:: Jayati Ghosh

Free market brings its own media censorship

Jayati Ghosh

Sept.29 : Freedom of the press, and of media generally, is one of the more prized features of Indian democracy. But just as real political democracy remains lacking in true content as long as a large part of the population is effectively economically disenfranchised, so too true press freedom is restricted by socio-political and material forces.

The media scene is undergoing a revolution in terms of the proliferation of new forms of media and new providers, both Indian and foreign. This may seem to be an indication of much greater freedom and reduced ability of the state or other few entities to control or monopolise information. Nevertheless, there are clear limits to the apparent "freedom" of the media, and sometimes these limits can be even more restrictive than the earlier more explicit curbs placed by government.

Globalisation over the past decade has been associated with the spread and intensification of the commercial model of communication. Insofar as this has meant a reduction in state monopoly over information and its dissemination, it is a positive thing. But it carries the danger of replacing state control with control by oligopolistic private corporations. The presumption is that deregulation and market-orientation will bring greater freedom. But that need not always be the case.

First of all, media activities driven by the market treat readers and audiences as consumers, not as citizens. Since what is being purveyed is not an ordinary good, but the very substance of knowledge which makes for informed politics, social consciousness and the ability to change social, political and economic forces, this matters a great deal. Indeed, in modern democracies, media plays a central role in terms of the possibility of creating an informed citizenry and, thereby, determining democratic practice.

The decline in the felt obligation to serve non-commercial information interests, involving purely public interest or addressed to groups with less economic power, effectively marginalises the public sphere. On television, for example, issues of major political or social importance tend to be expressed in minuscule fragments or in such a frivolous manner that the content is often missed. This absence of knowledge — access to it only in truncated and potentially misleading form — undermines democracy. A public which is inadequately informed about the substance of arguments that affect its most important social policies has effectively lost the substance of citizenship rights.

Related to this is the generally conservative bent of the information and analyses that are consequently presented. The crucial difference between what is good for private business (especially large, multinational private business) and what is good for the quality of life of the population is ignored. This is not so much the product of an overt conspiracy as a more insidious system of shared values in which the journalists, presenters and editors are all part of a system that promotes generally conservative economic philosophies.

Further, the tone and content of media dissemination is increasingly not innocently determined, because of the dependence of media on advertising revenues. As the role of advertisers in influencing media content grows, so too the traditional notions of the separation of editorial and commercial interests tend to weaken. Advertisers want affluent audiences who are likely to be influenced in the choice of their consumption, so media content tends to cater to the more affluent groups in society.

Paradoxically, this still does not ensure consumer sovereignty. The content of most media dissemination is determined by owners, managers and editors, often in conjunction with advertisers. And this in turn is influenced by perceptions of what would be the most arresting image to hold the viewer’s attention or the reader’s interest, the least demanding and, therefore, most likely to be indulged of stories, and the most facile of sound-bytes and printed epigrams.

So the choices available to consumers of the various media are limited to those which are consciously provided by those who purvey this service, and viewers or readers cannot hope to go beyond this. Surveys among television-watching households in the US have found widespread dissatisfaction with the nature of the content of the programmes, the extent of gratuitous violence, the overkill of staged "reality" television, and the desire for alternative programming. But the basic pattern of programming has remained unchanged despite such knowledge. Indeed, the plethora of television channels now available often serves only to underline this ironic lack of real choice.

Add to this the sheer effect of particular forms of programming, restricted information spread as well as so much directed advertising on the consumption and lifestyle decisions of individuals and households, and the actual lack of freedom of the recipients of this process of cultural determinism becomes more obvious.

Much in the frightening manner predicted by Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World, what appears to be much more choice and freedom for individuals in different societies ends up being predetermined aspiration without even the knowledge that it is unfree.

Of course, the entire picture is not as completely dire as may appear from this account. Just as technological change at one level has made the possibilities of and pressures for commercialisation and concentration in the sector much stronger, so it has also created other possibilities of spreading information — chiefly through the Internet — which are cheaper, more open, more potentially questioning of the dominant paradigm, and thus more democratic.

Even if Internet access is greatly limited in the developing world, it still provides new opportunities for access to and dissemination of information, views and analyses which otherwise did not exist or were being increasingly squeezed out by the process of media concentration.