What is power? We discussed in class the notion that it's getting someone to do something they wouldn't otherwise do--enforcing your will, so to speak. What does it take to enforce one's will? Force, perhaps? Firearms can help. But they're an expensive way to get people to comply, so holding a gun to someone's head isn't the way most power gets exercised, although the U.S. Military often doesn't have to hold the gun--having nuclear weapons, C-130 gunships, aircraft carrier and battleship groups and the like often does the trick.

Legitimacy

Short of force, legitimacy can be effective. We talked briefly in class about sociologist Max Weber's concept of legitimate authority. There is charismatic authority, which is usually someone with a strong personality and following. Cult leaders, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Ayatollah Khomeni in Iran (he's dead now) . . . there are some individuals who by the sheer force of their personalities command respect and allegiance. What they say goes. Hitler was charismatic, but as in many cases, charisma backed up by force is even more effective. A second source of legitimacy is tradition. Monarchs often are thought to rule as a devine right from God. It certainly makes it easier to get subjects to obey your commands if they think they're coming directly from God. Traditional societies often have cultures that perpetuate ideas because 'this is the way it's always been done.' Inheritance practices, division of labor between the sexes, patriarchal control over households, even domestic violence in some cultures is condoned and considered a right of a husband or head of household. Tradition can be a powerful source of legitimacy. The third kind is rational-legal. Our government for instance serves because of the set of laws we have. The constitution gives the government its authority. We often respect the law not because it's always been done a certain way, but because it's a legal source of legitimacy. The media often are considered a legitimate source of power and authority. With respect to the news media, we often think that they deliver the news in an objective way, and if we see it on TV, it must be true, right? That level of respect for the news media has dropped in recent decades, but many still watch one source and treat it as gospel. The media can have some leverage in what gets presented as news, and what gets presented as news can influence public opinion, elections of public officials, the functioning of democracy and the protection of free expression, etc. Why do people believe what they see in commercial news media? Because they enjoy a level of legitimacy, whether deserved or not. And that legitimacy comes not from charismatic individuals, or from tradition, but from the formal status of media institutions as somehow being purveyors of truth and important information.

Corporations and power and the media

We've discussed conflicts of interest in here--how General Electric for instance might not cover a story on defense contractors' scandals, or something that is critical of the war, because it makes lots of weaponry and benefits from a war economy. Yet they own NBC, and may have some influence over what passes for news.

• Product placement--you wouldn't expect this, but even interviewer Charlie Rose on PBS was not immune to product placement;
• Cross-advertising--media outlets own so many different companies, there is a great deal of advertising of one company's media offerings on another. Fox News is one of the worst offenders, and the local, affiliate level, for treating its TV programming as a source of actual news stories.
• Space for rent --The Washington Times actually offers to let individuals who've been attacked in print respond, if they're willing to take out an advertisement (selling space in their paper, essentially, to those who can afford it)
• Partnerships--The NYTimes had an arrangement with Starbucks that it didn't disclose before having already aired several news stories about Starbucks' growth. Coverage of contracted events also reveals this--for instance, NBC had the contract for the 2002 Olympics, and stories about the Olympics showed up on NBC news at a rate much higher than for any other network. This could be a combination of cross-advertising and not wanting to advertise for your competitor. Does this sound like anything the White House has done lately?
• Censorship--what gets left out?
  Even PBS faces censorship if some of its corporate funders are unhappy (the case of Gulf Western is a famous one we've read about in here). Would Charlie Rose discuss Coca Cola's use of tap water for its BWP (bottled water product) Dasani?
• There are many examples of people with any journalistic integrity getting fired for refusing to self-censor. Here's an example of an executive who was the recipient of a ferocious flak attack.

The three dimensions of power

To understand why the media have some level of power and how they wield it, it's useful to briefly examine how they cover power, and how people decide who has power. Political sociologist Steven Lukes discusses three different dimensions, or faces, of power.

First face of power. In this view, power is a resource available to a broad range of individuals and groups. We can see it, measure it, and it shows up in the form of overt, observable conflict. This is a pluralist approach to power--in other words, different interest groups sit down and debate and argue and in the end someone wins. But we can watch it, observe power being exercised and figure out as a result who has it.

This is the way politics are often covered in the media. City council meetings, for instance, or deliberations in Congress. The media often make a "first face" assumption about how power is exercised (that way they can claim they can show it to the viewing/reading/listening public). In the first dimension, the consumer is a rational decision maker, who can examine media and make informed choices about what to buy, for instance. Producers of goods and services have to listen to consumer preferences and try to meet their demands, and this drives the free enterprise, capitalist system of production and consumption. The free market is the pluralist approach to power. Power may not be equally shared, but we can see its exercise.

Second face of power. One criticism of the pluralist approach is that you just can't always see power as observable conflict. For instance, take Congressional debates over proposed legislation. It could be that lobbyists wrote the legislation being debated, after their industries provided millions of dollars in campaign contributions to key members who could push legislation forward. C-Span can't really cover that very well with a TV camera. Critics of the pluralist view say the exercise of power is not always overt or public. Yes, power is exercised, but we can't always see it happen or know who wields it. But there is still conflict--opposing viewpoints--it's just harder to figure it out than the "first face," pluralist approach suggests, because there are always groups, power structures working in the background to influence public agendas, elections, etc. Take the city council meeting. It could be that actual decisions are made long before an actual meeting of the council members, who may have little power but have to listen to large corporations that employ lots of local residents, or real estate developers with lots of clout and money to spend in the local community on development projects.

In addition, sometimes the powerful exclude others from the public debating arena as well. So it could be that not only are the powerful not there, but the powerless are absent as well. When debates about welfare happen on network news, do we see advocates for the poor, or actual individuals who depend on assistance participating? Woudl this make for good TV? People, whether by class, race, ethnicity, gendery, religious persuasion, sexual orientation, etc., are often aware that they're in subordinate positions. The research on the "second face" came from 'urban renewal' projects in inner cities in the 1960s, particularly Baltimore. They tended to require construction of lots of new highways and expressways to get people and their cars in and out of cities, and whole neighborhoods had to be razed. You can imagine which routes were taken--minority neighborhoods, where people had less political clout to resist. Forget talk of mass transit systems--you've got the automotive and petrochemical industries working that end of the political gymnasium.

With respect to consumers' views, they aren't represented on television, the second face would say. There is no 'consumer sovereignty.' Corporations decide what consumers should buy, what they should aspire to own, and use expensive advertising campaigns to create new needs. What might really make consumers happy--friendship, love, family, peace, etc.--become vehicles for selling goods and services. In other words, buy a certain car, a certain insurance policy, and you can have the contentment, the secure family, your kids in college, etc.

Now consider the news media-newsmakers have money, power, influence. As the one video asks, why isn't there a labor section in the paper?? It's the business section, which makes up a small percentage of readers, whereas practically everyone works. Hidden power structures may be difficult to uncover, perhaps politically unpopular for media owners. If they benefit from advertising, do they really want to show media consumers how the commercial media are basically set up to sell audiences to corporations to sell them products, and that these products, using techniques based on psychology research, really won't make them happy, but will probably put them in debt and distract them from other issues that may actually increase their quality of life?

This second face is called the mobilization of bias, and wealthy and powerful interests are better able to mobilize bias to present their views to the public. We're told of the liberal bias in the media--those librul journalists who vote democratic. What we don't see are the corporate pressures represented by their bosses and advertisers who pay many of the bills, and accept advertising money from political candidates as well. This is what organizations like Sourcewatch and CorpWatch and Open Secrets try to expose. But we can identify power relations, if we look hard enough--there is conflict, but sometimes those who are victims aren't heard from (e.g., Iraqi civilians whose lives have been uprooted by President Bush's Campaign of Freedom and Democracy, or the hundreds of thousands of non-whites disenfranchised by Republican Party tactics in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections).

Third face of power. This is a structural view of power. Power is part of the society's superstructure. People don't even recognize its presence. We go and buy things, advertisers bombard us with images, tell us we're inadequate and if we'd only buy these products (the rationalization trap) . . . but people often insist these things have no effect on them.

The PR industry plays an important role in masking power relations. They work in the background--we often aren't even aware they're there, but as the book says, we may find our views slowly shifting, but don't know why. Specific corporations and individuals don't count when it comes to advertising--it's the 'buying mood,' the culture of consumption, having to have the new care every other year, the latest fashions, jewelry, shoes, etc., and being told we're somehow unhip if we don't

Take the case of female genital mutilation--why would women in Africa support this practice? Forget that you probably don't know about it--that's another commercial media blindspot, even though this affects millions of women. It leads to very harmful health effects. But mothers want their daughters to undergo the procedure because it's part of the culture--if they're going to 'fit in,' be married and have children, that's what is supposed to happen. Culture is a structure of shared beliefs, values, symbols, etc. There is usually a dominant set of beliefs that prevails. For us some of those belief systems are centered around capitalism, anti-communism, patriarchy. This is traditional legitimacy.

So in the third dimension of power, there isn't necessarily any evident conflict. What conflict? We all want to buy lots of stuff, and some are more successful than others at getting the money to do that, but we all aspire, right? It's the American dream. Remember our discussion of conservative ideologies as being individualist--if you're poor, it's your own fault. A liberal ideology suggests that poverty is structural--some are born into it and escape it only with the greatest difficult and perseverence. Some do nothing but revel in affluence, and by golly we should eliminate the death tax because it's unfair to them.

So Steven Lukes says, in the absence of conflict, how do we know power is being exercised? Look for people's real interests. What does he mean? What might these be? Who can decide what real interests are if not the powerless themselves? Think back to the happiness surveys, and what people want, and what advertisers do to sell them their dreams. Advertisers can't deliver of course, but they have to sell and stimulate consumption, and some people are convinced that having the stuff is the fulfillment of the dream. The third face of power is the most insidious, because it doesn't require any observable conflict. It is also the most contentious, because of the difficulty of someone observing from the outside and saying that people are powerless, being exploited, and don't even know it.

How do commercial media fit into this picture?

There are at least a couple of ways we can think about this. One, we can look at the power of the media to influence public opinion and attitudes. The media have great influence over the kinds of stories that get covered, and those that don't. And many times, the stories that get covered are not the ones that public opinion polls suggest are most important to people. Recent examples are candidate Obama's bowling score, or Bush making the ultimate sacrifice: giving up golf for the troops. Or this just in: Obama's handwriting spells doom. So dispense with the notion that politicians are sensitive to public opinion--the trick is to spin your agenda in a way that resonates with the public. In this case, it's about framing the election and using 'wedge' issues to divide the electorate.

So, the media decide what to cover, and major stories somehow seem to be censored. Keep the propaganda model and the five filters in mind to get a sense of what stories are most likely to be censored. The commercial media at one point had news divisions with real legitimacy. They were protected from the owning corporations, in some cases considered fiercely independent to pursue news stories. With increasing concentration of ownership, with more companies involved outside of the media business, and with pressure from stockholders as many family-owned media companies went public, there has been increasing pressure for the news division to carry its own weight, sell advertising, or worse serve as an advertising arm for its sister companies or owning interests. So we're left with an institution with lots of legitimacy that is in many cases beholden to its corporate owners or advertisers. In addition, politicians depend on the media to air their campaign commercials, because of the importance of money and advertising to campaigns--well over 90% of elections go to the candidate who spent the most money. People are influenced by the commercials as much or more than the news, but a closer inspection shows that even most of the news about elections is superficial and deals more with public opinion polls and the 'horse race,' or who's winning right now.

Now, for the second way to think about commercial media and power. Why don't the media expose the ways in which the market system might actually work against consumers? Why do they portray power in such a one-dimensional way? Why indeed. Maybe it's because more and more, they are part of that power structure--selling audiences to advertisers for huge profits. It's a hard habit to break.

On an exam, I would likely take an example and see if you could understand how the issues of power are being covered by the media.