Media Management

Arslan Yaris (MMC)

Assignment
To: Sir Sajjad Hussain
1) Explain the following perspectives on media:

 Marxist perspective
 Neo-marxist perspective
 Pluralist perspective

Marxist perspectives draw our attention to the issue of political and economic interests
in the mass media and highlight social inequalities in media representations. Media in
context of Marxism, is viewed as a tool for the bourgeoisie: the owner of business, to
use and propogate the information to maintain the status quo, more importantly the
main idea that capitalism is in the natural order of things.

Marxist theory emphasizes the importance of social class in relation to both media
ownership and audience interpretation of media texts: this remains an important factor
in media analysis.

Traditional Marxists argue that those who own the media also control it. The bourgeoisie
also interfere with the contents of the media.

They note that the media is owned by members of the bourgeoisie: very wealthy
business owners. They argue that these bourgeois owners instruct editors and
journalists to put across particular messages to the audience. These messages spread
the dominant ideology which seeks to justify the power and privilege of the bourgeoisie.
Through this, the media is able to contribute towards creating a false class
consciousness.

Traditional Marxists suggest the owners have a clear political view and a clear set of
economic interests and ensure that their media companies project those views and
disseminates an ideology that supports their interests.

The primary role of the media in this regard is to keep largely passive audiences from
criticizing capitalism and this maintain the status quo. The content of the media is thus
narrow and biased and reflects opinions of the ruling class generally and media owners
in particular. The government does not regulate the media content because political
elites are also part of the ruling class same as media owners. The media plays
ideological functions instructed by the bourgeoisie and elites .
  Neo-Marxist Perspective

Neo-marxists argue that journalists share the dominant ideology of the ruling class
through agenda setting (deciding how media items are framed) and gatekeeping
(choosing what items are selected for coverage and what are kept out) to keep
information out of the media content which is harmful to the interests of elites.
Journalists have more freedom than the traditional Marxists suggests, and the media
agenda is not directly controlled by the media owners. Neo-marxist perspective is also
called as dominant ideology and hegemonic perspective on the media

Neo-marxists develop the traditional Marxists perspective on media by arguing that

media owners do not have direct but indirect control over media content. This indirect
control is more subtle than as any ruling class ideology shared by the journalists and
media managers.

Owners do not get involved in controlling the content in day to day basis. So content
then is left and managed in the hands of the journalists. Managers and journalists are
not tend to criticize the dominant ideology because of their background. They are mostly
belong to middle class, so tend to being pressed by dominant majority.

Neo-marxism basically extended and amended traditional Marxism, that is why it

explains further influence on information by not only owners of media houses but also
working journalists.

Neo-Marxists emphasize cultural hegemony

Hegemony is where the norms and values of the ruling class are taken to be common sense.
According to Neo-Marxists, the reason why we have limited media agenda is because of cultural
hegemony, not because of direct control of media owners. In other words, cultural factors are
more important than economic factors in explaining narrow media content.

Simply put, journalists have accepted the conservative worldview of the ruling class as common
sense, and they also share this world view with the ruling class - they thus spread the dominant
ideology unconsciously.

 Pluralist Perspective
Pluralistic perspective on media is differ from aforementioned approaches. According to pluralists, no
one group has a monopoly on power. Pluralists argue that power in democratic, free market societies is
spread out among diverse competing interests groups, and not concentrated in the hands of minority
economic elites, as Marxists suggested.

Pluralists argue that in democratic and free economies different media companies must compete with
eachother so they provide content and information, as viewers need. If a company fails to provide the
news and entertainment as people want, people simply stop buying their products or information and
go elsewhere which will emphasize the closure of the company. In the same way, it follows that control
over media content lies with consumers, not the media owners, because the owners need to adapt the
content fit the needs and wants of consumers.

Media owners primarily want to make money, so in order to sustain and maintain their media
enterprises, they publish content what fills the need of viewers and thier entertainment through their
media channels rather than publishing their own narrow and biased views. Media content, thus, does
not reflect biased and subjective opinions of the media owners. It reflects the diverse media content for
the viewers who pay for that media content. The public generally does not want one-sided and biased
media.

According to the pluralist perspective, content is determined by the consumer. They say audience are
active rather than passive and not easily manipulated. They are free to select, reject and interpret wide
range of media content.

Pluralists agree with the points of Neo-marxists to some extent. Pluralists point out that on a purely
practical level media owners of large global corporations can not personally determine the content of all
their media products, there are too many products and too many global level management issues to
keep them occupied. Thus producers, editors and journalists have considerable freedom to shape their
media content, free from the control of their media bosses.
2) Considering media situation in Pakistan, which of the
aforementioned perspective more appropriately explain the
media-society relationship? Give arguments.

We see the management of Pakistani media houses are run by media conglomerates. The
media enterprises in a country like Pakistan are more likely to make money than free flow of
information or educate the masses. But with the revolutionary developments in the field of
media technology, the owners and journalists are no longer able to feed the information to the
people, made by their own biases and one-sided meaning, and make them accept the
information as passive audience.

The internet, and especially social media have made the people opinion leader. Now people
have the power of feedback to consent or dissent, and label the credibility of a news or
disseminated information that it is impartial or biased as well as to which ideology the given
information supports.

Pluralistic Perspective fits more in the contemporary

Situation in Pakistan's media-society relationship:

There is no doubt that the Pakistani society played role as passive viewers of media for
decades. Until the dawn of the 21st century, the Pakistani media landscape comprised almost
entirely of print media publications because of this limited media information sources, media
owners were gatekeepers more than this contemporary era. Many of Pakistan’s established
newspapers were founded by journalists with a political or nationalist agenda.

People were passive on the other side of radio and television, and the bourgeoisie were free to
use the content in favour of their ideologies. Likewise, the media owners were free to make
people accept their disseminated information. The journalists wrote, even fabrication because
people were passive, and had no access to identify their mistakes or sure thier credibility by just
googling.

In this contemporary fast Communication era, everyone has developed their tastes according to
the information by various places they feed. In this regard, we can say that only those media
houses would be capable of making people stick to the screen who would have a variety of
content with consent and dissent simultaneously.
Public opinion, different journalists approaches, a variety of entertaining stuff, this can only be
happened if the owners have less to do with the content. When gatekeeping and agenda
setting seem less applicable, and allow people to see multiple variety of content and form thier
approach at their own.

Jhang Group and The Dawn media groups

We can take an example of Jang media group. Somehow, As we can see the owner of
this media group has been Pro-Nawaz Government - the then prime minister before last
election. Now he has been running a large media group, besides his Pro-Nawaz
Government stance, many journalists and television channel shows has been holding
Anti-Nawaz stance, and paid by him at the same time. There are multiple critics freely
criticizing public policies, and supporting simultaneously. The same goes the other way
around, the Dawn group has always been on pluralistic stance because of its rationality
and 'Diversity is Unity' slogan.

Simply put, we can see the pluralistic perspective in practical form because of the availability of
new media which null and void the biased and target oriented approach of the editor or
journalist of the media house.
References:
https://www.tutor2u.net/sociology/reference/marxist-views-on-the-
ownership-and-control-of-the-media

https://www.google.com/amp/s/revisesociology.com/2019/08/02/mar
xist-instrumentalist-theory-media/amp/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/revisesociology.com/2019/08/05/neo-
marxist-media/amp/