Chapter 7: Radio (30629.0K) - McGraw-Hill

402 Part V Impact of the Mass Media
represented by the state. Their purpose is to support the Marxist system and to achieve the
goals of the state as expressed through the Communist Party. Recent history has shown
the communist approach to the press works best in a closed society in which information
is tightly controlled by the government. Once information is available from competing
sources, people give little credibility to the official media.
This fact was illustrated by events in Russia and Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Voice of America, CNN, Radio Liberty, and
Radio Free Europe unraveled the Communist Party’s media monopoly. TV viewers in
Eastern Europe saw Western TV shows beamed from West Germany or sent via satellite.
Hollywood movies on videocassette were widely available. The people of Eastern Europe
and Russia saw the shortcomings of their political and economic systems and clamored
for change. As a result, the communist theory of the press has few proponents today.
China, Cuba, and North Korea are about the only places where it can be found, and even
in those countries the official version of the theory often bears little resemblance to the
actual practices of the media. In short, the communist theory has been rendered obsolete
by events.
A more recent formulation is the developmental theory, which would fall more toward
the authoritarian side of the spectrum. In this ideology, the government mobilizes the
media to serve national goals in economic and social development. Information is considered
a scarce natural resource and must be carefully managed by the government to
achieve national goals. Some of the goals the media are expected to help achieve include
political integration, literacy, economic self-sufficiency, and the eradication of disease.
Until recently, many emerging countries espoused the developmental approach, but
changing economic and political conditions have made it less prevalent. Many emerging
countries, such as Brazil, Chile, and Pakistan, have replaced dictatorships with democracies,
and democracies typically look with disfavor upon government control over the
media. In addition, even in those countries where democracy has yet to appear, the government
has either privatized the formerly state-run media or allowed competition from
independent channels. Consequently, the government has less control over the flow of
information and is less able to promote the developmental approach. All in all, the growth
of democracy and the growing popularity of free marketplace economics have resulted in
more countries endorsing the social responsibility approach.
>> Control and Ownership of the Media
One helpful way of distinguishing among the various media systems throughout the
world is to classify them along the dimensions of (1) ownership and (2) control. Finnish
Professor Osmo Wiio has developed a useful analysis scheme, presented in Figure 17–2.
As can be seen, ownership can range from private to public (public ownership usually
means some form of government ownership), and control can range from centralized to
decentralized. Note that this typology is an oversimplification. In many countries, there
are mixed media systems in which part of the broadcasting system is owned by the government
and part by private interests. In some countries, the print media could be placed
in one cell of the matrix and the broadcasting system in another. Nonetheless, this model is
helpful for displaying some of the major differences among systems.
In the upper-left cell are type A systems. These represent decentralized control and public
ownership, a type best illustrated by the broadcasting systems in European countries
such as France, Denmark, and Italy. Some of the broadcasting media are publicly owned,
but no single political or special interest group can control their messages. In Great Britain,
for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation is a government-chartered, publicly
owned corporation that is relatively immune to government censorship and interference.
Private broadcasting systems also operate in these countries.
In the upper-right cell are type B systems. This arrangement is typical of communist or
socialist countries in which the media are publicly owned and controlled by the dominant
political party. China is an example.