BOOKS

The new masters of the universe

SUSAN RAM

The Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian, fifth edition, paperback, Beacon Press, 1997; pages 289, $16.

IN 1983, Ben Bagdikian, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, documented and exposed what he saw as the central paradox in the development of the United States' media during the twentieth century. The very period that had witnessed exponential growth in the scope and reach of the media, diversification of media forms and modes of delivery and technological advances beyond the imaginings of our ancestors a hundred years ago had also seen an accelerating, seemingly immutable process of narrowing: the step-by-step shrinkage of the media's ownership base. In 1983, argued Bagdikian, the U.S. media, commanding awesome power to influence events and perceptions at home and across the planet, were dominated by as few as 50 private corporations. In his study, he set out to explore the implications - for journalism, for society, for democratic politics, for people's perceptions of the reality unfolding about them - of the inexorable trend towards monopoly ownership and control.

Back in 1983, there were critics who dismissed Bagdikian's analysis as 'alarmist'. Their caveats and ostrich-style complacency doubtless continue to surface, and to win the plaudits of corporate America. But for a reader with a modicum of objectivity, what is striking about Bagdikian's book is not only the brilliance and persuasiveness of the case it argues but also its ability to read the future. For by 1997, when the book was republished in its fifth edition, the number of corporations controlling most of America's daily newspapers, magazines, television, radio, books and films had dropped from 50 to just 10. Today, the U.S. media is in the grip of a new communications cartel with a power to penetrate and shape the social and political landscape that is unmatched in human history.

For this latest edition, Bagdikian prefaces the research which proved such a landmark back in 1983 with a 25-page update on developments since the appearance of the fourth edition in 1992. The scale of the change over that five-year period is such that even this gifted and resourceful writer is left groping for words; there is a schematic quality to this update which points to the need for a qualitatively fresh research engagement. But the case which Bagdikian put forward 16 years ago emerges as unassailable and uncontested in its essence by intervening developments.

Bagdikian's contribution in part derives from his dual identity: on the one hand, a working journalist who knows his profession from within, and on the other, a scholar capable of sustained research under conditions of academic rigour. His teaching and research at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley (where he is currently Dean Emeritus) have helped shape his perspective on the nature, goals and responsibilities of journalism, irrespective of the medium by which it is articulated and disseminated.

Journalists, argues the author, carry out for society a number of crucial functions. Through their work, they establish and enforce the principle of accountability, vital to the working and integrity of democratic societies. They sound alarm bells, signalling system weaknesses or failures that would otherwise go undetected. And they also help people contextualise events in such a way that their understanding of what is happening about them is enriched and endowed with meaning. Bagdikian endorses the view of James Britton in his 1970 study, Learning and Language, that, given the kaleidoscopic character of experience, humans need to group events on the basis of similarity; without this, nothing can be made of the present moment nor can expectations or predictions be entertained.

Concentration of media ownership, in tandem with the growing clout of mass advertising and the prioritising of commercial values, argues Bagdikian, undermines each of these journalistic functions and responsibilities. Journalists whose newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations are part of vast, interlocking corporate empires are tremendously weakened in their ability to call to account those in positions of power and authority. Moreover, with their editorial independence now fatally compromised, they may no longer see it as part of their remit to exercise their accountability function. Alarm bells that should be sounded remain silent. And consumers of the media, far from being helped to gain a rounded, well-informed perspective on reality, are fed a diet of pap: news presented in discrete morsels; the heavily loaded messages of mass advertising; generous helpings of tittle-tattle, trivia, sex and violence.

Bagdikian documents his argument with a series of case stories which buttress his position and enhance the accessibility of his study. For readers inclined to doubt the baneful impact of corporate ownership on editorial freedom, he tells how, back in the 1970s, a book by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman was effectively killed by Warner Communications, an awesome conglomerate that had begun life as a firm 'specialising in funeral parlours and parking lots'. He pursues the dismal story of mainstream American journalism's repeated failure to question the powers-that-be, from the McCarthy years in the early 1950s to the Vietnam War and beyond.

In a section that carries particular resonance today, as the U.S. tobacco giants stand indicted before the world for their culpable hawking of their deadly products, Bagdikian tracks what he calls 'a strictly media disease, a strange paralysis'. This, he shows, so afflicted the U.S. media that it could not alert readers and viewers to a basic truth, established beyond doubt as long ago as 1954: that smoking causes cancer. Tobacco, it should be noted, was until recently the most heavily advertised product in America.

The U.S. media's interaction with the tobacco industry also serves to illustrate the limitations of the 'doctrine of objectivity', an article of faith within mainstream American journalism. This holds that, in the interests of 'balance', one point of view articulated in the course of reporting should be matched by an opposing one. In practice, as Bagdikian documents, adherence to this doctrine has prioritised the views of the authorities and the officialdom, resulting in bland reportage from which all elements deemed dissenting or 'extremist' have been purged. Notions of balance have been taken to absurd degrees: Bagdikian shows how, in the case of the tobacco industry, scientific testimony and the views of doctors were routinely required to be countered by industry spokespersons in the interests of 'objectivity'. Small wonder that large sections of the American public remained confused and misinformed about tobacco over so many decades - and to such deadly effect.

Such notions of 'objectivity', Bagdikian argues, originate in the world of mass advertising. Here, blandness is favoured, confrontation is eschewed, and energy is focussed on creating and sustaining a 'buying mood'. In the case of American television, which has evolved as a commercial activity supported almost entirely by advertising, corporate interests can be seen to promote a 'buying mood' via a range of strategies, among which the doctrine of objectivity emerges as one of the more subtle and subliminal. Bagdikian cites numerous examples of corporations intervening directly to restrain, censor or otherwise influence the content of programming.

As Bagdikian's book has passed through a succession of editions, the basic processes at work within the U.S. media have strengthened and accelerated, perhaps beyond his own worst case scenario. Concentration of media ownership has grown inexorably, with all that that implies for journalistic freedom and integrity, while mass advertising has tightened its grip on media content and the purposes to which the media are directed. But from the early 1990s, Bagdikian suggests in the preface to this fifth edition, the name of the game has changed - in qualitative as well as quantitative terms. Not only has the ownership base of the U.S. media shrunk still further; there is something qualitatively new in the character of the corporations that constitute the cartel in command.

THE ten corporations that now dominate the U.S. media are identified as: Time Warner; Disney; Viacom; News Corporation Limited (Rupert Murdoch's empire); Sony; Tele-Communications, Inc.; Seagram; Westinghouse; Gannett; and General Electric. The resources they command inspire, in equal measure, awe and fear; the $340-million media merger between Gannett and Combined Communications Corporation - the biggest media merger in history at the time Bagdikian's book first appeared - shrinks in significance beside the $19-billion deal that, in 1996, brought together Disney with ABC/Cap Cities. This latter union, Bagdikian points out, created a conglomerate commanding great power over every mass medium: newspapers, magazines, books, radio, broadcast television, cable systems and programming, movies, recordings, video cassettes - and, through alliances and joint ventures, telephone and cable.

The name of the new game is 'synergy'. Whereas it was once possible to identify specific corporations dominant in one communications medium, with only a few of those corporations similarly dominant in a second medium, the new media conglomerates aggressively pursue a far more comprehensive agenda. As Bagdikian notes, they aim to acquire "dominant positions across every medium of any current or expected future consequence." The process by which one company subsidiary is used to complement and promote another has helped produce what the author identifies as a "quantum leap" in the power exercised by the media cartel over news, information and popular culture.

In the 25 pages of his new preface, Bagdikian provides fascinating glimpses into the world of the new media masters of the universe. There is some active demythologising here. For media consumers in America and around the world, the Disney empire is shown to extend far beyond its benign film-and-theme-park packaging:

The Disney empire includes - in addition to non-media interests in oil and insurance - interests in interactive TV and the America Online computer network, Buena Vista home video, Hyperion and Chilton book publishing, four movie and TV production studios and a national distribution system for them, four magazine publishing groups...., 429 retail stores selling Disney products, television and cable networks, a major league baseball team and a National Hockey League team, three record companies, eleven newspapers..., and nine theme parks in the United States and other countries. (p. xxv)

Bagdikian also draws attention to the growing involvement in the media of industrial conglomerates, including such major defence industry players as General Electric and Westinghouse. One wishes for a more extended engagement with the implications of this trend.

Indeed, the one substantive criticism that can be levelled at this new edition of what is rightly ranked a classic among studies of the U.S. media is the brevity and schematic quality of its preface. The 25 pages establish the character of change during the first half of the 1990s, but offer little more than tantalising hints as to the implications and results. A case in point is Bagdikian's engagement with the digital revolution, the Internet and the World Wide Web; while casting doubt on casual assumptions that these will stand as guarantors of individual freedom against the predations of the mass media cartel, he offers only a sketchy outline of why this should be so.

What seems beyond dispute is that Bagdikian's classic study will continue to illuminate and excite general readers and students of journalism for years to come. As the global reach of the U.S. mass media strengthens and the impact of American news presentation and popular culture is felt in every corner of our planet, his analysis - and his warnings - deserve the widest possible dissemination. And one looks forward to what he doubtless has in mind: not a sixth edition, but a new book for a new, even more challenging media age.