[en] Media, Politics and Power: Commentary on the concentration of power in the media

The Media Reform Coalition is an organisation formed in 2011 to promote the democratization of the media. Their academics, activists and media producers produce different research that shows the endemic problem of concentrated ownership across the UK media landscape and the possibilities of public media in the medium-term future.

To this end, since 2014 they have been publishing reports on media ownership in the UK investigating and making public how large companies dominate the local and national newspaper or radio market in the UK. In their research, they identify a concerning and widespread level of concentration within the news and information markets that need to be addressed as soon as possible because this endogamic situation can be used to manipulate the media landscape to align with media owners' individual beliefs and own interests.

I too consider that the accumulation of power in the media leads to the reframing of the world to one that suits the ones who control it. However, I disagree with some of the points MCR made in their reports and the framework from which they start to do the work they do. More specifically, although I believe that they are not misdirected in this statement, I believe that the reasons on which they are based and the consequent proposals come from a different ground than mine.

The Media Reform Coalition is not intrinsically tied to any specific political ideology. But it fails to question the system which produced the current media landscape. To some extent, MRC’s goals and positions can be understood as aligned with leftist or progressive values because they argue that a diverse and pluralistic media landscape is crucial for a healthy democracy. However, their focus on advocating for immediate regulatory influence to support this pluralism could be seen as limiting deeper exploration into the underlying causes and potential alternatives.

Media ownership concentration is the tendency for a smaller number of individuals and/or companies to possess a larger proportion of the media. While the history of this concentration has a lengthy and controversial past nowadays is a predominant feature in multiple countries. This has raised a concern for social scientists due to its anti-democratic essence because this distinct accumulation restricts [political and] cultural diversity [and] it undermines the ability of citizens to acquire and exchange the information and ideas necessary to take informed decisions about public life (Freedman, 2014).

Solutions to the media agglomeration problem usually fall within two basic categories, categories that fit within the current political system: regulate more or deregulate everything. To explain the differences in this, we can redirect to two countries that have simultaneously followed at the same historical time the concentration of media ownership: the USA and the UK.

In Freedman’s book The Politics of Media Policy (2008), he makes a comparison between the media regulation in the United States of America and the United Kingdom during the Blair and the Bush administrations. In summary, while both countries have some similar approaches to media policy, such as their market-driven orientation and public service broadcasting systems, they also have differences in terms of ownership, funding, political influence, content regulation, and their focus on local versus global media interests. Freedman illustrates the shift in the concept of “public interest” in mass communications in the United States, emphasising a libertarian approach and market competition, while the UK leans toward state regulation and a pluralistic approach aimed at diversity and public interest protection through regulations.

Even with these differences, both the British and American cases demonstrate a fundamental principle of neoliberal ideology: public institutions in diverse sectors, regardless of their historical performance or public backing, are susceptible to political intervention and restructuring. This may not always entail privatisation or fragmentation but frequently involves aligning them with market-friendly practices and principles. This process highlights the pervasive influence of neoliberalism on public institutions across distinct countries and is the reason why I differed from the initial statement of the Media Reform Coalition. If we accept regulation as the final goal, without understanding how the restructuring of policies is being mounted in a neoliberal framework, are we really doing something? Is this possibly the only possibility, to settle ourselves into what is already established?

Monopolies have not been solely shaped by the uncontrolled workings of economic forces. Rather, the policies implemented by governments have paved the way for the conditions conducive to monopolies: Legislation and political actions have been instrumental in driving the trend towards monopolisation.

The logic underpinning modern capitalism, as exemplified by the 1957 Treaty of Rome or the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, introduces a new approach to governing people, based on the universal principle of competition. Intending to establish and maintain the necessary conditions for a competitive system, neoliberal policies had to attack privileges such as monopolies. However, the practical application of these policies led to market dynamics that facilitated the growth and persistence of monopolies because when regulations are relaxed and competition is encouraged larger companies with more resources can use their advantage to acquire or outcompete smaller players, eventually leading to oligopolistic market structures. These oligopolistic companies can then turn back to the regulator and ask them to create more regulation which smaller competitors would find it differentially difficult to comply with.

As an example of the regulatory capture we should be afraid of, in 2011, the New York Times reported that a regulator responsible for overseeing the merger between Comcast and NBC Universal, two of the US’s largest media companies, went to work for the resulting conglomerate after having approved it.

The greatest goal of neoliberalism was to alter the mode of exercise of government power, as well as doctrinal references, in the context of a change in the operating rules of capitalism (Dardot, P. and Laval, C., 2017). Thus, what sets this new political form apart is its formulation of a fresh set of regulations that delineate not just a changed “regime of accumulation” but, more expansively, an entirely different societal structure.

According to the Marxist perspective, the inherent logic of accumulation defines the singular nature of capitalism. For instance, the general law of capitalist accumulation fosters a tendency toward capital concentration, primarily driven by competition and this concentration is woven into the logic of competition as a “natural law,” often described as “the attraction of capital by capital.” However, there’s an alternative viewpoint held by ordo-liberals and regulationist economists, suggesting that the actual form of capitalism doesn’t directly stem from the logic of capital but represents a historically unique economic institutional form. This is the rationale behind the legal interventionism advocated by neoliberalism, aiming to shape capitalism into a distinct form governed by a set of legal and political rules, challenging the idea of a single, uniform capitalism guided by an unyielding “natural law.” That is how neoliberalism doesn’t only respond to an accumulation crisis but also addresses a crisis of governance.

This logic of existence has expanded market rationality into every facet of life, reflecting a general principle of competitiveness that drives reforms across various domains, even those seemingly distant from commercial global markets.

Foucault underscores here the importance of neoliberalism as an emerging political framework that extends its influence well beyond economic strategies and the strengthening of capital. Within this framework, market principles have assumed a central role as governing principles that are not only applied by and to the State but also permeate various institutions and entities across society, including the media.

A strong emphasis on Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic power” is fundamental in understanding the role of media in the exercise of power because the control and preservation of social order by dominant groups are achieved through their use of culture and knowledge through the control and manipulation of symbolic systems. The media is dedicated to repeating with persistence these symbols and signs to influence public perception and establish a prevailing narrative or belief in various influential domains of society.

The monopolies that control the media encourage reinforcing and universalising conceptions around dominant ideals, turning them into myths. This leads to an ideological distortion of the media landscape where systematic biases predominate. However, contrary to what Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky maintain in Manufacturing Consent (1988), we cannot comprehend the media and its behaviour as a product of those who have the ownership. The explanation for this does not come from any explanation but from the hypersubjectification of the neoliberal system itself.

Anti-neoliberal critiques fail to focus on understanding markets as essential or natural to humanity. This has allowed that while a New Right openly identifies as neoliberal, the Modern Left falls into reproducing this same doctrine by having mystified it. Putting it another way, the current left is incapable of presenting alternatives to the established system because they have assumed its false naturalness.

I do not think our final goal should be fitted into the sense of our current market system. Even allowing for the possibility that monopolies were regulated, the dominant system would continue to reproduce itself and more oligopolies would end up being created because we are not addressing the underlying causes of the dynamics we seek to prevent. We should neither accept the neoliberal framework, nor blindly rebel against it, but rather look for some alternatives that question its assumptions.

Perhaps some alternatives in this vein might involve non-governmental initiatives to restore civic participation, experimentation with different models in different countries to see what works best, or indeed some form of more sophisticated regulatory approach which takes into account that the companies being regulated will attempt to subvert the regulation. On that point, it will be interesting to see how the EU’s legislative efforts to keep the biggest tech companies accountable–but not smaller incumbents–will pan out.

We could also try to analyse national conglomerates for weak points. For example, we could create local media cooperatives that challenge national conglomerates by providing local coverage of issues that national and global newspapers can’t afford to cover. So perhaps national newspapers could not be unseated by any one initiative but chipped away by a hundred local alternatives. Or we question the need for newspapers over other ways of learning about the world and perhaps choose to create or join book clubs on our topics of interest over paying attention to the rapid ebb and flow of weekly news. The possibilities are there, we just need to find them.

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