Famous Media Critic Slams Mainstream Media as Right Wing Terrorism

Ben Bagdikian is a staunch media critic who studied 20^th Century media and its influence on the public. His research work is mostly qualitative and structured through the lens of the functionalist theory. Bagdikian uses these theories and his research as ammo for his scathing criticisms in books such as The Media Monopoly, where he takes shots at conservative corporate media concentration and cultural hegemony, which he claims are a threat to the health of American democracy.

Bagdikian, whose main period of study is the late twentieth century, uses qualitative research to study media ownership and its effect on content. Most of his research work is anecdotal with very little structured analysis. His main focus is on how corporate media ownership negatively affects content. Although he has received some criticism for his lack of structured analysis, he claims that the process of journalism and the psychological and sociological aspects involved in the inner workings of a news organization are so complex that it is virtually impossible to accurately analyze the issue other than by relying on individual accounts and anecdotal evidence. (Mayor, 2005).

Typically, he will compare media content to what the media companies advertisers are selling to try and show how reporting is more concerned with advertiser interests than informing the public of information they need to now. In an interview with PBS, he claimed that ads accompanied by serious news do not have a lot of impact. In order to sell, they have to be accompanied by soft entertainment features. (PBS.org)

Often times, his focus is not on what the media is reporting, but what they are not reporting. For example, he has examined media content in the business sections of major city dailies to find that most of the content focuses on information to help investors and bankers, with little or no financial advice or employment information to help the average consumer. He also highlights how corporate advertising of sugary drinks and fashion has dominated child oriented television to the exclusion of educational programming.

Throughout his work, he cites examples of how important content is excluded if it is unflattering to the advertisers or the political beliefs of the corporate owners, who may very well be in the pockets of the U.S. government. His most famous battle of this nature involved his fight with his employer, The Washington Post, to publish The Pentagon Papers, which he claims were very newsworthy but hidden from the public because it exposed government lies and corruption during the Vietnam War. (PBS.org)

Theoretically, Bagdikian mainly sees the media as a tool used to socially construct a set of beliefs and values with the sole intent of shaping ideologies and human behavior, rather than giving them an accurate and diverse view of the world they live in and allowing people to form their own opinions.

Bagdikian is also a critical theorist who operates under the assumption that a dominant controlling class of power holders, who seek to propagandize the public and spread their corporate voice onto the masses, is in control of the mainstream media, and their goals involve satisfying shareholders. These power holders merely see newspapers as another tool to help them achieve their bottom line.

Bagdikian's theoretical background is also rooted in the framework of a belief in "ongoing hegemony" in the media industry, which is close to the Marxist/Gramscian theory of cultural hegemony. In his interview with PBS, Bagdikian explained that there is hegemony between the news media, corporate owners, and advertisers to the extent that newspapers have become little more than entertainment content providers who are no different than any other type of for-profit business. According to Bagdikian, mainstream news now "involves a decrease in hard reporting as a proportion of the whole, and an increase in soft entertainment features - which are the least expensive to produce and the most revenue producing." (PBS.org).

Besides making money, Bagdikian believes that the other goal of mainstream media is rooted in the "propaganda theory" which is shared by media scholars such as Noam Chomsky. This involves a belief that the media's aim is to distract viewers and readers with entertainment and consumerism, and to serve as a public relations tool to sell the public on the legitimacy of the government's foreign affairs policy. For example, Bagdikian is openly critical of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, whom Bagdikian believes promotes political views that are beholden to U.S. President George W. Bush's neoconservative Middle Eastern foreign policy. According to Bagdikian's article "Now Murdoch, Like the Bushes, Needs Saudi Money," Murdoch is receiving financial backing from the same Royal Saudi Family that has strong financial ties to The Bush Administration. (Znet.com)

In his most famous book, The Media Monopoly, Bagdikian uses a quantitative analysis to show how the number of controlling firms in the media has shrunken considerably from 50 in 1984, to 26 in 1987, followed by 23 in 1990, which is evidence of media concentration which limits content diversity. (2000)

Eventually, when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 erased the regulations of the 1934 Communications Act, which was created to help ensure that the media focused on the interests of the public, large media corporations were allowed to buy up even more media outlets such as cable and television, thus decreasing media diversity even further.

Bagdikian calls the current dominant ten corporations the "media cartel," which consists of Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation Limited, Sony, Tele-Communications, Inc., Seagram (TV, movies, cable, books, music), Westinghouse, Gannett, and General Electric. (Bagdikian, 1997)

This also extends to print journalism, where, according to Bagdikian, 99 percent of the 1,500 daily newspapers in the country are the only daily in that particular city, which are corporately owned and provide little consumer related information.

As grim as The Media Monopoly may sound, Bagdikian believes that there is a silver lining, which he writes about in his article Shaping Media Content. Heargues that the lack of diversity amongst media conglomerates has actually energized a new breed of journalists who are emerging who are united to no longer accept traditional media coverage. Also, Bagdikian claims that the public is hungry for alternative news sources and is increasingly distrustful of the "media cartel." (Bagdikian, Ben H. pp. 574)

According to Bagdikian, the last decade has seen an increase in middle class college educated students who are pursuing careers in the media and are motivated by social consciousness. Along with this, there has been an emergence of so-called "Weekly" papers which supplement the traditional daily and provide alternative views which are slowly exposing the public to the threat of media concentration and hegemony. (Bagdikian, Ben H. pp. 574)

Although most communications scholars, including Noam Chomsky, laud Bagdikian for his work in The Media Monopoly, Professor William Mayer from Northwestern University claims that Bagdikian never proved his case that the media has a pro-corporate bias. (Mayer, 2005 pp.315-338)

Mayer contends that Bagdikian makes an assumptive claim in The Media Monopoly that since World War I, the media has been more than willing to treat the American corporation as a sacred cow and portray it as noble and patriotic without question.

However, Mayer claims that Bagdikian offers no actual analysis to back this up.

"In a 252 page book he cites not a single content study that shows stories about businesses or corporations that are actually favored." Mayer goes on to say that Bagdikian's only argument is to bring up the stories in the media that are not run which may be critical of corporations.

The lack of actual content analysis, according to Mayer, is probably because accurate content analysis would show that businesses get more negative coverage than positive.

In conclusion, all of these issues seem to point to an uncertain, but exciting future for the media. If Bagdikian is right, there is a dichotomy brewing in the field of journalism that could manifest into newsroom civil wars between educated, socially conscious young journalists and their hard line conservative owners. With the increase in technology, and alternative Weekly papers, perhaps a media revolution is on the horizon.

References

1. Bagdikian, Ben (2000) The Media Monopoly. Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
2. Bagdikian, Ben. (1997) The New Communications Cartel. Beacon Press, Boston, MA. Retrieved February 20^th, 2008, from the World Wide Web at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com.
3. Bagdikian, Ben. (November 29, 2004). Now Murdoch, Like The Bushes, Needs Saudi Money. ZNET Daily Commentaries. Retrieved February 29^th, 2008, from the World Wide Web at http://www.zmag.com.
4. Bagdikian, Ben H. (Winter '73 - Winter '74) Shaping Media Content: Professional Personal and Organizational Structure. Public Opinion Quarterly;, Vol. 37 Issue 4, p569, 11p
5. Mayer, William G. (2005). What Conservative Media? The Unproven Case For Conservative Media Bias. Critical Review,17(3/4), 315-338. Retrieved March 2, 2008, from Research Library database
6. Priest, Susanna Hornig. (1996) Doing Media Research. An Introduction. Sage Publications. Thousand Oaks, CA.
7. Radford, Benjamin. (2003) Media Myth Makers. Prometheus Books. Amherst, NY.