Information liberation. Challenging the corruptions of information power

Even the “facts” that are presented are often wrong or misleading. Powerful groups, especially governments and large corporations, shape the news in a range of ways, such as by providing selected information, offering access to stories in exchange for favourable coverage, spreading disinformation, and threatening reprisals.

Advertising is another powerful influence on commercial media. Advertisers influence what types of stories are presented. But more deeply, advertisements themselves shape people’s views of the world. They are a pervasive source of unreality, fostering insecurity and consumerism.

There are indeed many problems with the mass media. But some media are much better than others, judged by the criteria of accuracy, quality and independence of special interests. Most media critics seem to believe that it is possible to promote and develop enlightened, responsive, truly educative mass media. Efforts at reform can be worthwhile, but have intrinsic limits.

The problem is not with media in general, but with mass media, namely those media that are produced by relatively few people compared to the number who receive them. Most large newspapers, television and radio stations fit this description. Mass media by their nature give power to a few and offer little scope for participation by the vast majority. The power of the mass media is corrupting. The only surprise is how responsible some mass media are. Given the corruptions of power, reform of the mass media, although useful, should not be the goal. Instead, the aim should be to replace mass media by communication systems that are more participatory.

The usual approaches

Most analyses of the media assume that there are just two choices, either state control or a free market. The problem with control by the state is that control is centralised. The media of military regimes and bureaucratic socialist states are notorious for their censorship. The defenders of the “free market” argue that government-owned media, or tight regulations, are similarly noxious even in liberal democracies.

The problem with “free market” media is that they give only a very limited freedom, namely freedom for large media companies and other powerful corporate interests.[1] Everyone is “free” to own a publishing company or television station.

The limitations of the mass media in liberal democracies are not always easy to perceive unless one has access to alternative sources of information. Fortunately, there are some excellent books and magazines that expose the incredible biases, cover-ups and misleading perspectives in the mass media. The magazines Extra!, Free Press, Lies of our Times and Reportage give eye- opening accounts of the ways in which the English-language mass media give flattering perspectives of business and government, limit coverage of issues affecting women and minorities, cover up elite corruption, promote government policy agendas, and so forth. The book Unreliable Sources gives examples of the conservative, establishment and corporate bias of US mass media on issues such as politicians, foreign affairs, environment, racism, terrorism and human rights.[2] Intriguingly, conservatives also believe that the media are biased, but against them.[3]

The analysis that underlies these exposes is simple and effective: corporations and governments have a large influence on the mass media, and the mass media are big businesses themselves. These factors appear to explain most of the problems. The power of the western mass media is especially damaging to the interests of Third World peoples, being an integral part of contemporary cultural imperialism.[4]

Yes, the media are biased. What can be done about it? Jeff Cohen, of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), has a strategy. He says

be sceptical of media stories;

write letters to media companies, make complaints, join talk-back radio;

don’t advocate censorship, but instead advocate presentation of both sides on any issue;

use public access TV;

hold meetings and pickets;

use alternative media.[5]

This is a good grassroots approach. But the goal is “fairness and accuracy,” namely the balancing of news. There seems to be no larger programme to replace undemocratic media structures.

A sophisticated treatment of these issues is given by John Keane in his book The Media and Democracy.[6] He provides an elegant critique of “market liberalism,” the approach by which governments reduce their intervention in communication markets. He notes that unregulated communication markets actually restrict communication freedom by creating monopolies, setting up barriers to entry and turning knowledge into a commodity. He also points out several trends in liberal democracies that seem to be of no concern to supporters of a free market in communication: the use of government emergency powers, secret operations by the military and police, lying by politicians, advertising by governments, and increasing collaboration between elites in government, business and trade unions. The increasingly global reach of communication corporations is also a significant problem.

The traditional alternative to commercial media is “public service media,” namely government-financed media (such as the ABC in Australia, BBC in Britain and CBC in Canada) combined with government regulation of commercial media. Keane favours revived public service media, with guaranteed autonomy of government-funded media, government regulation of commercial media, and support for non-state, non-market media, a category that includes small presses and magazines, community radio stations and open-access television stations.

Keane’s model sounds very good in theory. He gives an imposing list of things that should be done, but he doesn’t say who is going to make it happen — the government, presumably. More deeply, Keane doesn’t say how the state itself will be controlled. He wants a new constitutional settlement with enlightened and progressive government media, suitable government controls on commercial media, and promotion of the “non-state, non-market media.” But why should “the state” do all this? Why won’t it keep doing what it is already doing, as he describes so well?

Limits to participation

In principle, the mass media could be quite democratic, if only they were run differently. Editorial