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

404 Part V Impact of the Mass Media
concerned primarily with economic and political development. This concern is translated
into a rather focused definition of the role of mass media. In general, the media are
expected to help further modernization or other national goals. In fact, a new term, developmental
journalism, has been coined to describe this philosophy. In short, developmental
journalism means that the role of the media is to support national interests for economic
and social development and to support objectives such as national unity, stability, and cultural
integrity.
On the one hand, developmental journalism entails finding ways to make abstract stories
about commodity pricing, agriculture, and educational goals understandable to readers
and to highlight the developmental goals achieved by the nation. On the other hand,
developmental journalism can also mean that the press refrains totally from any criticism
of the government and prints only what the government deems helpful to its cause. The
philosophy of many Asian, Latin American, and African developing nations falls somewhere
between these two conceptions of developmental journalism.
The role of the media under the communist theory is straightforward: They are tools of
propaganda, persuasion, and education. They function only secondarily as sources of
information and entertainment. This philosophy dates all the way back to Lenin, who
decreed that the communist press was to help further the revolution.
As we saw in Chapter 2, Western media inform and entertain, but their content is somewhat
different from that of communist and less-developed nations’ media. Most of the
information carried by the media in the Western democracies is geared to the specific
political and economic needs of the audience. An examination of the press in the United
States and Canada, for example, would reveal a large amount of news about the local and
national government, some of it unfavorable and critical. The role of government watchdog,
based on the ideas presented in the social responsibility theory, is a function that
would be unsettling to many of the countries in cells B and D of the matrix in Figure 17–2.
Moreover, a great deal of content in the Western media is consumer oriented, consisting of
advertising, news, and entertainment. Further, there is, relatively speaking, little regulation
of the content of the entertainment media. Aside from some regulations governing
pornography and prohibitions against certain content on the broadcasting media, the government
takes little interest in entertainment content.
It is the interpretation or editorial function in which the biggest differences are found.
The United States and other Western countries have a tradition of press freedom that recognizes
the right of the media to present ideas to try to persuade the audience to some
point of view. The philosophy of the free marketplace of ideas is endorsed by most countries
in cells A and C of Figure 17–2. All relevant ideas concerning an issue are examined in
the media, and a “self-righting” process occurs. Given the autonomous nature of the Western
media, it would be difficult for the government to mobilize the media to support some
national goal, as is typically done in developing and communist countries. There is a builtin
tension and adversarial relationship between press and government that makes such
efforts rare.
>> Economic Differences
In the United States, advertising plays a key role in media support (see Chapter 14). Newspapers,
magazines, radio, and television all derive a significant amount of their total
income from the sale of advertising time or space. Direct government subsidy or support
of the media is minimal, limited to the funds given to public broadcasting. (Of course, the
government also indirectly helps support the media by buying a lot of advertising.) In
Western Europe, several countries provide indirect subsidies to the media, such as cheaper
mailing privileges and tax concessions. Some Scandinavian countries have a system
whereby newspapers controlled by various political parties are given direct financial
assistance. Several different systems are used to support broadcasting. In the United Kingdom,
for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is state-chartered and gets
its operating funds from an annual license fee paid by the owners of TV sets. At the same
time, the independent TV networks make their money from the sale of advertising time, in