The Effect of Ownership Structure on the Media Agenda

Andrew Ó Baoill

The Effect of Ownership Structure on the Media Agenda

"Agenda-setting", according to Dearing and Rogers, "offers an explanation of why information about certain issues, and not other issues, is available to the public in a democracy". In this essay, I will examine how the ownership structure of a medium of mass communication impacts upon the range of information available in that medium. I will do this with reference to three models of media ownership. These are the Conglomerate Commercial model, the Public Service model and the Community model. The different ownership structures result in different aims, professed and otherwise, and it is interesting to view whether there are differences between these media in terms of their construction of a media agenda, and the contents of this agenda.

I start by outlining some of the key ideas and definitions of agenda-setting theory pertinent to the topic. I then proceed to examine each of the three models of media structure individually, addressing comparisons, and contrasts, with the other models, where appropriate.

In analysing the effect of ownership structure, I rely heavily on critics of the media such as Chomsky, Bagdikian and Pilger. Some may believe that the analyses of authors such as these are biased, as a result of the mistrust which the authors clearly have in the existing media, and social, systems. I reject this view, however, in that the evidence presented by these authors stands by itself in highlighting the effect of existing ownership and governance structures on the media. Where issue can be taken, perhaps, is with the arguments as to what constitutes an 'ideal media'. I address this matter, by examining the proper roles of the media, towards the end of the essay.

Dearing and Rogers define a number of concepts which are useful in gaining an understanding of the area. An agenda is "a set of issues that are communicated in a hierarchy of importance at a point in time". There is no single agenda; rather, we talk of the media, public and policy agendas.

The first clue as to how an item makes it onto the media, or other, agenda lies in the use of the term 'issue'. Cobb and Elder defined an issue as "a conflict between two or more identifiable groups over procedural or substantive matters relating to the distribution of positions or resources". As Dearing and Rogers note, it is the existence of conflict that helps to make an issue newsworthy, and leads those interested to "battle it out in the shared 'public arena', which, in modern society, is the mass media".

One of the important findings of agenda-setting research is that "the position of an issue on the media agenda importantly determines that issue's salience on the public agenda". Salience measures the perceived relative importance of an item on an agenda. In other words, the amount and nature of coverage given to an issue within the media can determine how the public will treat that issue - and whether they will actually see it as worthy of being an issue.

Mazzoleni and Schulz note that "mass media present only a highly selective sample of newsworthy events from a continuous stream of occurrences. Events are identifies as 'newsworthy' when they satisfy certain rules, commonly understood as the criteria for determining 'news value'". The necessity for such selection comes from the fact that there is only a limited amount of time and space available in the media agenda. Of particular interest here, however, is the conclusion that "only part of the criteria of news value are intrinsic to the news events. Often the selection process is determined more strongly by journalistic worldviews and by media production routines".

Mazzoleni and Schulz note that "the media are organizations with their own aims and rules that do not necessarily coincide with, and indeed often clash with, those of political communicators. Because of the power of the media, political communicators are forced to respond to the media's rules, aims, production logics and constraints". They believe that not only form, but even content must be negotiated if politicians wish to address the public.

In addition to the nature of media space as a scarce resource is the interesting fact that access to the public agenda can be viewed as a 'zero-sum game'. In other words, if some issues gain access, others must lose out. This is a consequence of theories of choice such as bounded rationality which suggest that "we can detect only a modest number of variables in most of the problems that we face". Accordingly, "if an issue is to climb the public agenda, it must push other issues down the agenda and eventually shove one of the earlier issues off of the agenda".

In this context, framing can be important. Framing is "the subtle selection of certain aspects of an issue by the media to make them more important and thus to emphasize a particular cause of some phenomenon". For instance, Dearing and Rogers give the example of AIDS, which they say was "Framed differently in each of the four Eras of Media Coverage for this Issue". It is as a result of factors such as framing that Dearing and Rogers conclude that "under certain conditions the media of mass communication tell us how to think about issues, and, therefore, what to think". This conclusion - stronger than the traditional agenda-setting outlook - indicates the importance of the media agenda, and consequently the power associated with those who influence this agenda.

Having considered background issues and questions of definition, we now investigate the first of our three ownership models, the Conglomerate Commercial model. A report in the Financial Times of 21/12/99 highlighted some of the major problems surrounding the control of the media exerted by media conglomerates. In an article entitled 'LA Times confesses to breach of ethics', the newspaper reported that "The Los Angeles Times yesterday prostrated itself before its readers and critics with the publication of a withering, 14-page self-criticism of a profit-sharing deal between the newspaper and proprietors of a sports centre which featured in its weekend magazine". The problem was seen to be "efforts by the management to eliminate the 'wall' which is supposed to separate revenue collectors in the advertising department of a newspaper from the journalistic truth-seekers in editorial". The LA Times report also "listed past management suggestions that the books pages should pay more attention to products from publishers with large advertising budgets and the inclusion of 'soft' editorial". The LA Times is only one paper in the Times Mirror group, and this latest controversy is seen as "a 'big setback' for ambitions to further break down barriers between editorial and advertising".

The controversy can be viewed as arising from the goals of media giants, as described by Ben Bagdikian. He identifies "market share" and "maximum 'synergism'" as two key goals of the major media companies. The first of these goals appears straightforward. Every business, as Bagdikian acknowledges, wishes to increase market share. However, what of the second? "In the mass media", according to Bagdikian, "it describes how one medium can be used to promote the same idea, product celebrity, or politician in another medium". In effect, commercial companies, in seeking to maximise profits, look to increase efficiency across their holdings. Synergism, therefore, implies that commercial holdings, by a media company, will affect the media output of other holdings.

By the time the fifth edition of The Media Monopoly was published (in 1997), Bagdikian was saying that "earlier it was possible to describe the dominant firms in each separate medium ... With each passing year ... the number of controlling firms in all of these media has shrunk: from fifty corporations in 1984 ... as the borders between media began to blur ... in 1996 the number of media corporations with dominant power in society is closer to ten".

So we can see two important trends. First, a smaller group of dominant players (implying large market share for members of that group - the first goal mentioned by Bagdikian) and second a greater degree of cross-media ownership - which can lead to the gains from synergy that we mentioned above.

But what impact does this have on media content? According to Bagdikian, "33 percent of American newspaper editors said they would not feel free to print an item damaging to the parent firm".

This is not to imply that corporate-controlled media never carry stories critical of these interests. Indeed, Bagdikian admits that "In most cases there is no visible imposition of the parent firm's policies, and the policies are not often absolute, conditioned as they are by the desire for profits". However, I have already related Dearing and Rogers' observation that "the position of an issue on the media agenda importantly determines that issue's salience on the public agenda". What this implies is that merely being reported in the media is not sufficient to allow an issue to move onto the public agenda. The amount of coverage, and its prominence and format is also important. As the authors of Manufacturing Consent note, "That the media provide some facts about an issue ... proves absolutely nothing about the adequacy or accuracy of that coverage". Bagdikian believes that "items are more likely to be pursued in depth if they portray flaws in the public tax-supported sector of American life, and less likely to be pursued if they portray flaws in the private corporate sector". In agenda-setting terms, the 'media production routines' mentioned earlier can lead to industry-wide biases in how issues tend to be framed, and what stories are seen to be 'newsworthy' by editors.

There do exist, however, some documented cases of clear suppression of issues by corporations. One example, provided by Bagdikian, is of the destruction of all copies of Herman and Chomsky's Counter-Revolutionary Violence on the orders of William Sarnoff, then chief of all Warner book operations. When the publisher, Claude McCaleb, head of 'Warner Modular Publications Inc.', protested the decision, and "reminded Sarnoff of the agreement that they had ... that the professional staff would select the books and their judgement would be measured by the success of their books in the marketplace", Sarnoff "dismissed the agreement, saying 'it did not cover pieces that were worthless and full of lies'".

The thesis of Counter-Revolutionary Violence, incidentally, was "that the United States, in attempting to suppress revolutionary movements in underdeveloped countries, had become the leading source of violence against native people". It is interesting, therefore, to note the statement in Herman and Chomsky's 1988 book Manufacturing Consent that "Messages from and about dissidents ... often do not comport with the ideology or interests of the gatekeepers and other powerful parties that influence the filtering process".

At the core of Manufacturing Consent is the development of a propaganda model that "traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public". The model, developed for the United States, consists of five filters, as follows:

"(1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms;

(2) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media;

(3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and 'expert' funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power;

(4) 'flak' as a means of disciplining the media; and

(5) 'anti-communism' as a national religion and control mechanism."

Insofar as the 'profit orientation' aspect of commercial media is relate to the influence of advertising, it can be seen that at least the first two of these filters relate to our current analysis. An example of how this might be a factor in the production of the media agenda is provided by Dearing and Rogers' analysis of the 'designated driver media advocacy campaign. This campaign, they claim, was successful because it "attacked drunk driving, but it did not oppose alcoholism or the sale of alcoholic beverages, whose advertising is a very important source of income for the television industry".

Advertising is now of such importance to conglomerate media that, according to Bagdikian, "Executive editors throughout the country are being trained not to select news of interest to their community as a whole, but only for those people who live in selected neighbourhoods that have certain characteristics wanted by major advertisers".

The notion of the crumbling wall between journalists and commercial considerations can also be seen in the Times-Mirror group, publishers of the aforementioned Los Angeles Times. Mark Willis, chairman of the group since 1995, "they ought to spend more time associating socially with the paper's advertising sales staff".

According to the authors of Manufacturing Consent, the results of the propoganda model occur " so naturally that media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose the news 'objectively' and on the basis of professional news values".

This is consistent with the observation, noted earlier, that selection of news is influenced strongly by "journalistic worldview and by media production routines".

One attempt to avoid the bias of the personal opinions of journalists is "Public-Service" broadcasting, which is the second model we investigate. Within this model of state-run broadcasting concepts such as 'objectivity', 'impartiality', and 'balance' feature strongly. The creation of Public Service broadcasters arose from the perceived 'scarce resource' nature of the radio spectrum, and recognition of the potential power of the broadcast medium. While the structure of public service broadcasters differs - in Canada, for instance, much programming is relayed on local independent stations - overall governance by a State-appointed board is a common feature. Funding can come from one or more of a range of sources. These range from advertising to parliamentary allocations and license fees on receivers.

The financial structure of the Public-Service model can be seen as one of its weaknesses, since allocation of funding can be used to exercise political pressure on broadcasters. For instance, in Canada, where a licence-fee on receivers was charged up to 1953 "far from insulating the public broadcaster from political pressure, the licence-fee system increase its vulnerability". The practice of allocating licence revenue "by way of an annual parliamentary vote" is seen by some to have a number of effects, the most pertinent to our current case being "the development of ... a 'culture of caution' in programming policy". For instance, the use of 'outside pickups' was rejected on the grounds that the CRBC (Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission - at the time the national broadcaster) would not be "in a position to control the programme or to determine definitely its content beforehand". The Commissioners were also reticent on the matter of regional programming, believing that "regional programmes should be developed only by those whom the central office deemed competently professional".

Licence-fees are no longer in operation in Canada, but annual allocations and annual scrutiny continue. The resultant 'culture of caution' is seen by some as the reason why CBC can be presented "in the international literature as ... a government-funded broadcaster which has been remarkably free of political interference". In effect, broadcasters have avoided broadcasting anything that would offend the political 'owners' and invite active interference.

Not all broadcasters have avoided receiving such active interference. Speaking in 1966, the Taoiseach, Mr Lemass, rejected the notion of RTE as a totally independent voice. Rather, he stressed the role of RTE as "an instrument of Public Policy", and stated that "the government rejected the view that Radio Teilifis Eireann should be, either generally or in regard to its current affairs programmes, completely independent of government supervision". It was from this perspective that the Irish government approached a number of confrontations with RTE from 1966 onward. Interesting among these was a recommendation by the government that "the best interests of the nation would not be served by sending an RTE team to Vietnam". The deteriorating relationship between the two culminated with the dismissal of the Authority in November 1972 on foot of the "transmission of the report of an interview given by the leader of the Provisional IRA".

The 1976 Act can be seen as an attempt to improve matters. It limited the circumstances within which a ministerial order might be issued, and strengthened the security of tenure of members of the Authority, putting them, in this respect, on what can be viewed as a quasi-judicial basis. However, the then Minister, Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, also stated that "...if the State broadcasting system were ... to accredit the idea ... that it is appropriate for citizens to be neutral as between the democratic state and the armed conspiracies which seek to usurp its functions ... then the pattern of presentation coming from that service - i.e. a service closely associated with the State itself - would tend to confuse the citizens".

While Dr. O'Brien's argument may be reasonable in itself, it does indicate a resolve by the executive to limit, to some extent, the range of output of the State-owned broadcaster. (I do not intend to address here the later extension of the same legislative provisions to commercial and community broadcasters). It is clear that the national broadcaster is seen as an organ of the State, to be enlisted in bolstering the position and interests of the State when necessary.

There are those who believe that this can extend further than merely denying access to those who attack the existence of the State. Some critics of Public Service broadcasting have, for example, attacked the "euphemism for the authorised wisdom" demonstrated by BBC policy.

John Pilger claims that "possessing highly professional talent and the illusion of impartiality, as well as occasionally dissenting programmes, 'public service broadcasting' has become a finely crafted instrument of state propaganda". Interestingly, this is related to the theory of 'elite' control of democratic society and social thought expressed by Chomsky in Necessary Illusions. He believes that the impression of controversy and free-debate can actually be quite important to the survival of the current system, claiming that "controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns".

In one of several examples, Pilger cites the "silence ... in the media" concerning the nuclear arms race between 1965 and 1980. This silence included the banning in November 1965 of 'the War Game', a film which "reconstructed the aftermath of an attack on London with a one-megaton nuclear bomb". While officially, the reason for the ban concerned its possible effect on the "faint-hearted", the real reason was different. The Chairman of the BBC had earlier sought guidance from the Secretary to the Cabinet, on the grounds that the film "might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent". The BBC "subsequently surrendered its editorial control ... to the government". This provides support for Pilger's criticism of the view that "there is a point of balance ... and from that point society can be surveyed in a neutral fashion ... as if this centre is non-political, is somehow not a political position".

This belief that the balance observed in public service broadcasting is in fact a political position, that of "the prevailing bias", is matched by a lack of belief in the existence of "a genuine consensus view". Society is not a cohesive whole, and the views and priorities of 'Working People' can differ from those of the 'professional pundits, MPs and General Secretaries' who are accepted by the media as the proper source of any "serious political analysis". From an agenda-setting perspective, what this means is that the issues identified by the 'professional pundits' become accepted as the proper constituents of the public agenda. The concerns of individual 'ordinary' people, by contrast, must be seen as just that - problems for individual people (as opposed to "issues facing the nation").

An outlet for these concerns of 'ordinary people' can lie in our third model, Community Media, seen by some as a "third way", neither commercial nor State broadcasting. According to Tomas Roseingrave, "Community radio seeks essentially to serve the interests of the people of local communities and to promote the development of their communities rather than the economic ambitions of local commercial interest groups". Such an aim on the one hand differentiates community media clearly from the models already discussed, and impacts on the type and form of programming provided. Before looking at the output of these media, I want to examine the structures developed from these founding aims.

David Dunaway, in analysing the development of American Community Radio, notes that "To broadcast professionals ... the more that inexperienced civilians are given airtime to air their concerns, the less listener interest. Amateurs may make heartfelt radio, but it is not necessarily audience-building". For many in Community media, this misses the point.

The concept that "with regard to listeners, quality rather than numbers [is] paramount" is central to the traditional model of Community radio. While the notion of 'quality' needs to be clearly defined, the sister characteristic "that volunteer staff does not constitute cheap labour but an extension to the listening community itself" gives an indication of what is envisaged. As the NACB would have it, Community radio should "enable the two-way communication of diverse opinions".

In an idealised Community station, then, the media agenda is subordinate to and reflective of concerns of the individual members of the public. To refer again to the NACB's guidelines, they advise those setting up stations to consider how they can "get the listener to initiate discussion instead of responding to the issues you develop".

This is also an aim of Community-based media such as Access Television, as describe in an article by Laura Stein. Indeed, "free from economic and editorial constraints, access television provides citizens with the resources and facilities necessary to participate in democratic talk". Among the functions of 'radical media projects', according to Stein, is to "attempt to expand citizen participation in agenda-setting". In particular, she gives examples of projects which "seek to redefine the agendas of particular communities by publicising the perspectives of ordinary people within these communities". Stein views this last aim as a positive, since "access television opens up possibilities for democratic speech that are absent from commercial and public television". At the same time, she admits that "to date, the impact of radical media projects on political and social discourse has been minimal at best".

While Stein refrains from examining the reasons for access television's marginal impact, it seems clear that there are a number of factors in the community media model which may be responsible.

The first is the development of a "regular core group". The NACB warn that this group (both paid and unpaid) "should guard against constituting themselves into a local broadcasting elite, imagining themselves the voice of the community". Dunaway talks of the development of a "mutual admiration society" (consisting of programmers, friends and core fans) that reinforces its own belief in the popularity and appropriateness of the programming it produces itself.

The second is what Dunaway refers to as 'alternativitis', a syndrome encapsulated in the phrase 'It's not available anywhere else so we must play it here'. "Opposed to lobbyists for the wealthy, canned formats, government propaganda", Community Radio activists may insist upon a continued concentration on stories which do not appear elsewhere. It can be argued that a listener (or a reader) will be attracted to media which provide sufficient coverage to issues which the potential listener views as salient. The refusal to satisfy this 'prior saliency' requirement may, therefore, prevent the creation of a listenership in the first place, and may be a reason for the lack of impact of 'radical media' mentioned earlier. Further, the very diversity that is encouraged by community media advocates can prevent any clear media agenda from emerging, and consequently prevent any knock-on effects on the public agenda, due to the zero-sum nature of that agenda.

The third factor is the concentration, especially among European Community Broadcasters, on "organised elements in their listenership (unions, professional and social institutions) presumed to have sway over potential listeners". Stein has noted that in some access television projects "rank-and-file workers ... express views which are decidedly different from those of union bureaucracies". In addition, Dunaway claims that "expecting that teachers will listen to a specific station because society has allocated their guild a frequency ignores most of what we know about how people consume radio in a format-driven age". We have, therefore, two related problems as a result of this concentration on organised groups - the 'party-line' may not be reflective of the views, interests and concerns of individual members, and further, this may lead to a lack of interest in the media outlet amongst potential listeners.

Finally, and different in nature to the earlier factors, the smaller the community served by a station, the less likely it is that radically unconventional views (within the context of the community) will be heard on the station. Such views will be represented by such small strands of opinion as not to be seen as issues by the community. Without the essential element of "conflict" mentioned earlier, debate does not occur.

Community media, as noted above, if therefore, perhaps the most contradictory of the models examined, running the dual dangers of become diverse to the extent of becoming meaningless, and not truly challenging the core views of readers and listeners.

It is by now a cliché to say that all media models are facing into a period of intense change. With the huge increase in information available, as a result of developments such as the growth of the Internet, the importance of the media in 'filtering' information - in effect, agenda-setting - will increase. This is recognised by a paper by Peter White, in Telecommunications Policy, in which it is argued that "In commercial terms, transactional space will become the strategic battleground for control of media and communication systems in the future".

A second effect of the developing importance of the transaction space will be that movement between different media will decrease. If an individual uses Portal X as their entry point (for Web, Digital TV, or other services) they will be less likely than at present to also later use an unrelated Portal Y, partly due to the difficulty associated with finding that alternative portal. In an unregulated digital environment, consequently, somebody who uses Sky TV for entertainment and 'light' news will not easily move to RTE, or the BBC, for 'heavy' news. An even stronger example, is that those who enter the Web using an AOL portal are unlikely to find their way to Yahoo or Altavista, unless they have knowledge, gained from an outside medium, of the existence of these portals. This makes each individual outlet more powerful in creating the media agenda seen by its users.

The key may lie in the use of the word 'unregulated'. Just as Telecommunications network operators are currently being required to provide access by competitors to their network, so too might those controlling space be forced to provide linkage to competitors. How effective this would be in practice, though, is open to question.

I have shown in this essay that ownership structure can exert a large influence on the output of the media, and consequently on the media agenda. Within both Conglomerate-controlled media and Public Service media, the effect is to reinforce the existing status quo, while allowing the impression of open debate. Much of this influence is subtle, depending upon self-censorship and institutionalisation, though more blatant examples do exist. In Community media, the diversity encouraged can prevent the emergence of a clear media agenda, and dilute the influence of these media on the broader public consciousness.

Much of the criticism of the output of existing media models arises from conflicts regarding the objectives of these models. For instance, while some see public service broadcasting as assisting in the building of a nation, others see the role of the media as investigating and challenging authority, providing a fourth estate to the political process. Many people speak of the need to 'inform, educate and challenge' citizens through broadcasting, but the meaning of these terms can be vague. For others, media are political tools, to be used in creating participative democratic structures, facilitating citizens in their development as active members of society.

As we have seen, many of these objectives are contradictory, and cannot be met within a single media outlet. Open access provides opportunities for personal development and democratic spaces, but cannot properly create a media agenda (which is central to the aim of informing people). Filtered media, such as Conglomerate controlled media and Public Service Media provide an informational role, but within bounds that ensure that they do not challenge the existing system too strongly.

Each of the defining roles envisaged for the media has validity in itself, though no single model can accommodate all, or even many, of the roles identified. The development of a diverse range of media is more realistic and perhaps desirable. As noted above, one of the biggest challenges facing such a policy in the 'digital age' we are entering may lie in ensuring that the various media models and outlets are visible to individual citizens.

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