Murdoch
Almighty:
When Public Loses Opinion
By Ramzy Baroud
19 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
People
imagine that their opinions are their own, not those of corporate moguls
who compete to colonise the public sphere. We are not as free in thought
as we think.
German philosopher and political
scientist Jèrgen Habermas is often credited for his immense contribution
to sociology and critical theory among other areas of scholarly endeavour.
His most memorable achievement, however, is his introduction of the
concept of the "public sphere", a phenomenon, he argued, that
rose in Europe in the 18th century and was forced into an untimely hibernation
by the same forces that led to its inception.
Habermas's public sphere
enjoyed convenient yet reasoned specificity in time and place: 18th
century England. The formation of bourgeois culture coupled with an
expansion of liberal democracy gave rise to an increasingly educated
populace with precise interests, rights and expectations. Using coffee
houses and other public places as mediums for dialogue, the English
bourgeoisie managed to create their own public sphere, which eventually
contributed to the formation of public opinion. Other Western democracies,
notwithstanding France with its undeniable history of active citizenry,
were soon to be part of the growing movement.
Of course, Habermas's concept,
like any other groundbreaking realisation, generated debate, and an
intense one at that. Some argued that there are indeed various "public
spheres", overlapping and simultaneous. Others argued against the
existence of such a concept altogether. The debate is, obviously, much
more elaborate and unlikely to end any time soon. But Habermas's ideas
and their outreach -- first introduced in his book The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society
in 1962 -- persist in relevance and import.
The rise and endurance of
the public sphere of the 18th and 19th centuries was momentous in the
sense that it finally defined a relationship between the state and the
public on somewhat more equitable grounds than hence. Public opinion
finally mattered, or so it seemed. The way that such opinion was communicated
required fewer mediums and even less middlemen.
Regardless of where the public
sphere begins and where it ends -- for at times it failed to fairly
represent women, minorities, labourers and other historically marginalised
groups -- it at least succeeded in establishing and defining the boundaries
between the "life-world" and the "system"; the first
representing the mutual solidarity of those involved in making the public
sphere and the latter concerned with the state, its apparatus, and its
own concern with power and authority.
As expected, the relationship
would have to be that of push and pull, whereby the life-world would
fend for and attempt to expand its social and political significance
while the system would incessantly attempt to colonise the public sphere
and its life-world. One would rightly expect that a healthy democracy
is one that offers a balance of power between the public and the state,
enough to keep those in power in check, and to protect society from
a state of chaos.
Evidently, well-established
democracies were little interested in reverting to past historic experiences
with feudalistic and authoritative regimes. The 20th century was proof
of that assertion as much as it was of the rapid colonisation of the
public sphere by other means aside from brute power and coercion: that
of capitalism.
Capitalism saw the uneven
distribution of wealth, and thus power. While the bourgeoisie public
sphere of past centuries had long conceded to an ever-expanding life-world,
the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, once again, redefined
the relationship between the public and authority. The system had finally
managed to penetrate the virtual solidarity of the life-world through
newfound rapports struck between the state and the new capitalists.
Those with the money found it more beneficial to keep public opinion
in check to appease the state, in exchange for a share of power and
privilege that can only be granted by the state; thus the populace might
think that its opinion counts, but in actuality, it matters little.
This may explain why Habermas,
among others, spoke of the "rise and fall" of the public sphere
at a time when we seem to have more access to media platforms than ever
before. In short, what remains of the public sphere is the illusion
that there is one.
Habermas's ideas require
no compelling reason to be discussed; they are compelling on their own.
However, an article in The Guardian on 1 July by Lance Price, former
media advisor to the British prime minister, brought the topic back
to mind. Price asserted that media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was arguably
the most powerful man in the media world today. Murdoch, an Australian-born
US citizen, literally owns a significant share in public opinion through
his control of the world's largest media conglomerates.
"I have never met Mr
Murdoch, but at times when I worked at Downing Street he seemed like
the 24th member of the cabinet. His voice was rarely heard [but, then,
the same could have been said of many of the other 23] but his presence
was always felt," Price wrote.
Murdoch "attended many
crisis meetings at the Home Office -- the influence of the Murdoch press
on immigration and asylum policy would make a fascinating PhD thesis,"
the author of the best-selling The Spin Doctor's Diary added. "There
is no small irony in the fact that Tony Blair flew halfway round the
world to address Mr Murdoch and his News International executives in
the first year of his leadership of the Labour Party and that he's doing
so again next month [July, 2006] in what may prove to be his last."
Shocking as they may seem,
the revelations of Price, a man once intimately involved in the workings
of the British government, appear utterly consistent with the strengthening
bond between the mainstream media and governments in Western democracies.
Such a bond is equally, but especially visible in the United States.
But the relationship between
states and media become even the more dangerous when both team up --
and not by accident -- on the same ideological turf. Murdoch is a right-wing,
pro-Israeli (widely known to be a personal friend of Ariel Sharon),
pro-war ideologue. In 2003, every editorial page of his raft of 175
newspapers around the world touted the same pro-war mantras. Some might
have innocently deduced that the "world's media" were all
inadvertently converging on a consensus that sees President Bush as
someone who is "acting very morally [and] very correctly",
to borrow Murdoch's own language, and that such convergence is a reflection
of the overall international public consensus on the matter. Reality,
however, was starkly different.
Of course, Murdoch, who owns
numerous newspapers, TV stations and news services throughout the world
is not the exception, but the norm. In fact, a greater convergence is
constantly taking place in the media world in the United States, which
gives a few individual media conglomerates unprecedented ownership of
thousands of radio and television stations, newspapers, magazines, etc.
While some still laud the "freedom of the press", little aware
of who owns what, democracy is being greatly compromised: the "life-world"
is conceding like never before to the ever-encroaching "system",
and a true "public sphere" is almost non-existent, at least
in any meaningful form.
While states cannot prevent
events or guarantee absolute power for themselves, they've understood
the inimitable value of the media in its ability to forge a favourable
climate of public opinion that seems incidentally consistent with that
of the state. In exchange, the commercial and even ideological interests
of those who own the media are always guaranteed. As long as such a
correlation is not fully recognised and disabled, true democracy will
continue to experience a frightening decline, whereby meaningful participatory
democracy is replaced by mere democracy rhetoric used to satisfy political,
ideological, and ultimately imperialistic ends. Without a crucial awakening
that gives the public back what is rightfully theirs -- its opinion,
its public sphere and its democracy -- this downward spiral is likely
to continue.
The writer is author of
The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronology of a People's Struggle
and editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com.