mass-communication-theory

technocratic
control
Direct regulation
of media, most
often by government
agency or
commission
social responsibility
theory
A normative theory
that substitutes
media
industry and
public responsibility
for total
media freedom on
the one hand and
for external control
on the other
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press”—means exactly what it says. As
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black succinctly stated, “No law means no law.”
At the other extreme are people who believe in direct regulation of media,
most often by a government agency or commission. These include advocates of
technocratic control, people like Harold Lasswell and Walter Lippmann. They
argue that media practitioners can’t be trusted to communicate responsibly or to
use media effectively to serve vital public needs—especially during times of war or
social upheaval. Some sort of oversight or control is necessary to ensure that important
public needs are satisfied. In some cases, this may mean providing provocative
information; in others, withholding such information.
As we saw in Chapter 4, advocates of control based their arguments on propaganda
theories. The threat posed by propaganda was so great that they believed
information gathering and transmission had to be placed under the control of wise
people—technocrats who could be trusted to act in the public interest. These technocrats
would be highly trained and have professional values and skills that
guaranteed that media content would serve socially valuable purposes—for example,
stopping the spread of terrorism or informing people about natural disasters
or a disease like AIDS.
Other proponents of regulation based their views on mass society theory
(Chapter 3). They were troubled by the power of media content to undermine high
culture with trivial forms of entertainment. Their complaints often centered on the
way that sex and violence were presented by media. These regulation proponents
also objected to the trivialization of what they consider important moral values.
Thus, both propaganda and mass society theories can be used to lobby for media
regulation. Both perspectives view media as powerful, subversive forces that
must be brought under the control of wise people, those who can be trusted to act
in the public interest. But who should be trusted to censor media? Social scientists?
Religious leaders? The military? The police? Congress? The Federal Communications
Commission? Although many powerful people believed in the necessity of controlling
media, they couldn’t reach consensus about who should do it. Media practitioners
were able to negotiate compromises by pointing out the dangers of regulation and
by offering to engage in self-regulation—to become more socially responsible.
Advocates of regulation were opposed by people who favored various forms of
Libertarianism. Eventually, social responsibility theory emerged from this debate. It
represents a compromise between views favoring government control of media and
those favoring total press freedom. This didn’t satisfy everyone, but it did have
broad appeal, especially within the media industries. Even today, most mainstream
media practitioners use some variant of social responsibility theory to justify their
actions. To fully understand social responsibility theory, we must review the ideas
and events that led to its development.
THE ORIGIN OF LIBERTARIAN THOUGHT
Chapter 5 Normative Theories of Mass Communication 101
Modern Libertarian thought can be traced back to sixteenth-century Europe—an era
when feudal aristocracies exercised arbitrary power over the lives of most people.
This era was also rocked by major social upheaval. International trade and urbanization
undermined the power of these rural aristocracies and several social and
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