Wednesday, January 17, 2007

National

Prof. Dr.Thomas Meyer, University of Dortmund / Germany

Mass Media shape the Political Culture

In all times it has been obvious that communication is one of the crucially constituting parts of political life. Some like the famous German-American Political Scientist Karl W. Deutsch have even said that politics is nothing but communication. And it also is obvious that the incumbents of all different political systems most of the time have been well aware of that. The open question however always has been , what specific function communication had to fulfill and in connection with that in what direction it was running, top- down only, in the society itself at the grassroots, bottom up or more or less symmetrically both ways. Needless to say, that these are the very issues even today when it comes to the discussion of the role of mass media for democracy and the furtherance of its political culture.

It is self-evident that democracy usually defined as government by consent is crucially dependent on a sufficient degree of two way communication and horizontal communication at the grassroots as otherwise their cannot be consense building and responsivity. So democracy even in its most modest and reductionist concepts such as the economic theory of elite competition requires a free public sphere with free mass media and certain effective channels for two-way communication, bottom up and top down and what is even more open and active deliberation of all issues of public concern. Without this there can’t be democracy worth of its name.

In the present era of mass media communication the old questions still are the key to understanding the contribution of communication to the performance of the political system and its political culture. Mass media, such as newspapers, radio and television do have the potentiality of including practically everybody into the political public sphere and the process of political deliberation, will formation and decision making- but whether they succeed in materializing this historically new potentiality or not depends on a variety of conditions which by no means are fulfilled automatically once modern mass media come into existence. Print media, Radio and television can cause depoliticization of the rank and file or contribute to its enlightenment and appropriate information; they can serve the sheer interests of political power or that of the population and the public good. Information alone can be a quite mixed blessing.

Therefore, a large and crucial portion of the responsibility for both the construction and nutrition of a democratic political culture and even for the long term performance of governance rests with the media system and its actors. And this is all the more so in modern media-society as here it’ s mainly and sometimes almost only the media which constitute and give meaning and structure to the society’s public sphere. Whatever the fruitful contribution of other fora of public deliberation such as civil society may be the overall public sphere of modern societies addressing the supreme decision making bodies and the entire society invariably rests with the reach of mass media. In this sense, it’s they who bear the ultimate responsibility for a democratically adequate quality of public discourse.

In present day media democracies mass media are a crucial part of their respective political culture and contribute substantially to the shape of the rest of it.

To be capable of rising to this challenge two hard and a whole bunch of soft conditions have to be materialized. The most obvious of the hard conditions which normally goes undisputed is of course the legal guarantee of free media and free information. An effective legal framework which gives sufficient protection for the media system and its actors is one of the necessary conditions for a democratic public sphere. Such a legal protection is as we all know even in the post-totalitarian world of today still far from being a matter of course. And even in some countries where the fake appearance of independent media is stage-managed it is often dangerous to be a responsible journalist.

Hard conditions for democratic communication

As I understand, in this country good headway has been made in the right direction since the democratic transformation of 1990. With this, but one of the necessary (hard) conditions for democratic communication being met. But the institutional freedom of communication is not yet the sufficient condition for its appropriate democratic performance. Even formally free media can create the particular type of a representative public sphere which is not much more than a stage on which personal power parades its glory.

The second hard condition to be met lies with the decision-making power over the means of mass communication which normally but not in all cases is connected with the ownership of the different mass media units. This connection, however, is neither direct nor unequivocal. Widespread misunderstanding dominates the discussion.

There are roughly four models of decision-making power connected with the two principal forms of ownership. A. Public ownership combined with public control over the relevant decisions concerning the performance of the respective media unit. (Not the government, but civil society organizations do exercise the effective control over media units). B. Public ownership combined with government control. C. Private ownership with decision making at the owners ‘discretion. D. Private ownership with decision making in a legal framework or a strong cultural tradition concerning professional rights for journalists, quality standards and the like.

Obviously some combination of models A and D is required to meet the second hard condition for a public discourse of democratic quality. Many countries today represent one or another type of blend between the different models. In India e.g. there is free press and up till now a government- controlled TV. In Germany you find both publicly- and privately- controlled TV and Radio plus private print- media under certain public restrictions for private control. I do not want to discuss the various models in theory and practice here. My own preference however is clear: public control for the bulk of TV and Radio units plus a strong legal and cultural framework to protect the professional freedom of journalists in private print media and broadcast units.

Soft conditions for democratic communication

But even when such a useful model is effective still certain most crucial soft conditions have to be fulfilled for a media system to meet the challenges of democratic communication and democratic culture. As they are often neglected in public discussion I would like to focus my further considerations on these additional conditions. They are intrinsically related to the basic structures and functional laws of mass media performance as such and not in the first instance to the forms of ownership and control alone.

Let me just mention some of the most crucial ones:

1 .Mass media are intrinsically asymmetrical. The access to their functions is very unequal. Some social and political actors do have direct access others have at least indirect sometimes even powerful access and some social actors have no access whatsoever.

2.Mass media do have the power to set, to build and to shape the political agenda of a polity. Whether political issues at stake in the real political arena and the daily life of society are represented or not in the picture of political life as construed by the media is highly dependent on the media actors who in this respect function as most effective gatekeepers.

3. The agenda structuring function also lies with the media actors as it is up to their discretion whether certain issues rank high or low, are dealt with extensively or in a volatile manner only.

4. But what in the long run may be even more relevant in its effects for political culture building is the way in which the media shape the portrait of the processes and the logic of politics in the political arena which is enshrined in the reports they give and in the news they construe.

To cut a complex matter short I would like to point out some of the most widespread mistakes that are usually made concerning these soft conditions some of which are most detrimental for an appropriate democratic culture of communication.

Before going into some detail I have however to locate the function of the mass media system as such in the framework of the entire society. What is the functional role the media system has to perform for the society? Whereas it is the social function of the political system to produce legitimately binding decisions for the whole society, it is the function of the media system to draw the attention of the largest possible part of the society for common issues and by way of that to contribute to the self -perception and integration of a given society.

In order to perform this particular function the media system ,of course ,cannot follow the same rules of selecting, processing and presenting the relevant information as e.g. the educational system or the scientific system. The underlying basic law of the media system is to deal with information in such ways as to maximize attention , however under certain restrictive conditions such as correctness of information, respecting personal rights of public and private actors and abiding by basic ethical, moral and political standards.

Within the very wide framework constituted by these factors and criteria media units and media actors are free to construe their picture of political life which under no conditions ever can be just the one only truthful copy of reality. It is invariably a particular construction of reality competing with many other such constructions. Such media adequate constructions are necessarily built through a process of intensive selection and artful presentation. Professionality in journalism above all means competence in the handling of the twin sets of rules of selection and presentation in an appropriate manner. To say it before everything else: a journalist who desires just to enlighten and to educate people without catching their attention and curiosity would almost automatically obstruct his very intention to the same degree to which he would abstain from implementing the rules of selection and presentation which are meant to attract attention and which characterize journalistic professionalism.

But in their turn it’s also these very same rules which will hamper his efforts for enlightenment if used excessively and without severe controls regarding issues and contexts. Media work means: to attract, to amuse, to entertain and to inform, to explain, may be even to enlighten. Media work is the effort to create accountable forms of synthesis between all these factors.

The immanent tensions between the rules and criteria of successful media presentation of the political life entail that media are amongst the most crucial factors if they are not the single most crucial single factor which either can contribute positively to the building of political culture or impede it from emerging and growing.

Traps and Fallacies

Even in case both the hard conditions for free media are met with some dangerous traps for inappropriate performance of media actors along the lines oft the soft conditions are looming large. In some of the most advanced media democracies of the world of today these traps successfully have caught large parts of media performance and by way of that impaired their political culture.

Let me mention just four of the most frequent ones. 1 .There is above all the fallacy of over-personalization, particularly with respect to political celebrities and incumbents. It is committed when politics is depicted mainly as an activity of some most prominent political actors and whatever these actors do is reported as politics.

This fallacy suggests itself because at the same time it pleases the mighty and the most prominent figures of the society and caters to the need of large parts of the audience to indulge in a simple, entertaining and fascinating spectacle. By way of that in quite a superficial manner it seems to serve the interests of both sides of the respective media: its consumers because, they get a well digestible meal and the mighty which eventually can exercise control over the media and its personnel. However, even in a most autocratic system politics is always much more than what some of its star actors perform. The dominance of this fallacy in a media system leads to the creation of the representative (feudalistic, pre-democratic) type of public sphere, fascinating power parades.

2. There is closely connected with the first one- the fallacy of just transporting stage-managed symbolical politics to the audience without making clear what it is by its very nature. Politics invariably has two internally linked dimensions: the instrumental function of problem resolution through policies: for instance, a new school in a village. And it has always the symbolical function of expressing certain meanings and giving sense to action in a wider socio -political context: for instance, the prime minister coming to that village in order to inaugurate that newly built school in a public function. However in the world of today , particularly under the influence of mass media ( TV), we observe an increasing propensity of political leaders to disconnect the symbolical dimension from the instrumental dimension in most artfully stage-managed ways, in many cases smartly scripted with a well advised view to the media an their rules of functioning.

In our case the prime minister going to that village entering a richly garlanded most inappropriate old school and playing actor-like the role of an politician highly interested in the progress of the educational systems without delivering anything real. At least 80 percent of the media reported activities of Ronald Reagan have been performed along these lines. In many cases the placebo character of such symbolical actions is not at all obvious. It it is the obligation of quality media not only to mirror the surface of such onstage activities but to make also transparent their context and background so that its clients get the full and the real information.

To the degree to which this fallacy is committed and the stage of the media politics proper will be replaced by a misleading spectacle, which highly disconnects from the realties of the country. (In Germany an interesting and promising discussion about these concerns has just begun in the quality media)

3. There is the fallacy of following the agenda of the incumbents instead of that of the society. Media actors of necessity are gatekeepers. It is only for them to take the decisions about their own agenda: what will be in their paper or broadcast and what not. Which issues, persons, problems, ideas, interests, organizations groups matter and deserve broad attention, urgence or prominence and which don’t. Even in very free and professional media systems there is always a strong propensity of the media to focus on the incumbents, their performance, the issues they forward , the problems they take serious ,the groups and interest they refer to.

The more modern political communication is shaped and materialized through mass media the more it becomes true that reality is only what they show it is. What is not in the media is not real. To a high degree therefore the agenda setting power of the media is a political decision making power because it defines what can become a matter of political concern and what not. Subsequently it is one of the most crucial challenges for the media in a democratic society to build its agenda along the lines of the interests problems, ideas hopes and experiences of the people and the civil society though they are not delivered and presented in an artfully scripted manner on glorious public stages so that the media can swallow and digest them comfortably. Media which follow the agenda of the power structure mainly will serve as an echo of the interests and intentions of the powerful.

4 There is the fallacy of depicting politics in an un-political manner. In a rather exaggerated but interesting way this fallacy has been analyzed and castigated by the US media ecologist Neil Postman. According to him under the predominance of TV- adapted political information strategies we are about to amuse ourselves to death. That means the life and the process of politics in the mass media of today more often than not is depicted along the lines of drama, amusement, personality clashes, personal charisma, etc. to such a degree that it creates an absolutely distorted picture of what is really going on in politics and leads large portions of the public astray.

Politics in its very substance is a time consuming process in which a broad variety of actors pursue interests and value- based policies using particular resources, refer to public ideals for legitimation , acting in a given institutional and cultural frame work. It is invariably not an instant matter but a long term process , with goal attainment or failure through conflict, compromise or consensus and more often that not a mixture of all of them. These factors and their particular patterns of interaction must become visible and discernable in the media picture of the political world if it wants to meet its democratic responsibilities.

It is the objective of professionalism in journalistic work at first to select, to condense, recompose and secondly to arrange, stage and give attractive presentational form to political events and topics, but this in such ways that the structure of the political process nonetheless is adequately represented in it. Thus it can becomes obvious what is at stake and where the proper gates and levers for intervention are located. This is no easy art, because the twin traps of either depoliticizing by misusing extensively media forms of presentation or by alienating the audience through instruction methods are always lurking.

Responsibilities

The temptation of going the easy ways of either pseudo political entertainment or pseudo communicative political instruction is increased and sometimes overwhelming when one or more of the following three conditions prevail in the context of journalistic work:

1. Lack of professional training and consequently of appropriate journalistic skills, 2. Pressure from above or outside, 3. Extreme shortage of time to produce thorough goingly.

This is why all those responsible for journalistic work , the individual journalists, the journalists ‘federations, those in charge of the education and training programs for young journalists and those who exercise power over their working conditions and the ways their work list made use of have to contribute to favorable conditions for mass media to perform in such ways as to help democratic political culture to grow.

Because of their wide reach mass media can contribute immensely to public information and political culture. In a society where the literacy is still low it is nonetheless not only radio and TV which provide the rank and file with information and models of understanding and meaning but the print media as well. As we know very well from empirical research carried out by the IIMC each single person in a village that can read a newspaper will spread the news and the schemes of interpretation in a multi- step flow to the rest of the population- provided that the print media are such that at least one of the villagers would be able and like to read it.

Media which obey to the rules that can lead to the optimization of their reach and at the same time carefully mediate politics in an adequate manner and avoid the key fallacies will contribute most substantially to the political culture of democracy both by educating the incumbents and by enlightening the rank and file.

Media which are trapped by the usual fallacies of depoliticizing politics by the way they depict it and build their agenda will probably abandon with names of key actors and issues of the political life but at the same time contribute to the deterioration of the political culture of their polity.

The hard conditions for democratic media communication are necessary ones but only when also the soft factors are catered to all the sufficient conditions for an appropriate democratic communication are fulfilled. Only then mass media will contribute to the building and development of a democratic political culture that deserves its name.

This is why the responsibility of the actors of the media system is so extremely high.

Key note speech Delivered at a seminar by the author on “Role of Media in Enhancing Political Culture in a Democracy,” jointly organized by The Telegraph Weekly in cooperation with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Kathmandu held on September 17, 1998-ed.