and control is detached due to the fact it is impossible for individuals such as Rupert Murdoch to make every decision regarding media.  Thus there is a divorce between ownership and control, this is also due to the presence of chief executive officers and shareholders.  Burnham’s notion is evidently strongly in favour of Pluralists and possesses many valid points. Marxists on the other hand would agree with the statement that media controllers are influenced by the owners.  The Instrumentalists' main arguments would include that owners set the frameworks of their organisation and determine the long term plans of their investments.  They would ultimately argue that media is a tool of ideological control to reflect interests of the powerful and that controllers only possess operational control.  They would also point out that the social background of controllers and owners alike is similar, thus there would a consensus of similar values and views.  The structuralist Marxists would state that there is an immense competition and a fierce rivalry within and between the mass media, as a result of which a conspiracy of the powerful can not exist.  They would also declare that the personal influence of owners is diminished due to the pressure exerted by market forces.   Thus overall, Pluralists main view regarding media and ownership is that there is no influence of owners, mainly due to the audiences role as a dictator and the fact that power is not concentrated and is dispersed allowing for different groups to become influential.  There arguments can be subject to criticism as owners are a regulating authority with the possession of command, in other words they are highly involved in their business, and this may be due to competition as stated by Structuralist Marxists (above).   [20]