Press Freedom and Globalisation - International Press Institute

Press Freedom and Globalisation
Television gives them the perfect role as the connection between the commodity producer
and its market. 35
Newspapers were the earliest widespread mass media, but remain as the part of the
media industry which is least integrated into the global system. 36 Foreign ownership in
major newspapers is still relatively low. 37 The globalisation process has even, as a reaction,
contributed to a wave of ‘localism’ that local media benefit from. 38 That trend is an
advantage for newspapers. However, newspapers are completely included in the mass
media’s transferring of news and influence around the world. Further, newspapers have
often an élitist public and traditions that make this medium especially influential. 39
Books grew as a mass medium where concentration of the publishing business was
consolidated, but to a lesser degree than the film industry. In the early 1970s, the number
of annual new titles in some countries were: the United States 80,000; United Kingdom
40,000; France 30,000; Nigeria 1,316; and Kenya 224. India developed a significant book
industry, yet a little export trade came from this industry. Later, the book industry came to
be concentrated and linked to large global media corporations. 40
The internet is the youngest widespread mass media which has achieved global
penetration faster than any other media. However, the bias in access and use between the
rich and the poor world is extreme. The internet is more complex than any other broad or
narrow media. Internet represents the convergence between content, technology, and
communication. In that way the internet is the ultimate global roundabout of media from
many points of view; content, users, owners, technology, politicians and sellers, with all its
35
Joyrich, Lynne: Re-Viewing Reception : Television, Gender, and Postmodern Culture (Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 9-14 and 169-175.
36
Herman and McChesney, The Global Media, p. 12.
37
Islam, Roumeen, “Into the Looking Glass” in World Bank, The Right To Tell : The Role of Mass Media in
Economic Development (Washington: The World Bank/WBI Development Studies, 2002), p. 21.
38
United States’ Department of Commerce, Globalization of the Mass Media (Washington: U.S. Department
of Commerce, 1993), pp. 215-217.
39
Islam, “Into the Looking Glass”, pp. 16-18; and Hiebert and Gibbons, Exploring Mass Media for a
Changing World, p. 141-142.
40
Ibid., pp. 19-20.
29