Mass media without the masses

As elsewhere in India too ownership matters - that the corporate owners of mass communications media do actually use it (both consciously and unconsciously) for their own purposes, which are domination and control. Conversely, one of the great triumphs of neoliberal ideology has been to convince so many of us that it does not matter, that the media are ideologically neutral and above social conflict, and that the concentration of media ownership in a few private hands is natural, inevitable and perhaps even beneficial. Anyone who has any doubts about this matter should read Schiller's books.

Mass Communication students and researchers in India must reflect on the writings of Herbert Irving Schiller, an American media critic, sociologist, author, and scholar. Schiller warned of two major trends in his prolific writings and speeches: the private takeover of public space and public institutions at home, and U.S. corporate domination of cultural life abroad, especially in the developing nations. His eight books and hundreds of articles in both scholarly and popular journals made him a key figure both in communication research and in the public debate over the role of the media in modern society.

His Books

* Mind Managers (1972).
* Mass Communications and American Empire
* The Ideology of International Communications (Monograph Series / Institute for Media Analysis, Inc, No. 4)
* Mass Communications and American Empire (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries)
* Super-state; readings in the military-industrial complex
* Communication and Cultural Domination (1976)
* Living in the Number One Country : Reflections from a Critic of American Empire

* Who Knows : Information in the Age of the Fortune 500 (1981)
* Information and the Crisis Economy (1984)
* Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (1989)
* Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America (1996)

His first book, Mass Communications and American Empire, was published in 1969. He taught "Political Economy of Communications" and he presented his first paper in the communications field, on the topic of the radio spectrum considered as a natural resource.

Post World War II, US corporations to flourish in a condition of formal political subordination (colonialism) to one of political independence combined with economic dependence (postcolonialism) with "a marriage of economics and electronics" backed up by an extremely formidable military power; U.S. bases encircle the globe, ready and willing to use force when more sophisticated methods of persuasion fail.

His book "Mass Communications and American Empire" called for "a democratic reconstruction of mass communications."

Schiller's second book, "The Mind Managers," published in 1973, showed the specific methods of mind manipulation used by the managers of U.S. communications media in the service of corporate interests.

He identified five basic myths

The "myth of individualism and personal choice" defines freedom in purely individualistic terms and insists that individual liberty and well- being cannot be achieved without the existence of private property in the means of production.

The "myth of neutrality" fosters the belief that key social institutions such as government, the education system and the scientific establishment (and of course the information media themselves) are neutral and above conflicting social interests.

The "myth of unchanging human nature" keeps expectations low by emphasizing the aggressive and depraved sides of human behavior and rationalizing these as inherent and inevitable aspects of the human condition.

The "myth of the absence of social conflict" presents conflict almost invariably as an individual matter, and denies its origins in the social order.

The "myth of media pluralism" perpetuates the illusion of choice and diversity in information sources, when in fact there is little variety of opinion due to the common material and ideological interests of media owners.

Schiller also described two techniques used by media managers to shape consciousness.

The first of these, fragmentation, is the dominant format for the communication of news information in the U.S.: newspapers and magazines intentionally break up articles so that readers are forced to turn past advertisements to continue reading, while television and radio news programs are characterized by "the machine-gun-like recitation of numerous unrelated items," with frequent commercial interruptions.

Advertising,"disrupts concentration and renders trivial the information it interrupts,"

The second technique, immediacy, further undermines the public's understanding of news events; the competitive pressure to provide instantaneous information, Schiller argued, generates a "false sense of urgency," with the result that "the ability to discriminate between different degrees of significance is impaired".

He found reasons for hope that "the industrial working class, young and old, may be compelled for its own protection to abandon its present support for the 'system' and to adopt a vigorously critical stance would help to "demystify the media for a significant number of people".

In 1976, publication of "Communications and Cultural Domination" included an analysis of the media system in Chile under the Allende Popular Unity government overthrown in September 1973 by a military coup, which, it might be noted, was motivated rather explicitly by neoliberal theories of free-market competition as formulated by economists trained at the University of Chicago. In this analysis Schiller noted that, while freedom of information effectively disappeared in Chile after the coup, under the socialist Allende government there was a remarkably free flow of information representing all points on the political spectrum. The largest number of television viewers continued to watch a commercial station that carried programs produced in the U.S. Most radio stations remained in the hands of conservative, antigovernment elements, and the number of conservative newspapers actually increased. Of course, socialist ideas were also disseminated more widely than before, and in Schiller's view this explained the hostility of the anti- Allende elements toward the free information flow that prevailed in 1971-73. The Chilean experience, he argued, showed that genuine pluralism becomes intolerable to property-owning classes when it leads to widespread critical thinking and social action, and he drew the conclusion that the Popular Unity government's strong adherence to the doctrine of the free flow of information was in fact a mistake.

He argued that the flow of information between countries "follows the international division of labor, which itself is determined by the structure and practices of the strongest capitalist states".

He insisted on the legitimate right of nation-states to resist the importation of "messages of domination" in media produced by multinational corporations. It might be better to focus on the teaching of media literacy as part of these efforts, so that members of oppressed groups could learn to recognize and resist "messages of domination" themselves.

In the 1980s, as computerization of the economy and communications accelerated, Schiller advocated a "go-slow" computerization policy. In Who Knows: Information in the Age of the Fortune 500, he called for "a maximum effort directed at slowing down, and postponing wherever possible, the rush to computerization," in order to allow "time to think through the enormous complexities that surround advanced communication and other technologies at this stage of unequal global power and influence".

In Information and the Crisis Economy (1984), he described the "deepening overall social crisis" brought about by "economic, political, and military policies designed to maintain imperial power," and warned that "Technological solutions devoid of social accountability will be terribly costly to millions of human beings".

In Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (1989), Schiller lamented that "Transforming information into a salable good, available only to those with the ability to pay for it, changes the goal of information access from an egalitarian to a privileged condition," with the result that "the essential underpinning of a democratic order is seriously, if not fatally, damaged, not only in news but also in entertainment and general cultural product".

In Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America (1996), he harshly criticizes the Clinton Adminstration's "vision of, and reliance on, high-tech communications as the ultimate answer to whatever is ailing the country." He dissects the 1993 "Agenda for Action" report issued by the task force on the National Information Infrastructure (NII), calling its promised solutions to the nation's education problems a "technological subterfuge" of the Clinton-Gore leadership and their bipartisan supporters in Congress as "all power to the corporate communication sector," Schiller argues that private ownership and market competition are "Washington's basic prescriptions for the infrastructure that promises to carry, for business and home use, all the image and message and data flow that the country produces".