So, I was sitting in the car, outside an Italian grocery store in a small town near my in-laws’ home. I had the radio on the ‘Ottanta’ channel–the 80s channel. And some song came on, it was in English, but probably not a native English speaker singing, about ‘taking back the power.’ You don’t hear too many songs like this any more, but this one was so bland, it didn’t really strike me as worth listening. But it did get me to thinking about ‘the power.’ Most of us don’t have much power, especially when it comes to politics and decision making on issues that might affect our lives. We vote. We consume, and can use that as a ‘vote’ of sorts for what we’ll support.

But really. If politics reflected the interests of most people, higher education would leave you debt-free, those who don’t choose higher ed could find decent paying jobs, a trip to the hospital wouldn’t cause you to cancel your vacation and internet service, housing would be affordable and available, and the minimum wage would be a living wage. Which, for a family of four with one income earner working full-time, would mean making at least $15/hr–with the understanding that the federal poverty guidelines woefully underestimate 50 years after their creation the costs of health care, transportation, housing, and … smart phones. And the federal minimum wage? $7.25/hr since 2009 (some states have raised it, you might be able to figure out geographic patterns here).

So obviously, someone else is making the rules. Oh yes. It’s those people elected to represent constituents in their states and Congressional districts! But the rules seem tilted towards those who don’t have to make ends meet on $7.25/hr. And that’s a small minority. And it isn’t like they meet in some smoke-filled room to decide the fates of the unwashed masses. No, the individuals derive their power from their positions in powerful organizations and institutions (with the exception of some billionaires, who can wield influence even as individuals, but whose power derives from their wealth and organizational capital). Is it surprising that these groups might see it to their advantage to ‘frame’ issues in a way that benefits the interests of their owners? They certainly have the wealth and means to do so, and they can hire the best persuaders money can buy. And those people, as you knew or at least know now, are smart.

At the same time, commercial news organizations, as part of this ecosystem, have to report on politics and events of the day, but they also know who is paying most of the bills, through advertising mostly. And then there are the journalists, who want to do a principled job of reporting, but also want to keep their jobs–they generally have college degrees and these jobs pay better than minimum wage–and not give their supervisors and bosses any reason to consider them expendable.

And this is the environment in which what appears as the natural order of things to the casual observer, may in fact be a heavily processed version of reality, slanted to benefit those who would like people to believe that any inequalities of wealth are the result of a system of meritocracy, and those of us who haven’t measured up have only ourselves to blame. This is the world we live in–where privileged, connected and well-organized organizations and industries seek to shape our perceptions of reality. Nothing here that Chomsky hasn’t said more clearly and eloquently. But I digress.

So . . . 

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, terrifying (air) gunships, aircraft carrier and battleship groups and the like often does the trick.

Legitimacy

Short of force, legitimacy can be effective. Lecture material from class has infrequently referred to sociologist Max Weber’s concept of legitimate authority. He discusses three forms that respond to the question–how to get people to do others’ bidding without using force? In other words, what would a population consider legitimate sources of authority? There is charismatic authority, which is often someone with a strong personality and following. Cult leaders, and others such as Martin Luther King, Mohandas Ghandi (India), perhaps John F. Kennedy, the Ayatollah Khomeni (Iran), Fidel Castro (Cuba) . . . there are some individuals who by the sheer force of their personalities command respect and allegiance. Donald Trump seems to fit this bill, not on a national scale but certainly among his followers. What the charismatic leader says, goes. Hitler was charismatic, but as in many cases, charisma backed up by force is even more effective. As for Hitler, the charisma was manufactured through a sophisticated propaganda apparatus of the state (which even tried to create the illusion that Hitler, architect of genocide, loved children).

A second source of legitimate authority is tradition. Monarchs often are thought to rule as a divine right from God. And it certainly makes it easier, in a culture with some strong religious beliefs, to get subjects to obey your commands if they think they’re coming directly from God (also helps when the important religious institutions are on the monarch’s side). Traditional societies often have cultures that perpetuate ideas or practices, some of them that clearly cause harms, because ‘this is the way it’s always been done.’ Inheritance practices, division of labor between the sexes, patriarchal control over households, female genital cutting, and 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, and has a built-in mechanism to pass it from one generation to the next.

The third kind of legitimate authority is rational-legal. Not a term that rolls easily off the tongue, granted. Our government for instance serves the public because of the set of laws we have. The Constitution grants 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, power and the media

We’ve discussed conflicts of interest in this–how a corporate media owner for instance might not cover a story on defense contractors’ scandals if it was invested in the defense industry, or of something that is critical of a war, because owners’ investments may benefit from a war economy. Some other considerations:

• 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 at one point actually offered 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 NY Times 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.
• Censorship–what gets left out?
• Even PBS faces censorship if some of its corporate funders are unhappy (the case of the Koch Brothers is one of the more well-known). 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.

A ‘three dimensional’ view of power (from Steven Lukes)

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 (first dimension)

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. The decisions may have been made long before the deliberations, which turn out to be pretty boring theater.

Critics of the pluralist (one-dimensional) 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. This may happen behind the scenes. But there is still observable 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? Would this make for good TV? People, whether by class, race, ethnicity, gender, 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. But in the end, you can bet that the people who lost their neighborhoods–largely minority and African American–knew they were mostly powerless to influence the debates. They weren’t there when the decisions were made.

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. Associate the things people say they really want with products that they believe will help them obtain them.

Now consider the news media–newsmakers have money, power, influence. As Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann ask, 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 risky 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?

Lukes likens this second face of power to a concept from the work of political scientist E.E. Schattschneider, the mobilization of bias. Schattschneider contended that wealthy and powerful interests are better able to ‘mobilize’ bias to present their views to the public. Put more simply, they can organize and use the media (if they don’t own one …), and power at the societal level isn’t really exercised without some organization. In this case, they’re ‘mobilizing’ to see that their interests are served. Who? Corporations, industries, governments, political parties, etc. They have the resources to lobby, fund campaigns, advertise, influence legislation, create illusions of consensus, etc.  The public is often sold the notion of a ‘liberal’ bias in the media–those liberal 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., Afghan civilians, Occupy Wall Street protesters [vs the Tea Party, well-covered in the mainstream press], people who faced foreclosure during the Great Recession).

Third face of power

This is the tricky one, but the most crucial to understand, if you’re interested in understanding how power can function in a way that appears to simply be the ‘natural’ order of things. This is a structural view of power. Power is part of the society’s superstructure. Lukes says that 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 authors we’ve read suggest, we may find our views slowly shifting, but don’t know why, or simply think we’ve done some important thinking and should pat ourselves on the back. 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 keep up.

And it isn’t just a phenomenon for the industrialized world. In Africa, millions of women and young girls are subjected to female genital mutilation–it is a rite of passage in many cultures across the continent. The procedures range in invasiveness, from removal of the clitoris to essentially partially sewing up the vagina. Men say that this keeps women from being tempted by adultery–that they should have sex for procreative purposes.

Why would women in Africa support this practice? Forget that you probably don’t know about it–that’s another commercial media blind spot, but Africa is off many people’s radar screens. But FGM leads to very harmful health effects–physical, emotional, and psychological. But in a patriarchal culture, where mothers want their daughters to marry, have children, and ‘fit in,’ many people, men and women alike, don’t question the practice. If they’re going to ‘fit in,’ be married and have children, that’s what is supposed to happen. It’s always been that way. Barbaric? Yes. But think of the sorts of procedures and chemical treatments women in our culture undergo in attempts to attain some media-defined beauty ideal. And of the sanctions society inflicts on those women who ‘opt out.’ It starts early in school, and it can be cruel. 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. Even the women most harmed often think ‘it’s just the way things are.’ That’s pretty powerful stuff.

But Lukes’ critics would say it’s not power. Who are we to know better than the women themselves what’s good or bad for them?

Isolated example? I can hear corporations, in the background, criticizing efforts to reduce consumption and use of fossil fuels. If the people choose these things, who are they to claim they know better? Effete elites and intellectuals (take it from the VP who resigned in disgrace)!

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. Yet, though that rhetoric sounds hollow to those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, with little hope of escaping the traps of low-wage employment, most people believe their chances of escaping poverty are much greater than the statistics show (and hope is a good thing). But the systems within which we live clearly serve some groups very well, and work against the interests of others. What makes it power, according to Lukes, is that everyone for the most part buys into the system as legitimate and equitable. To the point where tax increases on billionaires are presented–often without much critical questioning–as morally problematic.

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 what people say they want in surveys, 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. We’ve discussed the prevalence of ‘junk food news’ throughout this course. And when news organizations cover elections, they’re sensitive to ratings. And discussions of complex issues by candidates representing a variety of political parties doesn’t do so well in the ratings. Politicians, for their part, are interested in public opinion insofar as they can understand how to ‘spin’ their agendas in ways that resonate with the electorate. 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. Other countries and their people face much more daunting prospects to learn the truth and hold their leaders accountable. The 2022 elections in Hungary (considered an ‘electoral authoritarian regime’) show how a government can tilt the game table in its favor, yet still claim an electoral victory (in this case for Viktor Orbán):

Overall, the opposition actually lost votes, although it gained some single-member constituencies in the capital. But there is no way in which this was a fair election.

Wherever I went over the last five days, I saw streets and metro carriages plastered with government-funded posters showing an avuncular image of Viktor Orbán beside the slogan “Let’s protect Hungary’s peace and security”. Another ubiquitous poster showed a young mother and child with the slogan “Protect the children”. This advertised a government referendum conducted at the same time as the election, with questions such as “Do you support the promotion of sex reassignment therapy for underage children?” (The referendum did not reach the required 50% of valid votes.) State media relentlessly promoted a pro-Orbán narrative, as they have done for more than a decade, and even spent some time effectively blaming the war in Ukraine on the Ukrainians. Márki-Zay got just five minutes on state television to explain the opposition programme. Facebook was plastered with regime-supporting paid advertising, thus continuing the platform’s ignoble record of helping the enemies of liberal democracy in return for filthy lucre (The Guardian, April 4).

Keep the propaganda model and the five filters in mind to get a sense of what stories are most likely to be censored in the US, by the ‘mainstream’ outlets (facing the greatest commercial pressures to turn a profit yet report the ‘news’). The commercial media at one point had news divisions with greater legitimacy. They were protected from the owning corporations, in some cases considered fiercely independent to pursue news stories (that is, they didn’t have to turn a profit). 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 inherited 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, how can we make this like something you’d see on ESPN (owned by Disney, which also owns ABC)?

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 in search of profit. It’s a hard habit to break. Are news consumers, relatively unorganized and uninitiated in the rites and techniques of propaganda, any match for some of the most powerful industries and corporations on the planet?

.  .  .  .  .  .  Hasn’t it always been this way?

Steven Lukes. 1974. Power: A Radical View. London: MacMillan.