The Power of Media
The mass media can be defined as all those mediums of communication which reach masses of people enabling communication between people. Basically, mass media is divided into two categories: the print and electronic media. Newspapers, magazines and books are examples of print while radio, broadcast television, sound recordings and motion pictures are examples of electronic. With the emergence of new technology other form of mass medium was developed, the internet.
The media represents channels of communication that can reach millions of people across the nation. These instruments are able to carry messages quickly to large audiences that cannot be gathered together in any one place at any one time. Thus, mass audiences are apt to be diverse, heterogeneous, and multicultural.
Mass communicators themselves are not people with whom these audiences have personal contact. They are remote and anonymous. The messages of mass communication are usually transient and impermanent as well.
The mass media is a very powerful entity. As a mass communicator, it can achieve what a nation-builder can by educating, motivating, exhorting and rewarding individuals. Media can hold before the public an ideal and castigate the deviant. Media can foster and promote the good and expose and condemn evil. It can promote tolerance, brotherhood and unity and root out intolerance, divisiveness, enmity and hatred. It can prevent conflicts and violence and build up peaceful relations and respect for rule of law. Media can curb confrontation and help solve problems amicably.
The mass media has become a more powerful institution than the state’s other three organs, as it can comment on and criticize functioning of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. It can make and mar individuals and institutions, as well as mobilize public opinion and overthrow governments.
News Presentation
The following are recurrent problems associated with news reporting and its influence on the political process: (1) a profit-seeking business, (2) objectivity vs. selectivity and personal backgrounds of journalists, (3) brevity in reporting, and (4) stress on drama, action, violence, and personalities.
First, new stories must hold the attention of large audiences. TV and other media forms depend upon advertising revenue, and the chances of a sponsor’s products selling are far less if the viewing or listening audience is extremely small. That is why ratings are so important. Typically, mainstream television (a major news network, such as CNN, is an exception) caters to entertainment shows, not to in-depth civic studies. Hence, the amount of time devoted to communicating political information is reduced.
Second, while journalists strive for objectivity, it is impossible to report every important story in the papers or on TV. Journalists have to be selective. Also, they are human beings with their own emotions and political attitudes. They also tend to be college-educated and upper-middle class in background. So, their stories may be slanted in one direction or the other. The news can appear fair and neutral, but it seldom conveys all of the facts that can help viewers make an independent, informed, responsible, and intelligent judgments.
Third, there is the need for brevity in reporting. Newspaper articles covering important political issues must usually be brief to make room for advertising, sports, or local issues. On TV networks, such as ABC, CBS, and NBC, evening news may have only have twenty to twenty-three minutes for actual stories, with remaining time devoted to commercials. It is very difficult to present the reasons behind complicated political events (inflation, the arms race, crime, etc.) in only a minute or two. Furthermore, TV covers presidential campaigns through the frequent use of “sound bites,” small excerpts of 15-45 seconds taken from a candidate’s much longer speech. Fortunately, there are more in-depth political news shows on television today, so some progress has been made in negating superficial coverage.
Fourth, lead stories of TV shows or the newspaper’s front page will often stress murders, earthquakes, airplane crashes, wars, scandal, etc. For example, rioting by protesters attracts media coverage, but reporters will often neglect the underlying causal factors that led to the riot in the first place. Politically, the media will view a presidential campaign as a dramatic contest or game between two protagonists, dwelling on personal differences, backgrounds, and conflicts. Detailed discussion of policy differences is secondary.
Inflammatory Media
Although the media usually claim that their purpose is to inform the public about public events, they often do so in an inflammatory way. Part of this is due to differing interests. In countries with a free press, journalists want to write pieces that get people’s attention (so they can get more readers, listeners, and/or viewers). To do this, they often focus on extreme events and negative stories, because those generate more interests than do stories about cooperation or peace. Although this bias does not occur in countries where the government controls the press, in those nations, the press usually gives the government view of issues, which may be highly one-sided and inflammatory as well.
In addition, many reporters simply do not understand enough about conflict dynamics in general or the particular issues or people that they are writing about to avoid making misstatements or statements that make the situation worse, rather than better. Further, they usually work on tight deadlines, interviewing as many people as they can in a few hours or days. Then they have to write their story and move on. This does not give them time to develop the deep understanding of an issue that is necessary to analyze it accurately and clearly for the public. As a result, media coverage of a brewing conflict which is intended to clarify the problem can actually obscure and escalate it.
The media and democracy
The essence of a democracy is information. Responsible citizens must gain accurate and worthwhile information from a conscientious, efficient media if they are to make responsible voting decisions. Critics argue that the media has failed in this mission, in that while much “information” (the quality of which is questionable) is available, the end result has not truly been an informed society. But media representatives argue that superficial treatment of the news is compatible with what the public truly wants. Most audience are simply not that interested in politics. They prefer to be entertained, rather than informed, by the media. Citizens are thus indifferent to media presentations involving complex issues and in-depth coverage of presidential campaigns. If citizens were to demand a more comprehensive and extensive media discussion of the issues and candidates, then the mass media would surely oblige them.
Modernization and Media Power
A pattern has emerged from the past clashes between new media technology and the political world. History shows that technology revolutionizes the way in which nations and peoples interact but without impacting the core of their relations. It is almost as if the media influence diplomacy and war at the margins while keeping intact the principles that guide both. The media, empowered with a new technology, can force the agenda but do not dictate the outcome.
From the printing press to the photograph, from radio to cyberspace, media technology has challenged political leaders to rise above the immediate “do something” clamor of public opinion. The changes unleashed by satellite television are no different. With nearly every new invention, diplomats complained that they no longer had time to make rational decisions, while journalists boasted of new-found power to influence public opinion.
History provides other examples of new communications technologies influencing public opinion. Seventy years after the invention of the printing press, the founder of the German Protestant tradition and the herald of the Reformation, challenged the papal authorities with a flood of pamphlets that exploited both a new technology and a growing role for public opinion.
If history brings a conviction about the primacy of leadership, so too does it leave a certainty that technology is often feared or praised beyond its deserved legacy. To this end, mastering a new technology is a fundamental prerequisite of strong leadership. For all the thresholds crossed by new technologies, individual skills of leadership in the selling of public policy matter most.
In modern polyarchies, the mass media emerge as an autonomous power center in reciprocal competition with other power centers. As (1992) note, “the role of the media has moved increasingly from being merely a channel of communication to being a major actor in the campaigning process, as it selects the persons and issues to be covered and as it shapes its portrayal of leaders.”
The emergence of mass media as an autonomous power center has had important consequences for modern politics. Media institutions and practices become indissolubly linked to “the institutions and practices of democratic politics”, as campaigning for office and governing are increasingly tailored to the needs and interests of mass media. In a growing number of countries, television and other media have begun to self-consciously advance their own agendas in covering politics. In countries having technologically advanced media systems, media collaboration and competition with politicians and government in “the modern publicity process” is now at the very heart of modern democracy.
Mass media also play a very important role in accentuating the process of personalization. Here, television is the key. Television is the medium through which voters typically encounter political candidates and officials, and it is through television that the attachments are formed that link citizens to their representatives. Thus, skillful use of television to cultivate personal support is regarded as essential to political success in every democracy that is well along in the modernization process.
The power of the media has been seen as a function of the extent to which the media have power over their audience and the extent to which the media themselves have power over what they present. Consequently, there are four possible answers to the question of the media’s power: (1) In what they present, the media have little or no power over the audience and, as an actor, the media have little or no power over what they present; (2) the media have great power over the audience, but little or no power as an actor over what they present; (3) the media have little or no power over the audience, but as an actor great power over what they present; or (4) the media have great power over the audience, and as an actor great power over what they present.
The media also have another kind of power. They exercise power by their mere existence. The simple fact that powerful people must give consideration to the way in which the media react affects their actions. There is an invisible side to the media’s power as well.
The invisible face of media power not only restricts action, but also leads politicians and other powerful people to adapt themselves to the media and the conditions they raise, such as the media’s demands for simplification, incisiveness, confrontation, and personification. This adaptation of the logic of politics to the logic of the media and the thought patterns and norms that journalists apply in their work is the most sophisticated form of power exercised by the media.
New Media
In the coming era of cyberspace, everyone is a publisher; everyone is a journalist, a possibility that blurs the line of professional status. Newspaper will have to compete with government offices, business interests, humanitarian groups, and outraged citizens for the public’s attention if information is the currency of the Internet.
Readers will have little for general news if prefer to get their information from specialists. They will have much appetite for reporters who pretend to be objective while pushing a deliberate if subtle ideological line. Eventually, the audience may be able to ignore the “professional” journalists completely. Online chat rooms already form at the drop of a crisis, as readers reach out to one another for information instead of the traditional sources of news.
The medium of cyberspace like journalism is a mixed blessing for diplomacy and international relations since with this new technology, the potential are enormous for global interaction. The internet can be used by government and savvy political figures to reach former adversaries and attract new investors.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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