Another example of disputes between organisations is the Government versus the BBC over the Iraqi war. This argument came about after Britain when to war with Iraq. One of the journalists in the BBC said that he had evidence that the dossier produced by the government, with reasons why we should go to war with Iraq (the evidence that Iraq has Weapons of Mass destruction), had been ‘sexed-up.’ The Government denied this, but the chief editor, editor in general both stood behind their journalist. This was eventually proved to be wrong, both of the editors resigned and so did the journalist. This shows that the media doesn’t control everything we read or listen to. Instead other organisations can stop them publishing false information.
Another argument put forward by pluralists is that human nature itself does not allow the concept of a ruling class in the media. People have the ability to choose what they are going to read, watch or listen to. Therefore they would notice if there was no choice in the media output and would begin questioning the media owners.
Pluralists also believe that society is now made up of many different groups, people with very different beliefs and ideology. If you look at our media today there is still bias but many other opinions or even religions are portrayed in different forms of the media. For example the Asian Network, on the BBC Digital network, is aimed at Asian people living in Britain today. This Network talks about their religious beliefs, their culture being compatible with life in Britain and it also plays their cultural music. Whereas BBC Radio One aims at an audience of British people with a traditional English culture, their views are put forward and music popular in this audience is played. Both of these networks are extremely popular but they are very different. Now this proves the pluralist view that the mass media is appealing to different groups of people. “Today’s society is composed of a great diversity of groups…pluralists argue that the media reflect this diversity in their output.”
There are also arguments against the pluralist ideas of the mass media. Marxists would argue against the idea of an equal access route to the control of the mass media. In order to buy a successful existing newspaper company you would have to pay millions. Most ordinary people simply do not have that amount of money. Also to start a newspaper company you need to have money. Also even if a minority group started up it would struggle to stay open against one of the large media companies, as it would be appealing to a smaller audience.
Another argument is that media owners can try to control the output of the media, even if they are not successful. There are many examples of direct manipulation of the media by its owners. Here are some examples, both of which show the direct manipulation of Rupert Murdoch (owner of the Sun, The Times, Sunday Times, The News of the World, SKY TV, Fox Network, the publishing company Collins, amongst many others). When SKY TV made a bid for Manchester United every single newspaper was against this except the papers which Mr Murdoch owned. The Sun and The News of the World were the forerunners in support for the move. Marxists would say that Mr Murdoch used his newspapers to try and convince people that his latest financial investment was the correct thing for himself and Manchester United.
Another example is that of The Iraq War. It is reasonably known that Rupert Murdoch has a very profitable friendship with the Prime Minister, of England, Tony Blair and The President of the United States, George W Bush. It was no surprise that when Britain when to war against Iraq, to aid America, that the only papers to support the war were the papers owned by Rupert Murdoch. These examples both show that sometimes media owners do sometimes manipulate the media in order to benefit themselves or their allies.
The Government also try to manage the media, they are sometimes unsuccessful but they been successful on a number of occasions to keep certain things out of the Newspapers. If the media wants to run a story and the Government do not wish them to do so. Then sometimes they class the information under The Official Secrets Act. This makes it illegal for the information to be published or shared with anyone. This backs up the argument that the Government do control to a certain extent what information the British public have access to.
Another argument against the pluralist view is that usually given by feminist groups. This is the fact that the media is generally controlled by white, middle-class males. If you look at a newspaper’s list of employees with their photographs, then you will see that any women working for the newspaper are usually in very stereotypical roles, such as: secretary, gossip editor, magazine editor, advice columnist, columnist, medical reporter, home and family editor. This is therefore decreasing the variety of opinions in the media. The media cannot surely put across a variety of views and opinions if all of their articles are written by the same type of person.
There are alternative ideologies to the pluralist view. One of these alternatives is Marxism; there are two forms of Marxism, Hegemonic or Neo-Marxism and then Marxism itself. Marxists believe that the mass media is a means to control society. They believe that the things we read in the newspapers or see on the news are the limited ideas and beliefs of the dominant few. This ‘elite’ can tells us anything they want to, they basically brainwash us into a happy existence in our current position. Marxists think that the media, along with school, soap operas, television programmes and game shows brainwash us into a passive acceptance of our current status in society, unquestioning of our current political system and our exploitation.
Another alternative is feminism. There are three forms of feminism, they are: Liberal Feminism, Radical feminism and Marxist/Socialist feminism.
Liberal Feminism believe that social inequality is seen to have been introduced by stereotypes and gender socialization. In accordance to this the mass media is responsible, along with education and TV etc, for keeping these prejudices in our society today. They believe that if these ideas were removed and more positive images of women brought in to the media, then equality would begin to be developed. In order to achieve full equality this would need to be supported by law.
Radical Feminism is the belief that female oppression is the direct result of a male dominated society. This usually results in the want to eradicate men from women’s lives completely, resulting in lesbianism. It is the most extreme form of feminism; it is fully built on the foundation belief that men have a desire to control women.
Marxist/Socialist feminism believes in discrimination, and that all types of ideological control benefit capitalism. It is not only sexism tied under this belief but class, sexuality, disability and ethnicity.
After looking at several issues to do with the pluralist view on the mass media, I believe that this ideology gives us a reasonable amount of accuracy on how our media system works. Marxism and feminism both challenge this ideology; however they cannot challenge all of the pluralist ideas successfully. They simply do not hold the answers to some of the pluralist questions.
