Media, Democracy and European Culture

Ib Bondebjerg, Peter Madsen, Ib Bondebjerg, Peter Madsen

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781841502472
• eBook ISBN: 9781841502878
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Media, Democracy and European Culture presents some of the most recent, cutting edge research on Europe, from social, political and cultural perspectives, equally focusing on each dimension of democracy in Europe. The role of the media, communication policy and the question of how the media report on Europe runs as a thread through all contributions. The book is interdisciplinary and international. It brings together researchers from many countries and from humanities, social sciences and law. The articles combine the discussion of central theories and theoretical concepts for the understanding of media, democracy and European culture with empirical data and comparative analytical studies of media culture and democracy across Europe. The book is written by some of the most prominent European Scholars in media, political science, sociology and cultural studies.

PART ONE: MEDIA, POWER, DEMOCRACY AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

1

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MEDIA AT THE ROOT OF THE EU’S DEMOCRACY DEFICIT

Sophia Kaitatzi-Whitlock

Abstract

This study looks how the EU, by handing over control of the media to business interests, did irreparable damage to its own political communication with its citizens. It looks at the mutual influences and relations between the EU ‘Democracy Deficit’, politics – both the national and supra-national and the political economy of communications. It holds that both the democracy deficit and the political communications deficit have been created and sustained by a political economy in communications which produces the commodification and disempowerment of citizens, the depoliticization of power relations and the incapacitation of policy processes which have attempted to produce significant changes. The political economy framework of communications which has been put in place offers no redemption from either of these notorious deficits while severely undermining political credibility and a democratic politics.

Keywords

democracy deficit, political communication deficit, citizen commodification, de-politicization, self-regulating media market system, de-commodification

Establishing structures for political and communicative subjugation

‘A democracy without democrats is an internal and external danger’ Hermann Müller, Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, 1930 (in Mazower 1998).

Since the establishment of EU citizenship by the Treaty of the European Union (TEU, Maastricht, 1992), EU citizens have been afflicted by a political communication deficit. In the transition from the national to the supra-national level of politics, citizens of EU member states have been losing out on transparency, accountability and access to political information. The supranational constellation of the EU now suffers from a systemic crisis of legitimacy, linked directly with the political economy of communications. Nonetheless, the EU can neither confront the crisis nor escape from it. But how long can such a democratic deficit last before corroding the democratic system altogether?

The study investigates why the EC/EU self-regulating media market system favours the pathology of concentration of ownership, leading to media baronies and to de facto unfair competition. Examined policies, and their impact, reveal a relentless control of policy agendas and outcomes by the most powerful market forces. The malaise of Europe’s political communication deficit is the outcome of frustrated policy attempts or obstinate refusals to establish an inclusive, pan-European communications sphere. The long-term consequences of this economically profitable, but politically aberrant EU-style economism result in de-politicization, while the deficit in a common civic communication system is the key constitutive vector of the democratic deficit.

The 1989 Television without Frontiers Directive (TWFD) was the result of bitter compromises between member states and competing market forces. A critical assessment of the TWFD policy process exposes its catalytic effects on the dual strategic shift: first, from the political to the commercial control of the media and secondly, from the national to the supra-national control of the policy agenda. The foundation of the EC/EU communications policy was the 1984 Green Paper Television without Frontiers (GPTWF) which launched structural transmutations in politics and culture. By transforming the role of electronic media, the TWFD dis-embedded politics and the role of citizens who became commodified. Thus, the GPTWF accomplished the crucial objectives of its policy mentors.

Setting up the strategic transmutation – the double shift

The exclusive emphasis of the TWFD on the economic role of communication converted it into a veritable trap. This choice was, legally, grounded on the relevant articles of the Treaty of the European Community (TEC).¹ Under the TEC ‘the EC does not have the means to impose a cultural policy. It will, therefore, have to tackle the problem from an economic point of view’ (Jacques Delors, quoted in Negrine and Papathanassopoulos 1990: 67). Given the conjuncture of urgent pressures for liberalization and deregulation in communications by global capital forces, the catalytic strategy of the Green Paper consisted in tackling this sector through the circumscribing framework of the EC, rather than through any proactive alternative. The Green Paper provided the discourse and the legal means for an EC-wide intervention in the audio-visual sector, thereby accommodating to extra-institutional global market demands (Venturelli 1998). European Court of Justice (ECJ) jurisprudence on interpreting key TEC Articles was mobilised in conjunction with the evocative power of ‘integrationist’ rhetoric and the ‘pressing need’ to develop global audiovisual industries.

The Green Paper bypassed constitutional caveats, notably concerning the imperative need for universally accessed political communication at a pan-European level. Thus, constitutive political prerequisites slipped off the agenda. But, if the EC discarded political communication, what kind of communications policy was it actually pursuing and for whom? The Green Paper (GPTWF) boldly expanded the scope for commodification by deregulating and reinforcing an already prevailing economism. Not accidentally, it was dubbed the ‘flagship of the Single Market’.² In this vein, member states were asked to make unconditional concessions:

on sovereignty

on cultural self-determination

on prerogatives to frame political spheres.

Conversely, opponent global capital free-marketeers got their gains without having to make concessions to political integration. As a corollary, the normally superordinate objectives of national communications and cultural orders soon became subordinate. The political naïveté of this approach became apparent after the GATS agreement of 1993.³

Allegedly, the GPTWF aimed, first, to demonstrate the importance of broadcasting for European integration; ‘for the free democratic structure of the European Communities’ and secondly to illustrate the significance of the TEC for those producing, broadcasting and re-transmitting audio-visual programmes and for those receiving such programmes (GPTWF 1984: 1)⁴. These objectives are mutually exclusive. The first addresses viewers as citizens, while the second treats them as consumers and as economic agents. But an unresolved tension exists between them. The first objective promoted the ideology of European integration, via broadcasting policy, which commanded enormous rhetorical power, but was legally groundless. Hence, comparatively, it is degraded to a vague desideratum.⁵ Without constitutionally guaranteed rights at the EC/EU level, freedom of expression is void of any political commitments since the EC/EU could not undertake such responsibilities.

By contrast, the second objective, well grounded in the TEC, was pursued quickly and securely. Besides, the GPTWF conflated civil freedom of expression with that of movement of commercial services. This was arbitrary⁶ as it not only blurred distinct categories of civil (human) rights with economic freedoms (of companies), but, further, encompassed mutually exclusive objectives. Commercial ‘rights’ could thus ‘ride’ on the vehicle of individual democratic freedom. Such conflicting media roles could only be organized if constitutionally guaranteed and functioning in separate zones, by distinct, strongly regulated, channels. Both advertising-free and advertising-funded channels could operate only under limited competition. The crucial problem is that advertising-funded channels sell packages of viewers, as commodities, to advertised industries (Mills 1956: 304–5; Smythe 1977). In multi-channel environments under intense competition for ‘attention’, the commodification of viewers constrains their role as citizens and results in de-politicization. But politics presupposes the role of citizens.

The EC failed to legally establish the first objective, or the compatibility between the two objectives in TWFD. Hence, the second objective prevailed. Its imperative and priority goal was to legitimate EC intervention in this, thus far, ‘virgin’ area and to transfer control of communications sectors to supra-national policy-centres, in order to thereby submit them to the exclusive control of ‘self-regulated’ markets. This entailed usurping the field of communications from politics and subjugating it to ‘big capital’ forces. So, the main battle was among economic and democratic political power.

Information was, henceforth, treated exclusively as a commodity, thereby subjecting this socio-politically strategic sector into an entirely different political economy status. Here, then, is the turning point for the triple transmutation of 1. the role of communication, 2. the role of individuals as commodities and consumers versus citizens, and 3. the role of the Political and of politics.⁷ The internal hierarchy between the political and the economic role of communications was reshuffled and so was the balance of power between political and economic stakeholders.⁸

‘From an economic angle, the establishment of a common market for broadcasting has implications by far transcending mass media. As an advertising medium, broadcasting organisations help to stimulate sales of goods and services in many branches of the economy...[Cross-frontier] broadcasting of advertising promotes cost savings and increases in efficiency. These economic aspects must not be overlooked, if from a cultural and social point of view, the role of broadcasting as a medium providing information, expression of opinion, education and entertainment is to be preserved’ (GPTWF 1984: 37).

The circulation of broadcast signals and services shouldn’t be impeded (Collins 1994).⁹ The huge gains were anticipated by media barons, advertisers and the advertised. Public broadcasting was sacrificed to serve the goals of the economy by boosting consumerism. Thus, behind the ideology of ‘transfrontierism’ lurked a radical move towards inexorable commercialism. European ‘transfrontierism’ dawned with commercialisation and the commodification of citizens.¹⁰ So despite the Community’s legal incompetence to handle cultural issues, it triumphantly did so.¹¹ Only, rather than acquiring binding constitutional legitimacy in cultural affairs, Community decision-makers changed the fundamental nature of communications.

This strategic restructuring, called a ‘minimum regulation approach’, accomplished the ‘double shift’: the displacement of the field of communications from the national to the supra-national level, and its transferral from the control of political forces to commercial agencies. Ultimate control was thus devolved to the automatic pilot of the self-regulating media market: competition. So the Community’s lack of legal competence in this area proved extremely expedient.

Commodification: the end of citizens’ sovereignty

Up to 1989 the electronic media domains were largely free from the constraints and the corrosive effects of advertising and commercialism. An array of still un-commodified factors were values and ends in themselves. The immediate consequence of the TWFD was that all agents implicated in media and politics became commodified and intensely commercialized: first, individual citizens, secondly, politicians, thirdly, politics and public affairs and, fourthly, audio-visual contents, programming which until then was predominantly based on in-house production; fifthly, airtime on screen. By making advertising-funded channels mandatory, commercial propaganda instantly acquired a pivotal role as power broker and regulator.

In the new political economy of commodified electronic media:

aggregates of individual viewers are sold by channels to advertised industries

air-time, notably prime-time, is ‘sold’ by channels to advertisers

programming is supplied to viewers by producers via channel rights-holders

channel performance ratings are sold by ratings companies to advertisers and channels.

Under such premises, ‘citizens’ sovereignty’ is jeopardized (Curran 2002: 205)

In spite of such a tumultuous overturning, not even minimal, counterbalancing ‘must carry’ rules of any political kind, were set in place. This remarkable omission was perfectly in line with the EC’s economism and its conception of the media as a strategic economic instrument for commodification. So, at that conjuncture, the EC was the ideal tool for the onslaught of economistic transnationalization. Social responsibility or a politically proactive media policy (Gurevitch and Blumler 1990: 280; Stepp 1990: 186–201) was inconceivable. Cultural prerogatives were fiercely, yet ineffectively, adv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• Part One: Media, Power, Democracy and the Public Sphere
• Part Two: Journalism and the Europeanization of the Public Spheres
• Part Three: Media, Culture and Democracy
• Part Four: Media and Communication Policy in Europe