WK16 – Political Economy of the Media
and Media Regulation
Dr. Carolina Matos
Department of Government
University of Essex

Readings
Required texts:
• Blumler, J. G. (1995) The Crisis of Public Communications,
London: Routledge, 97-111
• Golding, Peter and Murdock, Graham (2005) (eds.) “Culture,
Communication and Political Economy” in Mass media and
society, London: Hodder Education, 70-92
Additional:
Curran, J. (2002) “Media and Democracy: the Third Way” in
Media and Power, London: Routledge, 217-248
Garnham, N. (1986) “Contributions to a Political Economy of
Mass Communication” in Collins, R., Curran, J., Garnham, N.,
Scannell, P. , Schlesinger, P. and Sparks, C. (eds.) Media Culture
and Society: A Critical Reader, London: Sage Publications, 9-33

Key points
• The critical political economy tradition: key concerns
• Critical political economy versus Cultural Studies
• Democratic functions of the media and the critical political
economy’s concerns
• The private versus public dichotomy in communications
• The relationship of the media with the state and with public
service broadcasting (PSB)
• PSB in Europe and in the UK: the case of the BBC
• Media reform and the Leveson inquiry
• Latin American broadcasting and European PSB
• Seminar activities and conclusion
• Readings for week 17

The media, journalism and politics

Critical political economy: some theorists in the
field
• Curran, J. (2002) “Media and Democracy: the Third Way” in Media
and Power, London: Routledge, 217-248
• Garnham, N. (1986) “Contributionsd to a Political Economy of Mass
Communication” in Collins, R., Curran, J., Garnham, N., Scannell, P.
, Schlesinger, P. and Sparks, C. (eds.) Media Culture and Society: A
Critical Reader, London: Sage Publications, 9-33
• Mosco, V. and Reddick, A. (1997) “Political Economy,
Communications and Policy” in Mashoel, B. and Dwayne, W. (eds.)
Democratizaing Communications: Comparative Perspectives in
Information and Power, NJ: Hampton press, 10-32
• Scanell, P. (1989) “Public Service Broadcasting and Modern Public
Life” in Media, Culture and Society, vol. 11, 135-166

Political economy of the media
 Thussu (2000) sees the political economy approach as
including many of the other theories of international
communication, such as dependency and hegemony.
 The class with the means of material production controls the
means of mental production, thus it controls both the
production and distribution of the ideas of its age.
 Focus on corporate and state power (the market versus the
state)
 Research within this perspective is very much focused on issues
of ownership of the media (i.e. control that Rupert Murdoch’s
News Corporation exercises globally).
 An important theme within “critical political economy is the
transition from American post-war hegemony to a global order
where world communication is dominated by transnational and
multinational corporations”. (in Madikiza and Bornman,
2007,30)

The critical political economy tradition (in Golding
and Murdock, 1991, 2000)
• Focuses on the interplay between symbolic and economic
dimensions of public communications
• Criticises the rigid and flawed division between
“administrative” and “critical” research
• Nonetheless, there has been a more pronounced division
between writers who focus more “on the construction and
consumption of meaning” (i.e. Fiske, 1989), or on the
economic organizations of media industries (i.e. Collins,
Garnham and Locksley, 1988),
• I.e. the former is seen as more aligned with the Cultural
Studies tradition and the latter with the Political Economy
• Political Economy is concerned with showing how the ways of
“financing and organizing cultural production for the range of
discourses and representations in the public domain” (70)

Critical political economy versus Cultural Studies
(in Golding and Murdock, 1991, 2000)
• Both are concerned with the exercise of power
• Critical political economy draws people from Economics,
Political Science and Sociology and Cultural Studies
• Cultural Studies is concerned with the ways in which audience
members interpret media, viewing them as active subjects
• Criticisms of the Cultural Studies strand from the Political
Economy perspective - “offers an analysis of how the cultural
industries work that has little or nothing to say about how
they actually operate as industries” and how their economic
organization affects “the production and circulation of
meaning.”
• Does not examine the relation between consumption choice
and their economic position in the wider economic formation.

What is critical political economy? (in Golding and
Murdock, 1991, 2000)
• Worried about inequality in society and how it is reflected
and/or perpetuated by communication structures
Definition:
“…differs from mainstream economics in four respects: first, it
is holistic; second, it is historical; third, it is concerned with the
balance between capitalist enterprise and public intervention
and finally it goes beyond technical issues of efficiency to
engage with basic moral questions of justice, equity and the
public good.” (72).
“…critical political economy is interested in the interplay
between economic organization and political, social and cultural
life……is concerned to trace the impact of economic dynamics
on the range and diversity of public cultural expression and its
availability to different social groups”. (73)

Critical Political Economy continued
• What does it have to say regarding the media?
• Critical political economy is worried with the ways “news is
structured by the relations between press proprietors and
editors or their sources, to the way TV viewing is affected by
the organization of domestic life and power relations within
the family.
• Critical political economy is thus especially interested in “the
ways communicative activity is structured by the unequal
distribution of natural and symbolic resources.”
• Chomksy’s propaganda model – Authors see this analysis as
being partly right: “Governments and business elites do have
privileged access to the news; advertisers do operate as
a…licensing authority….: media moguls can determine the
editorial line and cultural stance of the papers and broadcast
stations they own.”

Critical political economy tradition continued
• Four historical processes are critical to a critical political
economy of culture: 1) the growth of the media; 2) extension
of corporate reach; 3) commodification and 4) the changing
role of state and government intervention. (74)
• Arguments in political economy between the public and the
private:
1) What constitutes the public good?
2) Notion that private enterprise would not provide what a
good society required.
3) Links the constitution of a good society to the extension of
citizenship rights.
A more just “communications system would provide people
with access to information, advice and analysis that would
enable them to know their rights……”

Political economy in practice
• Political economy has been interested in determining the
scope of public intervention in the media, mainly the relation
between state regulation and communication industries.
• Political economy is concerned with three main areas:
• 1) the production of cultural goods and the limiting “impact of
cultural production on the range of cultural consumption”;
• 2) the examination of texts to show the “ways in which the
representations present in media products are related to the
material realities of their production and consumption”;
• 3) the assessment of the political economy of cultural
consumption in order to show the relation between material
and cultural inequality.

Critical Political Economy: concerns with
ownership and constraints on media messages
• Media concentration and the worries with abuse of power
• Concerns with the diversity of the public sphere, and with
editorial intervention and choice of media personnel
• Increase of synergies between companies in a new era of
media convergence
• Although increasing commercialization, new technologies,
deregulation policies and convergence have resulted in more
media outlets and vehicles in the “marketplace of ideas”, the
political economy tradition reminds us they might be more
variants of the same messages and themes than a real
democratization, diversity and expansion of ideas
• Era of convergence – cultural production flows between and
across media in an increasingly fluid way.

Core concern: the public sphere ideal and the media
as civic forum
• The news media as civic forum has in its ideal the
Habermasian conception of the public sphere; the idea of the
press as a civic forum for pluralist debate….has remained
influential (Norris, 2000)
• “Liberal theorists from Milton through Locke and Madison to
John Stuart Mill have argued that a free and independent
press within each nation can play a vital role in the process of
democratization by contributing toward the right of freedom
of expression, thought and conscience, strengthening the
responsiveness of governments to all citizens, and providing a
pluralist platform of political expression for a multiplicity of
groups” (Sen, 1999).
• Political economy tradition sees the public sphere ideal as
worth retaining, seeing broadcasters as having an obligation
to provide the widest possible range of information to the
public and to represent the diverse groups in society fairly

‘Private’ versus ‘public’ dichotomy (in
Matos, 2012)
Private Public
Right/Conservative/Centre/Left – the Centre/Left/Liberal/some conservatives -
consumer citizen
‘Objective’ and informational journalism ‘Objective’/’public’/’serious’ journalism
Talk shows/sit-coms/reality TV – Realism in films/documentaries/reality
American programming, some content TV – ‘arty’ and European programming,
from other countries some US material
Advertising/aesthetic of consumerism – ‘Quality’ aesthetic/Challenging material
self/intimacy/the private sphere (i.e. Sci- - collective/the public sphere
fi, horror)
Dreamy/fantasy/’escapism’ texts – Historical material/in depth analyses –
occasional ‘serious’ material some entertainment (i.e. Soaps, drama,
sci-fi, horror).

Media and democracy: core political functions of
the media
• Blumler and Gurevitch (in Jack McLeod, Gerald M. Kosicki and
Douglas McLeod, 126) argued for 8 normative standards for media
systems in democratic societies, including agenda-setting, providing
platforms for advocacy and holding officials to account (in Norris,
2000, 33)
• 1) surveillance of contemporary events…that will impinge upon the
welfare of citizens;
• 2) identification of key sociopolitical issues including their origins
and possibilities for resolution;
• 3) provision of platforms for advocacy by spoke-persons for causes.;
• 4) transmission of diverse contents across various dimensions and
factions of political discourse….
• 5) scrutiny of government officials, their institutions and other
agencies of power….;
• 6) incentives and information to allow citizens to become active
informed participants..;

Curran’s democratic model for a complex media
system (in Matos, 2008)
• Curran (1991, 2000: 142-149) has envisioned an alternative model for a
complex media system - third way between liberalism and Marxism
• An ideal democratic media system is one in which various sectors, the
state, the market, civic and alternative sectors, are represented (Matos,
2008)
• It has at its core the public service TV, with private enterprise, the social,
civic and the professional sectors surrounding it (1991,2000; 140-148).
• Civic sector is composed of political parties, social movements and
interest groups; the professional sector is controlled by professional
communicators;
• The private is more responsive to popular pleasures and can act out the
watchdog function whilst the social market represents minority media
interests.
• Youtube video: Outfoxed Rupert Murdoch (1-9)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFDwdRXCg3I)

The case of the BBC
• PSB under pressure since the 1980’s amid the expansion of the
commercialization of TV and rise of new technologies (cable,
satellite and digital). According to Collins (1999; 160), the number of
commercial channels in Europe was 58 in 1992, jumping to 250 in
the late 1990’s
• BBC in the UK - Arguments around the licence fee and wider state
control of broadcasting were grounded on assumptions of “spectrum
scarcity”…;
• Arguments that question BBC’s necessity –
• “….media abundance (Keane, 1995); the burden of the license fee tax
on citizens; the claims that the BBC discourages innovation, and that
in its efforts to retain the attention of fragmented audiences, it is
“dumbing down” and becoming more indistinguishable from
commercial broadcasters…” (Matos, 2008)
• BBC ideal – has been undermined as the Corporation has responded
to a fall in the value of the license fee by expanding its commercial
activities in an effort to raise money (i.e. subscription channels for
special interest groups). BBC’s independence has always been
fragile.

PSB ethos revisited: Scannell and Keane on the role
of the BBC in public life (in Matos, 2008)
• Criticising the academics (i.e. Curran, Garnham, Scannell) and the
understanding of public service broadcasting as a space where the
Habermasian notion of the public sphere can be articulated, Keane
(1995) has deemed the public sphere obsolete in the 21st century.
• According to Keane, the development in the 21st century of a
“multiplicity of networked spaces of communication” which are not
tied to the nation-state contributes to reinforce the view that the
public sphere is outdated (different public spheres as opposed to a
unified one)
• UK versus US - Differences - PSB emphases news and public
affairs, features and documentaries; commercial broadcasting
entertainment (Munghan and Gunther; 2000, 10)

The crisis of civic communications: what is
it?
• Blumler and Gurevitch (1995) identified the crisis of public
communications as being grounded in….:
• 1) a decline in the quality of political journalism, driven by what is
described as the process of commercialization, tabloidization,
Americanization and “dumbing down”, in short, the ascendancy of
“infotainment” over serious reportage…..
• Brian McNair (2000) attempts to offer a sophisticated and “realistic”
understanding of the role that the media and political journalism play
in our society, rejecting the tendency to lament the decline of “serious
journalism” and condemn entertainment formats

PSB models (in Hallin and Mancini, 2004)
• Four basic models for the governance of PSB (Humphreys, 1996:
155-8):
• 1) The government model – where public broadcasting is controlled
directly by the government or by the political majority. Classic case
of this is the French broadcaster under De Gaulle
• 2) The professional model – is exemplified by the BBC and the
tradition of independence. Model is also characteristic of the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Irish public broadcasting
and some Scandinavian countries and PSB in US
• 3) The parliamentary or proportional representation model – is
divided among the political parties by proportional representation.
The classic example is Radio Televisione Italian (RAI) in the 1980s.
• 4) The civic or corporatist model – is similar to the parliamentary
model in the sense that control of PSB is distributed among various
social and political groups

Historical and theoretical perspectives on PSB
• Two slightly divisive models of broadcasting have been constructed in
the UK and US. The former has been labelled the public service one,
and which is currently more a dual system (Curran, 2002), and the latter
is the commercial system, which has also predominated in most Latin
American countries.
• As Munghan and Gunther (2000, 10)note, PSB tends to put more
emphasis on news and public affairs, features and documentaries,
whereas commercial broadcasting more on entertainment.
• - The “death” of public service broadcasting in the UK has been
proclaimed since the 80’s, in the context of the Thatcher government and
the revival of the neo-right neo-liberal market politics, and amid the
growing expansion of multi-channels and the commercialisation of
broadcasting in Europe

Future role for PSB in old and new democracies
 In the UK, PSB has emerged as vehicle for strengthening
debate.
 Talk became more spontaneous and less constrained
(Scannell, 1995)
 As a vehicle for cultural and educational emancipation;
boost of political diversity as well as both regional and
national integration
 Functioning as a counterweight to the market – the
necessity of multiple public spheres and media to attend to
both citizen and consumer demands
 Is a truly independent public media possible?

Broadcasting in the UK and regulation
* The state’s participation in the ownership or regulation of the
broadcast media in liberal European democracies has been
based upon the need to guarantee standards of ‘neutrality’,
minimising political bias....
• Set up under the 2003 Communications bill, the UK’s
broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has been an example of
reference in media regulation in Europe;
• British newspapers operate on a system of self-regulation
(i.e. Press Complaints Commission is an independent self-
regulatory body)

Broadcasting in the UK and regulation continued
According to Forgan and Tambini (2000, 03, in
Santos e Silveira, 2007, 73), PSB regulation in the
UK improved through time;
• Dunleavy (1987) has argued how public service
broadcasting in the UK has managed to act as a
counter-weight to the press, neutralising or
balancing the biases of the partisan British
tabloids ;
• Regulation in the UK has also been supported by
various regulation bodies who have established
different codes of conduct.

Media reform, regulation and the Leveson inquiry
• The Leveson inquiry has come up with many suggestions for
the newspaper press in the UK, the main one being the
creation of a new regulatory body to replace the Press
Complaints Commission
• The new agency will be independent of editors, government
and business and would be able to impose fines of up to £ 1 m
• A recognition body, such as Ofcom, would be given
responsibility to oversee this and it would not include any
serving editors
• Remedies would include the publication of corrections and
apologies. Arbitration service would offer a low-cost
alternative to legal settlement
• The UK press will also seek to prove that it can produce a
model of regulation that attends to the Leveson requirements

Public communication infrastructure in Latin
America: a history of neglect
 State intervention in South America has had the aim of reinforcing
governmental powers rather than promoting democratic communications
(Waisbord, 2000; Matos, 2008).
 Broadcasting has been built on a combination of political control and
limited regulation. Educational and state channels are mainly owned by
sectors of the Church and politicians.
 National broadcasting policies have also been traditionally aligned with
political interests and state control.
 Debates on the necessity of broadcasting and media reform and
regulation culminated in the first realization of a conference on the theme
in 2009 (i.e. Confecom debates)

Conclusions and questions for thought
• Critical political economy shares similar set of concerns, but the
Political Economy tradition is concerned with material resources, the
means of production and the relationship between inequality and
communication structures
• The expansion of media commercialization throughout Europe and
the world since the 1980s has been paralleled by a perceived “crisis”
in the public service broadcasting tradition and in public
communications
• The BBC’s role and its future has been questioned, with debates on
the necessity of a license fee when the Corporation is becoming more
like the commercial channels
• Is the private and public dichotomy in communications becoming
increasingly blurred ?
• Where might media reform come from? – Journalists, according to
Golding and Murdock.

Seminar questions and activities
• 1) Discuss the critical political economy tradition. What
are its main concerns and its three core tasks? How does
it differ from the Cultural Studies tradition?
• 2) How would a critical political economy tradition
investigate the media messages put out by a media giant
company, such as News Corporation? What would it be
worried in addressing?
• 3) What is meant by “crisis” in public communications?
Discuss by making reference to the tradition of European
public service broadcasting and to the specific case of the
BBC.
• 4) Compare public service broadcasting systems (PSB)
and regulation policy debates in specific regions of your
choice (i.e. Latin America and Europe).

Readings week 17
Required texts:
• Fairclough, N. (2005) “Political Discourse in the Media: an
Anaylitical Framework” in A. Bell and P. Garrett (eds.) (2005)
Approaches to Media Discourse, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 142-
163
• George, A. (2009) “Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to
Content Analysis” in Krippendorff, Klaus and Angela Bock, Mary
(eds.) The Content Analysis Reader, London: Sage, 144-156
• Van Dijk (2008) “Structures of Discourse and Structures of Power”
and “Critical Discourse Analysis” in Discourse and Power, London:
Palgrave Macmillan
Additional:
• Glynos, J., Howarth, D., Norval, A., and Speed, E. (2009) ‘Discourse
Analysis: Varieties and Methods’, ESRC National Centre for Research
Methods
• Riffe, D. et al (2005) “Defining Content Analysis as a Social Science
Tool” in Analysing Media Messages, 23- 39