‘Smooth operator?’ The propaganda model and moments of crisis

The propaganda model is a powerful tool for explaining systematic flaws in media coverage. But does it explain the cracks and tensions within the commercial media that are capable of arising at moments of political crisis and elite disagreement? To what extent does the model privilege a flawless structuralist account of media power at the expense of focusing on contradictory dynamics inside the capitalist media? This article looks at a key moment where critical media content was generated by a mainstream media organization: the coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War in the British tabloid paper, the Daily Mirror in 2003. It reflects on the consequences of such a moment for resisting corporate media power and asks whether it suggests the need for a revision of the propaganda model or, rather, provides further validation of its relevance

‘The Resilience of TV and its Implications for Media Policy’

The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries is collection of contemporary scholarship on the cultural industries and seeks to re-assert the importance of cultural production and consumption against the purely economic imperatives of the ‘creative industries’. Across 43 chapters drawn from a wide range of geographic and disciplinary perspectives, this comprehensive volume offers a critical and empirically-informed examination of the contemporary cultural industries. A range of cultural industries are explored, from videogames to art galleries, all the time focussing on the culture that is being produced and its wider symbolic and socio-cultural meaning. Individual chapters consider their industrial structure, the policy that governs them, their geography, the labour that produces them, and the meaning they offer to consumers and participants. The collection also explores the historical dimension of cultural industry debates providing context for new readers, as well as critical orientation for those more familiar with the subject. Questions of industry structure, labour, place, international development, consumption and regulation are all explored in terms of their historical trajectory and potential future direction. By assessing the current challenges facing the cultural industries this collection of contemporary scholarship provides students and researchers with an essential guide to key ideas, issues, concepts and debates in the field

The world is changing – it’s time our media did too

The UK media’s handling of the coronavirus crisis has been a shambles, argues writer and academic Des Freedman. We need to demand more

Who Owns the UK Media? 2023 Report

Report produced by the Media Reform Coalition, Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre

Media Development and Media Reform: Time for Change

Actors shape their communicative environment to suit their needs and the needs of their fellow citizens. Yet, in spite of the innovations and agency found on the continent, African media remains strongly influenced by colonial legacies ranging from colonial media infrastructure and operational logic. What’s more, models of journalism, especially those from Britain, Germany and France, are taught and practiced in independent African countries; meanwhile African talk shows, soap operas, and newscasts follow formats developed in the colonial era; and the very messages transmitted by African broadcasts and in African newspapers can frequently be traced back to news sources in Britain, France and Germany. Amid this contradiction, those pursuing media development must remain uniquely focused on ensuring that the media being developed is relevant. This chapter gives some indication of where more relevant forms of media development are likely to emerge in Africa

How to Study Ownership and Regulation’

Bringing together a truly international spread of contributors from across the UK, US, South America, Mexico and Australia, this Handbook charts the field of television studies from issues of ownership and regulation through to reception and consumption. Separate chapters are dedicated to examining the roles of journalists, writers, cinematographers, producers and manufacturers in the production process, whilst others explore different formats including sport, novella and soap opera, news and current affairs, music and reality TV. The final section analyses the pivotal role played by audiences in the contexts of gender, race and class, and spans a range of topics from effects studies to audience consumption

A Future for Public Service Television: Content and Platforms in a Digital World

Report on the inquiry, chaired by Lord Puttnam, that examined the future of public service television in the UK in the 21st centur

Some Contradictions of the Assault on the BBC

Reaction to the green paper on the future of the BB

Media Policy Fetishism

Recent studies have demonstrated that media policy is not a clean, administrative, depoliticized, and nproblematically evidence-based space but instead, an ideological power field in which certain preferences are confirmed and others marginalized. In this context, this article proposes that we focus on the fetishistic character of the media policy process, understood in relation to the loss of control over the decision-making arena and the outsourcing of political agency to external forces. The article focuses on both the dimensions of “everyday fetishism” (its capacity to naturalise commodification processes and to reify social life) as well as its relevance to media policy debates concerning press freedom and the pursuit of media pluralism. It reflects on how a fetishistic policy distorts key policy principles, restricts access to policymaking arenas and mystifies the process as a whole so that it becomes a “spectral” activity from which ordinary citizens are largely excluded. The article finally considers three key ways in which publics can re-connect themselves to the policy process and, in doing so, to invigorate and democratize the struggles for media justice we face today