Political Economy in The Media

Political Economy is interested in the state, regulation and conditions of cultural labour. A good example of this is how they are interested about what life is like for journalists in a newsroom and the implications of these conditions in the newsroom.
Nick Davies who argues in his book; Flat Earth News, that news is a commodity. He states that journalists don't have time to check facts anymore due to the time that it takes for the news production to be created. Ultimately, I do believe (although not entirely) that this is true. Many journalists now use reversioning, therefore by re-using other stories which have already been written, therefore mainting most of the facts, then re-writing the story in a different way, it saves a lot of time. Many of these reversioned stories are not even based upon an interview which in my opinion is quite lazy. Although I do agree that many journalists that are involved in broadcast journalism or online journalism don't have much time to find the story itself, so by re-using it does make it a lot easier. But then again, the easy opinion is not always the best option! Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey is the saying often told to me by my mum. It means, by working hard and not rushing you often get rewarded. Hmm, hasn't applied for much of my life, but we'll see!
Now to delve into power and the way this power has an affect on society. Hard power can be related to the control of capital, military power and the legal system. All of these have a very influencial power amongst society and this often means people are very wary and scared of the effect they can have and also not to mess with them. You definitely wouldn't see me trying to fight the legal system any time soon! Thanks to my law lectures that's hopefully going to help me know my place as a journalists and what i'm allowed to do. Going back to the important stuff, soft power can relate to symbols, discourses, and everything cultural and semiological. Corporations and governments do yeild to excercise soft power, but often not. Within the Media, hard power is exerted through concentration of ownership. For example the use of vertical and horizontal integration. Large companies such as News Internation and Rupert Murdoch can relate especially to this, as the use of Murdoch buying out many more companies and plots to use for his 'media world' his is using this integration to have POWER over the media as a whole.
Power can be said to work at 3 levels;
1. The ability to influence decisions
2. The ability to set the agenda in the first place
and 3. Structural power - the effect and institution has, just by simply being there


Relating back to Murdoch and the hard power he has amongst the media and society, can lead on to the well known phone hacking scandal. It was said that many people were worried about giving any evidence about the scandal as they were worried about what News International would do them as they were such a big company with so much media power. In other words, many people were afraid that N.I would defame them within one of their many newspapers or television programmes and therefore create problems for them. These companies such as News International have the ability to influence key personnel within the state and have done for decades. Ultimately, it makes you wonder as a citizen who does not have any wider knowledge of this, how much these companies get away with. Really, this can be easily be related to the Law and the ways many people get away with crimes on the down low because they are close to the police. A disgrace if you ask me. These large corporations aswell as individuals who have hard power have the ability to keep particular issues off the agenda through this.


Now to move on to Berlosconi, who today was defamed in The Sun for the amount of debt he has created for Italy, a £1.6 trillion one! Wow! Berlosconi started off as a builder then moved to local Italian TV. He then made his way up to national newspapers and then got involved with the large football team AC Milan. Berlosconi obviously is and was a very intelligent man as he precisely knew the exact way to work his way up in the world as after this he created and took over 3 main commercial channels and strided forward to create his own Politcial party named Forza Italia. He managed to create members and fans of this party by using all of his workers. A way to show his power amongst society can be shown in a video which is of him leaving a building and seeing a female police officer leaning against a car writing something down. Berlosconi continues to walk over to her making rude gestures behind her, insinuating many different things. I would put the video from YouTube straight on here for you to easily see but thanks to my copyright restrictions which I am now aware of this is not possible! So just go on YouTube and watch it instead.


As a summary of political economy in the media, there is a relationship between hard and soft power and both are always being used on society and by companies to get things done their way. This is why companies such as News International run the media world due to the use of integration and their influence on what is fed to us through the media means we and the police -who probably get bribed more often than not to keep quiet about many things- let them get away with it.  Murdoch, what a man!