Media in the 21st Century – Media History, Censorship and the BBC

As with many events, there are various approaches in which you can look at Media history. Week 1’s media readings outline some of these.

Curran and Seaton, in their book “Power Without Responsibility”, outline two different ways in which the rise of the free press can be seen. The first is the “Whig” approach where the press winning its freedom is depicted as a “heroic struggle against state repression”[1] which is often accredited to the abolition of acts such as Fox’s Libel Act in 1792 and the press taxation between 153 and 1861. The second, the “market” approach, implies that the press did not become free until it reached financial independence through advertising and the growth of profits through this “rescued the press from its compromising dependence on state or party subsidies.”[2]

However, it could also be argued that the press’ reliance on advertising to be profitable is in itself a form of censorship – as this is what they relied upon to be able to make a profit, they would be inclined not to run stories which the advertisers or the public did not like as this would affect the amount of companies advertising in their paper. Of course, you could also argue that other companies would be willing to advertise in their place, and therefore allows much greater freedom than government or party subsidies.

These perspectives can also be applied to television – as the BBC is, indirectly, government funded, it does not need to concern itself, necessarily, with shows that a mass market will enjoy and is therefore able to produce texts which are educational and informational as well as entertaining, as per its charter, whilst commercial channels need their texts to appeal to a large number of people in order to get funding from advertisements.

What is also interesting to look at is whether technology is driven by social needs (symptomatic technology) or if technology alters the way society works (technological determinism) which is looked at in Raymond William’s “Television”. In this reading, he discusses several different ways in which the relationship between television’s invention, the texts produced and the way in which society uses it can be viewed – whether television has changed the way in which society works or if the evolution of society has driven television to develop the way it has as well as how the market may or may not have affected the development of either or even both.

Kevin Williams, in chapter 5 of his book “Get me a Murder a Day”, seems to imply that technological determinism is not necessarily accurate as, in the case of the radio, technology is often developed for one purpose such as the military and then turned into a form of media afterwards, often by companies selling receivers for the medium (and therefore, supporting a market perspective) – “The BBC began as a private company… formed by the leading wireless manufacturers.”[3] However, you could interpret it as providing evidence for technological determinism as society adapted itself around the new technology rather than the other way round.

All of this suggests that there is no definitive perspective with which media history can be viewed, though many would disagree having already formed their own opinion on the subject.