Download Normative theories (of press performance)

Normative theories
(of the media)
MCOM 310
Mass Communication Studies
Normative theory
• Descriptive statements are falsifiable statements
that attempt to describe reality.
• By contrast, normative statements affirm how
things should or ought to be, how to value them,
which things are good or bad.
• Normative theories of the press: Ideal views of
how journalism/ media ought to, or are expected
to, operate – what is desirable in relation to both
structure and performance): “Journalists/
journalism should or could do this or that.”
Structure and performance
• Structure – e.g. freedom from the state,
multiplicity of different channels.
• Performance – e.g. how the media carry out their
chosen or allotted informative or entertaining
tasks. Conventions, genres, professional
guidelines and ethical rules, which apply to what
the media do.
Four theories of the press
The Four Theories of the Press (Schramm, Siebert,
Peterson. 1956)
Basic theories:
• Authoritarian
• Libertarian
Variations:
• Social responsibility
• Soviet communist
McQuail’s additions
Additions (Denis McQuail. Mass Communication
Theory: An Introduction):
• Development
• Democratic-participant
Authoritarian theory
• Applies to authoritarian societies, but can surface
in less authoritarian societies (particularly in
times of war, terrorism)
• Depends on the medium – TV subject to greater
control in some countries
• Propaganda model of Chomsky and Herman – is
US media authoritarian? (Model alleges systemic
biases in the mass media and seeks to explain
them in terms of structural economic causes.)
Authoritarian assumptions
• Press should do nothing to undermine vested
power and interests;
• Press should be subordinate to vested power and
authority;
• Press should avoid acting in contravention of
prevailing moral and political values;
• Censorship justified in the application of these
principles;
• Criminalisation of editorial attacks on vested
power, deviations from official policy, violation of
moral codes.
• Media as instrument/ mouthpiece to publicise and
propagandise government ideology and actions.
• Absolute power of state versus subservience of the
individual – press ‘freedom’ a right vested in the
state.
• Examples: Fascist regimes, some African countries,
communist countries? Aspects of apartheid SA?
Libertarian theory
• Modernity: Rise of democracy, religious freedom,
expansion of economic freedom, philosophical
climate of the Enlightenment
• Undermined authoritarianism – emphasis on
personal freedom and democracy
• The idea that people are rational – can
distinguish between truth and falsehood, and
between good and evil.
• Classical liberal perspective:
• Free market as foundation of free media;
• Freedom to publish without prior restriction – independence from government;
• Public has access to wide diversity of opinion (only limitation on freedom to
publish is public willingness to pay);
• Market-based diversity promotes public rationality – free marketplace of ideas
and information as a self-righting mechanism, minimises bias and exposes
weak arguments and evidence.
• Another strand in liberal tradition:
• Media as representative agency (‘Fourth Estate’ alongside
executive, legislative and judicial authorities)) or as a
watchdog protecting the public (individuals rights),
overseeing the state.
• Watchdog reveals abuses in the exercise of state
authority… this role overrides all other functions of the
media and dictates the form in which the media should be
organised, i.e. the free market.
• “The best stories are those that afflict the comfortable
and comfort the afflicted, the ones that the people of
power do not want told.” Peter Beaumont and John
Sweeney, The Observer
• But, can muckraking journalism co-exist with objective
journalism?
• Objectivity: As newspapers gradually lost their party
affiliations, journalists worked to establish their
independence as searchers after “objective truth”.
• Independence from government control and
influence – if media is subject to public regulation it
will lose its bite as a watchdog.
• Press is source of information and platform for
expression of a range of divergent opinions; enables
people to monitor government and form ideas about
policy.
• Curran: But, society seen as an aggregation of
individuals – media’s representative role conceived
primarily in terms of articulating public opinion,
which is the sum of individual opinion. How should
media relate to representative structures as distinct
from individuals – role of media in mediating class
and other conflict in society? Also, little account of
how power is exercised through non-state
structures, like property and patriarchy.
• Is a free press and end in itself, a means to an end,
or an absolute right?
• Freedom can be abused. Absolute freedom is
anarchy. Mill: The freedom of the individual
constrained by the freedom of other individuals. (My
freedom ends where yours begins).
• Boundaries of freedom defined in such a way that
they do not infringe the rights of the individual.
• Abolition of censorship; but, also the introduction of
press laws designed to protect individual rights
(protection of reputation, privacy, moral
development of individuals or groups, security of the
state) – could override the right of the press’s
freedom to publish.
• Assumptions:
• Press should be free from any external censorship;
• Publication and distribution should be accessible to any individual or group
with a permit or license;
• Attacks on governments or parties should not be punishable;
• No coercion to publish anything;
• Freedom of access to information.
Social responsibility theory
• Hutchins Commission, 1947 – reaffirmed the principles of
freedom/ independence but added to them the notion of
social responsibility.
• Media operate in capitalist economy, but some believe the
market can function benignly (not just in the interests of
shareholders but of all people).
• Premises (McQuail):
• Media have important function to fulfil in society (support
democratic political principles);
• Media are under obligation to fulfil their social functions
(transmission of information and creation of a forum for different
viewpoints);
• Independence of media emphasised in relation to their
responsibility towards society;
• Media should meet certain standards.
• Solutions to the problem (of reconciling freedom with responsibility):
• Regulation
• Promotion of political and cultural pluralism – independent public institutions for control
of broadcasting (e.g. ICASA);
• Balance of public and private ownership
• Professionalism:
• Codes of conduct;
• Training and continuing development of professionalism, to advance and nurture
balanced and impartial news presentation.
• More principles (McQuail):
• Media should accept responsibilities towards society;
• Media should fulfil responsibilities by setting professional
standards with regards to the supply of information and
the truth, accuracy, objectivity and balance of their
reporting;
• Media should apply self-regulation;
• Media should avoid publicising information that can lead
to crime, violence or social disruption, as well as
information that can offend ethnic or religious minorities;
• Media collectively should represent all social groups and
reflect the diversity of society by giving people access to a
variety of viewpoints and opportunity to react to them.
• Society entitled to high standards and intervention
justifiable if the media fail to meet these standards.
Soviet communist press theory
• Western notions of freedom of press rejected by
Soviet bloc as being fundamentally ‘unfree’
because Western media are controlled by
capitalist economic interests (prevent them from
publishing the Marxist truth).
• Communist press – no profit motive. But, did this
mean it did not foreground special, elite interests
in Soviet society?
• Assumptions:
• Media should act in the interests of and be controlled by the working class;
• Media should not be under private control;
• Media should perform positive functions for society, such as socialisation (to
make people conform to desirable norms), education, the supply of
information, motivation and mobilisation of the masses;
• Media should respond to the desire and needs of their recipients;
• More assumptions:
• Society has right to use censorship and other legal measures to prevent and
punish antisocial publication;
• Media should reflect complete and objective view of world and society in
terms of Marxist-Leninist principles;
• Media should support communist movements everywhere.
• After fall of Soviet Bloc, is this relevant? What about
China? Cuba? Parts of Africa?
A brief critique of libertarian and
social responsibility theories
A political critique:
• Journalism in capitalist societies functions in the
interests not of society as a whole, but of
dominant groups and classes.
• Concepts like free press, democracy, the public
interest, objectivity, neutrality seen as myths.
• All research processes – including journalism –
seen as value-laden and methodological
decisions political.
• “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the
powerful and the powerless means to side with the
powerful, not to be neutral.”
Paulo Freire
• Concentration of ownership and control of media
(lack of diversity), and the declining vitality of
publicly funded media/cultural institutions like
public broadcasters (due to privatisation).
• Other problems with modern media:
•
•
•
•
Lack of democracy within media organisations;
Governmental secrecy;
Institutionalised racist and patriarchal codes;
Commodification of culture:
• Are we being addressed as citizens or as consumers? Shift away from involving people in
societies as political citizens of nation states towards involving them as consumption
units in a globalised corporate world.
Journalists and objectivity
• Can journalists transcend their own subjectivity in accounting for
the facts?
• Does such a demand rest on plausible philosophical assumptions
about the nature of, and relations between, perception, the
external world, facts and values?
The biases of objectivity
• Theodore Glasser: As a set of beliefs, objectivity is rooted in a
positivistic view of the world – a commitment to external,
observable, and retrievable facts.
• Such an ideology promotes three kinds of bias.
1. Bias against the watchdog role of the media in
favour of the status quo.
To remain value neutral, only news sources with
impeccable credentials (invariably prominent
members of society) are quoted. The democratic
process requires the participation of ordinary
citizens as much as those who are prominent.
2. Bias against independent thinking.
Journalists have to remain impartial and value
neutral – therefore no longer the need nor the
opportunity to develop a critical perspective from
which to assess the events, the issues, the
personalities he or she is assigned to cover.
3. Bias against the journalist’s assumption of
responsibility for what is reported.
News seen to exist “out there” (independent of the
reporter), so journalists can’t be held responsible for
it. The day’s news is viewed as something journalists
are compelled to report, not something they are
responsible for creating. Objectivity in journalism
effectively erodes the very foundation on which rests
a responsible press.
• “News is never a mere recording or reporting of the
world ‘out there’ but a synthetic, value-laden
account which carries within it dominant
assumptions and ideas of the society within which it
is produced.”
Theodore Glasser
Critique of “professionalism”
• Professionalism critiqued as a rhetorical strategy
to hide journalism’s inherent pro-systemic bias.
• Professionalism implies standards and
procedures, which means journalists tend to act
as responsible members of the political
establishment, upholding the dominant political
perspective.
Critique of public broadcasting
“Perhaps in no other country does broadcasting
hold such a privileged position as opinion leader
as in Britain. When ‘information’ is conveyed on
the BBC with such professional gravitas, it is more
likely to be believed. Possessing highly
professional talent, the illusion of impartiality and
an essentially liberal ethos, Britain’s ‘public
service broadcasting’ has become a finely crafted
and infinitely adaptable instrument of state
propaganda and censorship.”
John Pilger
Chomsky’s Propaganda Model
• Traditional theorists see propaganda as being a
useful conceptual tool to apply to media products
of totalitarian dictatorships while applicable to the
media of Western democracies only in exceptional
periods (war).
• But, Chomsky and Herman argue that the
propaganda function is a permanent feature of
Western media systems.
• The powerful elite “fix the premises of discourse, to
decide what the general populace is allowed to see,
hear and think about and to manage public opinion
by regular propaganda campaigns”.
• Journalists’ exalted claims to be working as the
noble Fourth Estate are rhetoric. Media practices do
not reflect a genuine public spiritedness but rather a
concern to boost sales or improve ratings. The
increasing media emphasis on infotainment has
accompanied the depoliticising of civil society.