Email Class Listserv

University of Florida

.

Selections from Eric Burroughs, Virginia Rada and Jeneen Szajkowski 
Clicking on a name above will take you to the corresponding essay on this page. 
Clicking on each name below will take you to the writer's personal profile. 

Burroughs, Eric 
     Once again, without explicitly saying so, Stevenson appears to denigrate media in Britain, Australia and Canada because of increased government involvement, which Stevenson often equates with lessened press freedom, and because of the fact these countries do not have laws of free expression as direct as the First Amendment, of which he is quite proud. As he states: "If press freedom is defined as freedom from government influence before and after publication, then the U.S. media are the freest in the world" (143). Stevenson then goes on to give a typical market-based justification for this definition of freedom by stating that media "is a commercial product offered to the public who decides whether or not to buy it" (143). But when it comes to Canada, Stevenson discounts its print media as regionalistic, dominated by chains with little or no competition, and as "fat, advertising heavy papers (that) carry a similar bland diet of news and entertainment" ­ a criticism often made today of U.S. print media, but one that Stevenson does not make (147). 
     But, as Philip Gaunt points out, media ownership in the U.S. has passed largely from private hands to corporate control. According to Gaunt, about 75% of all dailies in the U.S. are now owned by chains whose management styles by and large are aimed at profit maximization (64). 
    In a survey study, Martha Matthews looked into the effect that public ownership is having on publisher autonomy. In this study, Matthews makes a distinction between private ownership and public ownership of chains since publicly listed companies are the ones who must meet a need for increased profit (344-345). Also, the study examined the amount of control a corporate office exerts between public and privately owned chains. Based on the responses to this survey by publishers of these chains, the study found that publicly owned chains did exert more control, that publishers of public chains had significantly less autonomy in making major managerial decisions, and that publicly owned newspaper companies did place greater pressure on their publishers to generate revenue for their parent companies (351). On the survey, publishers in publicly owned chains ranked the importance of providing income for stockholders of the company an average of 6.7 out of 7 (350). Matthews did not look into how this extra control influenced editorial content and says that, although conventional wisdom suggests that public service is compromised by high profit orientation, more research needs to validate this claim. 
    The implications of this are very broad because of the emphasis of media in the U.S. as a market as opposed to a public service, which as is seen in comparing this sort of system to those that are more public service oriented, such as in Britain and Europe, can leave significant gaps in what is provided and often crosses the precarious line between providing information and promoting an agenda. Though Stevenson does occasionally recognize the contributions of the public service approach (150), his American hesitance at any government involvement leaves him to doubt it and promote a market formula. 
    But as Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman show in their video "The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News," the commercial and governmental influences on the media in the U.S. are preponderant today. They contend that the conservative criticism of the liberal media is a method to deflect attention from the control they actually exert over the system, stating that the liberal question often focuses on journalists while ignoring other media system components such as media owners, advertisers, news shapers and news makers. Chomsky and Herman then illustrate case by case how these actual media powers filter the news we receive to promote their own views and how it translates into media agendas on domestic and international issues. For example, Chomsky and Herman show how journalists do express their opinions through well-chosen "experts" from the so-called think tanks who promote their opinions. Most of these think tanks are funded by corporations, and many have conservative agendas ­ 51% are conservative, 41% are moderate and only 7.5% are considered progressive. The experts of one such think tank, the American Enterprise Institute - conservative, pro-business and supported with corporate funding - were quoted 1297 times in the media on economic issues in 1995. And of the most-quoted think tanks inn 1995, three were conservative ­ the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise and the Cato Institute. 
    Once again, in priding American "freedom of the press," Stevenson neglected ongoing and important changes that threaten it. 

Sources 
Gaunt, Phillip. Choosing the News: The Profit Factor in News Selection. New York: Greenwood, 1990. 

"The Myth of the Liberal Media: The Propaganda Model of News." With Noam Chomsky and Edward 
Herman. Video.  Media Education Foundation. Northhampton, MA. 

Matthews, Martha. "How Public Ownership Affects Publisher Autonomy." Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Summer 1996. 342-353. 

Stevenson, Robert L.  Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century.  White  Plains, NY: Longman, 1992. 

Robert Stevenson in his chapter 6 presents an analysis of the media in the English – speaking context, highlighting their presence and influence around the world.  He briefly examines media in the USA, Canada, Britain and Australia and affirms that its popularity is basically for the predominance of Anglo-American cultural values which are, according to Stevenson, widely accepted in the world, the competitiveness of their markets and media, and the potential audience that present the English – language markets. 

Stevenson states that “if press freedom is defined as freedom from government influence before and after publication, then the U.S. media are the freest in the world’ (143).  Although I am agree that media in the U.S. are the most independent from the government, I support the idea that usually (for not saying always) every country’s mass media broadly reflect government policy, and the United States is not a exception. 

Soderlund, Wagenberg and Surlin present an interesting analysis about ideology and media coverage over Cuban affairs in the U.S. and Canada and in my criteria reflect a more objective perspective than Stevenson’s.  These authors realized a comparative studio between U.S and Canadian television news treatment of Cuba  showing their appreciation about how these two countries present from a different angle Cuban’s  news clearly defining their policy.  For example, in Canada, a less negative image of Cuba and Castro is presented.  In the domestic politics of United States, Cuban politics are a concern while in Canada there are not. The U.S. networks gave far more prominence to Cuban stories, is a far more important area of interest for American media gatekeepers than it is for their Canadian counterparts. 

Perhaps this reflects Canadian interest in Cuba as a trade partner rather than as an ideological adversary.  Canadian seem significantly less worried about the impact of this particular Communist dictatorship and its leader on hemispheric and worlds politics.  This difference is reflected in neutral (maybe ambiguous) Canadian evaluation rather than negatives ones. 

A significant observation that these author mentions is that Cuban sources contributed to Canadian news stories to a far greater extent than in the United States, where the U.S. administration, American experts, prominent Americans, and members of congress all made more frequent contributions to media.  Canadian stories tended to focus more on the country than on its leader, while American stories tended to focus more on Fidel Castro than on Cuba. 

Cuba is simply not as important a story for Canada as it is for the United States. There is no large number of Cuban immigrants  in Canada which could have domesticizin Cuban affairs as is the case in the US.  Canadian-Cuban relations have not been characterized by the hostility evident in U.S.- Cuban relations, trade and diplomatic relations have been maintained and Cuba has become a popular tourist destination for a large number of Canadian. 

Another interesting studio that reflect the government policy in the media is a research realized by Robert Entman about how American media covered the case of the Korean Air Line shot down by a Soviet fighter plane and the Iran Air Flight shot down by a U.S. Navy ship in 1983... The KAL victims were humanized in the verbal and visual messages, encouraging identification with them.  The Iran Air victims were much less visible, the information less centered on the humanity and less likely to evoke emphaty. They used humanizing words that implied or said explicitly that the victims were human beings “innocent human beings”, “loved ones”, “269 people” and more neutral terminology like “travelers”, “civilians”, “passengers”, “victims”, “those who died” and “”269 lives”.  In other words, the idea was to remind the audience that the KAL victims were human beings.  The presentation of the new was imbalanced and therefore that the media’s emphasis on Soviet guilt and denial of American guilt was somehow predertemined.  The United States was lees morally responsible for the fate of the Iranians than the Soviet Union was for the KAL passengers. 

Probably Stevenson is right when he says that U.S. media are more independent of government and public control but it is not possible to affirm that media in this country is totally free from government.  Stevenson also say that Canada tries to maintain its cultural independence reflected in the media, the studio of Soderlund, Walter and Wagenberg could support this idea but also reaffirm that each of this countries portrayed their ideology in the media. 
 

Work Cited: 
Entman, Robert M.  (1991) “Framing U.S. coverage of International news:  Contrasts in Narratives of KAL and Iran Air incidents” Journal of Communications.  Vol. 41. No. 4:6-27 

Soderlund, Walter C., Wagenberg Ronald H. And Stuart H Surlin (1998).  “The  Impact of the End of the Cold War on Canadian and American TV News Coverage of Cuba:  Image consistency or Image change”.  Canadian Journal of Communication. Vol. 23 No.2:217-231. 

Stevenson, Robert L.(1994)  Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century. Lognman Publishing Group. 

     Stevenson's chapter provides an excellent comparison and contrast of the media systems within the larger English-speaking countries of the world, namely the U.S., Canada, Britain, and Australia.  After discussing reasons for the dominance of English media, which he identifies as cultural imperialism, the appeal of Anglo-American cultural values of creativity and tolerance of dissidence and eccentricity, the economy of scale of the English-language market, and its dominance in many facets of global communication that lead to a natural gravitation toward English media, among other factors, Stevenson looks at the media systems of these countries in greater detail.  Such a presentation is informative but lacks the specificity and illustration that only an example, that incorporates all of these systems' perspectives, can provide.  A search for such an illustration led me to the research of James F. Larson and Nancy K. Rivenburgh. 
     The research of Larson and Rivenburgh explores the power of media to portray sometimes favorably, sometimes demeaningly, foreign nations and cultures to their audience members.  As highly visual and auditory as the television medium is, it is very influential in producing new images in the minds of audience members, images that either foster the need for and recognition of international understanding and common goals on which such an understanding is based. On the flip side, television coverage can focus on narrow interests of 
individual groups within nations, focus only on certain nations, or can select clips of international coverage that only perpetuate stereotypes. In their study, the authors look at the tension between the promotion of nationalism and the commitment to internationalism and how this tension plays out in the broadcast of the Olympic Games, more particularly the Opening Ceremony of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, in terms of the telecasts as seen in the United States (NBC), the United Kingdom (BBC), and Australia (TEN) (Larson and Rivenburgh, 1991: 75).  The key question is: How do these countries' telecasts frame the Olympic spectacle?  The authors make the distinction between the three television networks stated above as follows: the BBC is noncommercial in nature and is funded by licensing fees; NBC is a commercial, privately-owned enterprise, funded by advertising; and TEN falls somewhere in between the two other stations in that it too is commercial yet  Australia's regulatory environment is much stricter on the number of commercials allowed to be aired (Larson and Rivenburgh, 1991: 78). 
     The results of such research, research which included specific countries being mentioned, visual aspects of the telecasts, story length, audio themes, all of which incorporated an extensive method of coding, provide insightful information on (1) broadcaster attention to cultural versus Olympic characteristics and symbols, (2) broadcaster styles and Olympic and national images, (3) broadcaster content and international relations, and (4) broadcaster portrayals of South Korea (Larson and Rivenburgh, 1991: 80-89).  So many significant differences 
among the findings were found.  NBC, for example, cut into much of the cultural performances, most of which were dedicated to sharing Korean music, costume, dance, and narrative; it dedicated 49 minutes, 57 seconds to cultural telecast compared to the 85 minutes telecast by BBC and 81 minutes, 58 seconds shown by TEN (Larson and Rivenburgh, 1991: 82).  Furthermore, NBC skipped two cultural performances altogether. Authors speculated that both BBC and TEN (though the latter is also dependent on advertising dollars), are more limited in their coverage by "regulatory constraints, financial limitations, and editorial decision-making," all of which explain their greater attention to the ceremony itself and less branching out into athlete interviews, historic and chronicle segments, and coverage of Korea irrespective of the Olympic ceremony (Larson and Rivenburgh, 1991: 83). 
     Among the many intriguing results of their research, the authors found a remarkable difference in the use of "sweeping generalizations" among the three networks.  TEN characterized Oman as probably "the hottest nation in the world," Mexico as "one of the most highly emotional countries in the world," Burkimo Faso as "one of the poorest countries in the world," Mauritania with the comment "No wonder they haven't won any medals with 90% of the population in sub-Saharan climate," and Ireland as the "home of the leprechaun and four-leaf clover" (Larson and Rivenburgh, 1991: 86). 
        The research provides a wonderful account of marked differences in the manner in which the English-speaking countries, which are often assumed to be so similar even in their media presentation and ideologies, at least as compared to other nations, telecast a singular event.  The illlustration provides an informative, eye-opening contrast among the media of these nations and how such media "impose their inherent cultural values and perspectives on the transcultural communication process and influence our perceptions of others" (Larson and Rivenburgh, 1991: 79).  Stevenson's inclusion of such research would clearly illustrate the differences, differences that are more easily seen through example than through narration. 

References 

Larson, James F. and Nancy K. Rivenburgh. (1991). " A Comparative Analysis of Australian, US, and British Telecasts of the Seoul Olympic Ceremony." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. Vol. 35., No. 1, Winter 1991. pp. 75-94. 

Stevenson, Robert L. (1994).  Global Communication in the Twenty-First Century. New York:  Longman Publishing Group.