First of all, the concentration in field of cultural industries and in
media could be considered as the threat to opinions' diversity,
and this is probably the first argument of
any political scientist in field of media also.
Why? Let's take a look on media in pre-commercial era.
In pre-commercial era, each media was financed by particular political party,
particular social field, social organization, et cetera, et cetera.
So, from this point of view,
we can't speak about this so-called exterior pluralism,
which means that, yes,
if you would like to have a landscape of point of views,
a set of different point of views,
you have to buy different newspapers of different parties,
and you will be more or less able to understand them
to make a difference between different political programs of different political parties.
So, it was the case when media wasn't the business.
Media was just the communication spendings for communicators.
So, for political or social groups which would like to spread out any information.
And they financed their own media outlets by themselves,
and then these media outlets was,
we'll say, read, consumed by the consumer.
What was the main shift in the commercial era?
In a commercial era, media started to compete for audience.
It means that one newspaper as the commercial service,
as the commercial good would like that all audience prefer to read it instead of reading
the competitor because each newspaper has
a particular owners and each political party would like to have a particular,
we'll say, access to this newspaper,
to have the ability to circulate their ideas,
their ideologies, their political programs to their audiences.
In this situation, they either can get
all the information about all parties in one newspaper.
And newspaper is not commercially interested
in spreading out just the ideology of one party.
It's much more interesting to spread out ideology of few parties,
to cover few parties activity,
because in this case,
it will probably brings the audience to this newspaper instead other newspaper.
And this is a period of so-called commercial era.
This is the period when we can speak about the experience of news journalism,
the culture of news,
the news as the multi-point of view,
coverage of events, et cetera, et cetera.
So, the ideology of modern journalism,
of the journalism of few points of view,
journalism without any particular political,
we'll say, position, et cetera,
it's coming from this commercial era.
And of course, this process of commercialization of media has been largely criticized.
And from this point of view,
we can distinguish two views on this economic issue, on this commercialization.
First view is the positivist view.
This positivist view argues that economy is just an extension
of the politics because politics also has a market.
It's a market of votes,
ideas about governing, and public goods.
And from this point of view,
media are regarded as a tool of informing people about the quality of
public goods at the same manner as
advertising informs people about the quality of commercial goods.
From this point of view, media are publicly important
because media are making able the population,
their audience to see the real quality of public good,
the real quality of governance,
the real quality of the city governance for example,
the real quality of roads,
and other public goods.
And as a reaction on this information,
the people are making their votes, their choices,
political choices, in the market of political vote.
So, this is the marketing dream in
a market driven view of how political system is working and what is media inside it.
And in the sense, media are not incorporated into
economic system and act independently as a tool of performing better,
as a tool of performing the society better.
This is a positivistic view of the role of media in the contemporary societies.
And from this positivistic point of view,
commercial media is good because commercial media are making media,
we'll say, have well ties between media and their audience.
So, more media is consumed,
more media has a revenue,
more media has a audience.
It means that the audience,
we'll say, respect it.
It means that the audience has a trust to this media.
And from this point of view,
the function of media as the information,
I will say, platform to
provide information about quality of public goods is working well.
The second view is the critical point of view.
The critical point of view argues that media is just a part of
any economic system because the economy is subordinated to the power relations.
And from this point of view, media are not independent
from economic or political system, media are inside it,
because media are owned by
a particular companies or people which has a particular political or economic interests.
And from this point of view,
any commercial media acts as an ideological machine of the alienation towards capitalism,
if we will use this term of Adorno.
And from this point of view,
any economic domination has its implication at the level of ideology.
And if we will try to use these optics,
we will obtain absolutely different, we'll say,
picture of the control,
how the control is working in media.
From this point of view, media cannot be considered as absolutely independent.
Media are always dependent,
just because they are inside simultaneously economic and political system.
Economic because they are making money, it's the business.
Political because the owners of media could have a particular political interests,
which means that media cannot be absolutely objective in
coverage of any political goods or any thing,
any story related with public goods.