Tuesday 10th November 2009

Apologies once again for a bit of "churnalism", but I thought it was about time I updated this blog with something and saw one of my course mates had put some of his university work on his blog. So here's my chapter review of Contradictions in Capitalist Media Practices, by Colin Sparks, an assessed piece of work for the Journalism Media Culture and Communications unit:

A few weeks ago I noticed newspaper The Socialist being sold at a stand. Being open to all sorts of different publications, I purchased a copy and soon found it was one of those socialist viewpoints “you have to hunt out” which Colin Sparks mentions in his chapter on Contradictions in Capitalist Media Practises.

Sparks, who looks specifically at Journalism and Popular Culture as well as Communism and Capitalism in the media, takes a radical mass media criticism stance to launch an attack on the capitalist media. He clearly highlights the fact that the media are no longer the ‘fourth estate’ which was identified in the nineteenth century, but now work hand in hand with government and large corporations in order to maximise audience and profits.

Sparks indirectly challenges the view of the press as the ‘fourth estate’ by saying that even journalists from tabloid newspapers such as The Sun and Daily Mail “enjoy just as good relations with the political elite as those of posh papers and sometimes even better”. He gives the example of “when on the day she was appointed new editor of The Sun, Rebekkah Wade, was rung up, in succession, by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Blunkett, each of them eager to establish good relations with this powerful figure”. This evidence of a close working relationship between the press and politicians suggests that newspapers are no longer the ‘fourth estate’ in place to hold the powers that be to account.

The author puts emphasis on the role of capitalism in the bourgeois media and his views are supported by the work of Raymond Williams in the 1960s, who claimed that advertisers have the power to limit press freedom, as fifty to seventy per cent of newspaper revenues come from advertising. But perhaps the role of advertising is slightly overlooked by Sparks in this chapter. Take The Socialist newspaper as an example; It is only a twelve page weekly paper, but because of its anti-capitalist position, the twelve pages contain no advertising at all. Instead, The Socialist has a cover price of 70p, which is a lot when we compare it to Britain’s best selling newspaper The Sun, which has a cover press of 30p and is owned by the hugely powerful Rupert Murdoch, a frequently mentioned individual in the chapter. However, Sparks does recognise that “the media are primarily businesses”, so with the exception of newspapers such as The Socialist they have to make profit.

Contradictions in Capitalist Media Practices echoes much of what O’ Connor says in his chapter on Institution, from the book Raymond Williams: key thinkers in critical media studies). Both Sparks and O’ Connor discuss three broadcasting systems and how they operate politically, but what Sparks does which O’ Connor fails to do is give examples of broadcasting politics in different countries. He explains how, in the UK, the BBC tries to reflect the views of political parties impartially, whereas in France Charles De Gaulle used the media as “the outright tool of government”. I was interested to learn about another broadcasting model, where political parties have their own designated TV channel. This system was in place in Italy up to the 1990s. By giving examples of different systems Sparks makes them easier for the reader to understand.

I like how this chapter highlights the power newspaper owners have, as Sparks points out that Murdoch uses this power to regularly intervene in the editorial direction of The Sun. This is an important part of the chapter, because it shows how capitalists such as Rupert Murdoch have great control of the media.

In contrast to Murdoch’s publications, “Newspapers and other media can and do adopt a wide range of positions, while remaining entirely within the framework of capitalism”, as Sparks explains. Here he is perhaps referring to the Mirror, a paper for the working class which has always supported the Labour party, but still exists within the capitalist framework because it is making money. This is what differentiates Mirror from another left wing newspaper The Socialist.

A criticism of this chapter is that Sparks doesn’t give much history of how the relationship between the media and capitalism has developed over time. He does acknowledge that “the mass media are relatively recent phenomena and have been closely linked to capitalism and the development of the state system” and that “as capitalism has developed and changed, so too have the media”. However, this is far too vague for me, as I always like to be informed of the historical context of an idea or concept.

To his credit though, Sparks does give a balanced argument by producing good evidence of how the media does revolt, such “the run up to the invasion of Iraq (in 2003), when some sections of the media seem to launch outright offensives against government policy”. Here he is most probably referring to the BBC and the Mirror.

I also like how Sparks briefly looks into anti-capitalist models in other countries, such as Sweden, where there is “a system designed to support weaker newspapers and promote diversity of ownership”.

In conclusion, I enjoyed reading Contradictions in Capitalist Media Practices because most of all I found it very thought provoking; When Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister she wanted to destroy socialism. Nearly twenty years on from when The Iron Lady left office, there is no clear indication to suggest whether socialism has been destroyed in society, but we could say she has destroyed the socialist media. Those were my thoughts when I bought my copy of The Socialist and the man selling it said to me: “We socialists have to stick together; there aren’t many of us left now”.