Question

According to a media literacy principle; the media are affected by industrial as well as political pressures. Explain what is meant by this statement, and with the relevant examples, explain the implications

Answer 1

Media literacy encourages people to inquire, evaluate, understand and appreciate their multimedia culture. It teaches them to become active, engaged media consumers and users. Media educators base their teaching on key concepts for media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. These key concepts act as filters that any media text has to go through in order for us to critically respond.

Mass Media Research- involves the use of systematic methods to understand or solve problems regarding the mass media. The research methods will often examine the ways in which the mass media influences or impacts the social and cultural world.

Definitely, mass media is both influenced and affected by political and industrial factors. Media convey ideological messages about values, power and authority. In media literacy, what or who is absent may be more important than what or who is included. As a result, media have great influence on politics and on forming social change. TV news coverage and advertising can greatly influence the election of a national leader on the basis of image; representations of world issues, both in journalism and fiction, can affect how much attention they receive; and society’s views towards different groups can be directly influenced by how - and how often - they appear in media.

To better understand media, we need to understand the political environment in which they operate. This becomes obvious when we consider the drastic differences between media in a democratic society and those in totalitarian nations. State control of the mass media is a routine element of totalitarian systems. Here the structural constraint of the state largely dominates the potential agency of the media. In extreme cases, state-owned news agencies, broadcast media, and film studios act as propaganda arms of the state, promoting a narrow set of government-sanctioned images and messages. Audiences in such nations must become adept at “reading between the lines” in decoding such propaganda efforts. The emergence of illegal underground media is also common in such situations, affirming the active agency of citizens in even the bleakest of circumstances. Such cases can be observed in North Korea and China. And also there are some violations of Press Freedom around the World such as in Tanzania, Mexico, and Nigeria etc. in democratic nations like India the situation is not different. But in other European countries like Norway, Finland, Denmark which is advanced, ranking first second and third in 2020 world press freedom index.

One widely discussed tension in journalism relates to the fact that most media organizations need to rely on revenues from advertising, creating tension between economic and journalistic objectives. To ensure autonomy and strengthen professionalism, newsrooms established a rhetorical, and often physical, boundary to separate the economic and journalistic sides of the company. Growing economic pressures and changes in the media environment have seen this wall become more permeable, and economic influences are being felt both on the organizational level and in individual journalists’ daily routines and practices.

Common to all of these deviations is the will of the political, economic or other interest groups to control media. And public media is under more pressure. Private companies have to respect the independence of the media and refrain from exerting pressure or blurring the line between journalism and advertising.