In the society in which we currently
find ourselves, class society, a small minority of the population holds
ownership and control over industry, banks and all major means for
producing wealth. Because we, the workers, do not get to enjoy this
wealth, although we create it, our lives are reduced to working for
wages that disappear when we pay the bills. How does the ruling class
keep us putting up with such a lifestyle? One way is the fact that the
ruling class’s ideology permeates contemporary culture and dominates
the media.
the surface, media sources constantly accuse each other of having a
“left wing” or “right wing” bias, but the bickering just obscures the
inner workings of a media system owned and operated in the interests of
the corporate shareholders and advertisers, not the interests of
working people. In 1997, the CEO of CBS/Westinghouse said, “We are here
to serve our advertisers. That is our raison d‘être (reason for
existing).”
A small and decreasing number of multi-billionaire media
conglomerates with vast holdings in several areas of industry own
virtually the entire media system. Two decades ago it was “The Big Ten”
businesses that dominated all areas of media. Now it’s “The Big Six.”
They own all the largest film studios, television programs, cable
systems, book publishing, magazines, newspapers, record labels,
Internet websites, retail, telephone systems, even sports teams and
theme parks! The six biggest media companies worldwide are AOL/Time
Warner, Walt Disney Co, Bertelsmann AG, Viacom, News Corporation, and
Vivendi Universal. In the US, the top five are Disney, Viacom, Time
Warner, News Corp and General Electric, which together own a whopping
90% of the media market.
the years, fewer companies have come to dominate the market, partly
because the most powerful companies cooperate to eliminate their
competition. This concentration of capital is one of the central
tendencies of a capitalist economy. This means the media system is
effectively owned and controlled by only the wealthiest handful of
companies in the business.
The consequence of such a system is that it provides news, analysis
and debate, only so far as it does not pose a threat to the ruling
class or expose the full extent its activities. Journalists, editors,
and staff of corporate media are surrounded by and inevitably
internalize corporate values. Media sources may appear to debate hot
issues, but if they can help it, they rarely touch on topics that
fundamentally affect their shareholders and advertisers.
As University of Illinois professor Robert McChesney said in the
article “The New Global Media; It’s a Small World of Big
Conglomerates,” published in The Nation magazine: “…the media giants
are significant beneficiaries of the current social structure around
the world, and any upheaval in property or social relations —
particularly to the extent that it reduces the power of business — is
not in their interest.”
The past decades have been filled with imperialist interventions of
different sorts, almost invariably to protect corporate interests and
capital flow. But the media rarely questions the government’s right to
invade any country at any moment for any reason. Administration
officials and foreign policy spokespeople often talk about “spreading
democracy.” What imperialism is really spreading is the reach of
capital and access to resources and new markets. Although this should
be of great concern to the working class majority, corporate media
never questions the equation of free markets with “democracy.”
A report entitled “Project Censored” explains the phenomenon of
self-censorship in capitalist media: “It is illustrative that the Today
Show on NBC — a network owned by General Electric — removed mention
of defective GE-made bolts from a correspondent’s news report in
November 1989. And it’s telling that the program’s producers told a
guest expert on consumer boycotts not to mention a major boycott
targeting GE. But it’s unlikely that anyone from GE’s front office
specifically ordered Today Show producers to protect the company’s
image. No one had to. That’s how self-censorship works.”
times of great revolutionary activity, when class struggle
contradictions burst onto the political arena, the media has a big role
to play. Take for example the ongoing Bolivarian Revolution in
Venezuela. Privately owned media in Venezuela has become the face of
the counter-revolution’s campaign of misinformation in the country and
abroad. Corporate media in the US has functioned similarly, calling
President Hugo Chavez a tyrant and giving no coverage to the
achievements of the Venezuelan working class. Ruling class media can
recognize that working class victories abroad are contrary to the
interests of their class here at home. Likewise, working people can see
that a working class triumph in any part of the world is in their
interest as a class.
Amid the ruling class-dominated media system, the socialist point of
view is slowly gaining territory. After all, working people living
through the humdrum motions of wage labor can feel the misery of a
system based on exploitation. A new generation of workers and youth are
growing increasingly class conscious and working class tools like the
Socialist Appeal are a precious instrument for the growing movement.
The capitalist world we live in today contains the seeds of a
socialist tomorrow. The working class has all the tools it needs to run
society – but it doesn’t control them. Through the socialist revolution
and the democratization of the media under the control and management
of working people, we will at last experience true freedom of
expression and the press.
