Press Freedom and Globalisation - International Press Institute

Press Freedom and Globalisation
sion 127 where media are not accountable to other powers except markets. 128 Extensive
deregulation of media is part of this broader liberal globalisation agenda. 129 A function of
global media is also to integrate new states into the global commerce system. 130 In this way
press freedom has been used as agent for economic globalisation.
Global culture spread by global media is another way of maintaining hegemony. On
one hand, globally shared images create a global culture. Among the effects is a shared
notion of what kind of society peoples want in terms of values and material needs. On the
other hand, like-minded consumers are created, which benefits global markets. 131 Despite
press freedom, more than 99.999% of the world’s population have no access to audiences
because they are receivers and not senders in the mass media communication model. 132
Hence, a shared culture, the technology and the exclusive access to influence media’s
content, all of these support the existing hegemony. An effect of global culture is also how
mass media’s streamlining of a mass culture results in reduced diversity in the cultural
‘ecology’. Stronger impulses erode the weaker cultures, and global mass media are accused
of reducing cultural plurality. 133
Cultural and ideological narrowing as an effect of global media is not by accident.
That is, in fact, declared American policy, according to the United States’ Department of
Commerce, which writes:
“Since the founding of the republic, the mass media industry has held a
special place in American society. The products of this industry – films,
video and radio programming, and recorded music, as well as books,
magazines, and newspapers – provide the vehicles through which ideas,
127
Allan, News Culture, p. 49.
128
Okonkwo, Ifeanyi Edward, “Journalists in a Developing Economy” in Okigbo, Charles (ed.), Reporting
Politics and Public Affairs (Nairobi: The African Council for Communication Education, 1994), p. 10.
129
Gunther and Mughan, “The Media in Democratic and Nondemocratic Regimes”, p. 14.
130
Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, “The Globalization of News”, pp. 3, 8, 10 and 15.
131
Real, Exploring Media Culture, pp. 3, 18-20 and 148.
132
Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen, “The Globalization of News”, p. 11.
133
Oluoch, Fred, “Is Globalisation Eroding Our Culture?” in The East African (Nairobi: Nation Media Group),
news article, 29 th December, 2003; and World Bank, Globalization, Growth, and Poverty, pp. 129-130.
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