Press Freedom and Globalisation - International Press Institute

Press Freedom and Globalisation
located in the United States. 22 The system is wrapped up with concepts of American
ideology. In that way, globalisation has led to a global American empire. 23
That empire, according to Noam Chomsky, is full of contradictions between what
the United States professes and what it practices at the global level. Noam Chomsky is a
Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The ‘war on terror’,
he argues, is an excuse for forcing regimes to adapt an American friendly policy while the
United States itself ‘is a leading practioner of international terrorism’. 24 On ‘human rights’,
he notes that the United States gave aid to regimes in Latin America who tortured their
citizens, 25 and that the media in the United States serve the American elite interests and in
fact undermine democracy. 26
Mass Media Involvement in Globalisation
Mass media in general are involved in globalisation in two ways. First are the mass media
as global industry. Second are mass media as the core spreading democracy, shaping
liberal world order and creating globally shared culture.
The concept of ‘media globalisation’ or ‘global media’ means large cross-border
flows of mass media content, growth of transnational media corporations, centralisation of
media control, and a strong emphasis on the commercial side of media activities. 27 There is
a distinction between the ‘medium’ and the process of ‘mass communication’. Media are
instruments of that process. Any instrument that makes ‘mass’ communication can be
22 Williams, Failed imagination?, pp. 284-286.
23 Petras and Veltmeyer, Globalization Unmasked, pp. 61-73.
24 Chomsky, Noam, “Commentary: moral truism, empirical evidence; and foreign policy” in Review of
International Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 610.
25 Chomsky, Noam, “United States and the challenge of relativity” in Evans, Tony (ed.), Human Rights Fifty
Years On : A reappraisal (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 27.
26 Herring, Eric and Robinson, Piers, “Too polemical or too critical? Chomsky on the study of the news
media and US foreign policy” in Review of International Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003), pp. 554-556.
27 Herman and McChesney, The Global Media, p. 8.
26