– Christopher Sterling
The first experimental broadcast stations operated in the United States in the years prior to World War I. They had sporadic schedules of but a few hours a week. The first broadcast in the world was probably done by Reginald Fessenden in 1906 from a transmitter south of Boston, Massachusetts.
AM (or medium wave) radio broadcasting began on a regular basis in late 1920, when several stations first went on the air, primarily to sell radio receivers (the first stations were owned by major electrical manufacturers). In 1922, the number of stations shot up from about 30 to more than 500 -- with 30 to more than 500, with no overall supervision or regulation about access to spectrum. The public craze for radio dates to this time. Only after much pressure from radio operators did the U.S. Congress finally agree to set up a regulatory scheme to license stations in 1927.
Until 1941, broadcasting consisted only of AM stations and networks. In 1926 to 1928, both the CBS and NBC networks began operation, rapidly establishing the pattern of advertising-supported entertainment programs that still characterizes the American system of electronic media.
Just before the United States entered World War II (December 1941), FM (or VHF) radio and television broadcasting was approved for regular operation. Only a few stations of either service got on the air before a wartime freeze on most civilian construction, which lasted until 1946.
From 1945 to 1952, the industry and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) grappled with allocation problems for FM and television, and getting both services up and running. FM was moved from its old allocation to the present 88-108 MHz in 1945.
Television networks owned by ABC, CBS, and NBC began regular operation in 1948. Then, just as the public's appetite for television was at its height, the FCC had to suspend accepting applications for new television stations from 1948 until 1952, while crucial decisions were made to add UHF frequencies (to the 12 VHF channels already in use) to allow more television stations in more communities and to reserve some frequencies for noncommercial TV stations. In a parallel proceeding, color television standards were issued late in 1953 (though color was not commercially important until the late 1960s).
The number of stations on the air grew slowly after 1952 as both television and AM expanded. For much of that decade, FM radio stagnated due to lack of original programming, limited numbers of receivers, and almost total disinterest in the secondary radio service by advertisers because of tiny audiences. Only after 1958 did the number of FM radio stations begin to climb as interest in high-fidelity sound aided its expansion, which was pushed further by agreement on FM stereo standards early in 1961 and requirements after the mid-1960s that most FM stations program differently from co-owned AM operations. That gave the medium an identity of its own for the first time, and by 1979, more people listened to FM than AM. A decade later, three quarters of all radio listening was to FM stations.
Competition for broadcasting was slow in developing. The first community antenna television (CATV, now usually called cable) systems began operation in the Rocky Mountains and in the Appalachians, where small towns could not get signals from distant markets and were too small to support stations on their own. Only a tiny proportion of Americans were "on cable" until well into the 1970s.
In 1975 came two separate developments that would show the way to a more competitive future in electronic media. Sony placed the first Betamax VCRs on sale, and Home Box Office, a pay-cable service, announced plans to begin use of a domestic communications satellite (domsat) transponder to deliver its signal across the nation.
Fifteen years later, two-thirds of all American households had VCRs and could "time-shift" their viewing, about 60 percent had "basic" cable television service (that supported by advertising), about 30 percent subscribed to one or more pay cable networks, and virtually all national electronic media program services were distributed to stations and cable systems by means of domsats.
Cable program networks expanded rapidly after the late 1970s, with Cable News Network (CNN) and others beginning operation by 1980. At the same time, the number of noncommercial and independent (of network affiliation) stations grew, giving viewers more choice of programming.
Where the networks dominated prime time viewing (usually between 7 and 11 p.m.), controlling about 90 percent of those watching television in 1980, a decade later their share of the TV audience had dwindled to between 55 and 60 percent. The audience was making increasing use of competitive cable services, rental movies for their VCRs, and independent or noncommercial broadcast stations.
Broadcasting in America is based on a system of privately owned local radio and television stations and cable television systems. While these outlets are widely diversified in their ownership, nearly all subscribe (contract for) one or more national program services or networks.
In round numbers, there are nearly 12,000 broadcast stations in the country -- more than 5,000 AM and 5,000 FM stations -- and nearly 1,500 television stations. Major markets often have 30 or more radio stations and five to seven television stations.
Federal regulation allows any company or individual to control up to 12 AM, 12 FM, and 12 television stations, no more than one of each kind in a given market. There are no ownership limits on the number of cable systems or subscribers one company can control. Telephone companies are not allowed to own cable systems where they also provide telephone service, a limitation presently under attack by the telephone industry. One owner cannot control a television station and cable service in the same marketplace.
Most television stations sign a contract with a national network in order to carry its programs. Fewer radio stations are network affiliates.
There are four major television broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), which each owns a few stations in large markets (called O&Os, for owned-and-operated) and is affiliated by contract with about 200 other stations across the country.
There is no ownership connection between the networks -- they are held independently of one another. Network programs are beamed to O&O and affiliate stations by means of satellites. The broadcast networks (except Fox) each operate news divisions that present daily newscasts and specials. Entertainment programming is leased from independent companies.
There are nearly 60 cable networks, all of which are distributed nationally by means of domestic satellite transponders that beam signals to the "headends" of cable systems for distribution to homes. Of these networks, a few are pay networks (Home Box Office, owned by Time Warner, is the oldest and largest), where viewers subscribe by paying a monthly fee averaging nearly $10 to $50 a month. The rest are advertiser-supported services such as Turner Broadcasting System, the Discovery Network, and the USA Network.
Many cable networks are very specialized -- in comedy, weather forecasts, business news. More services are announced all the time.
Dozens of radio networks -- most of them music services -- deliver programming by satellite or mailed recordings. A few provide regular news services.
Broadcasting and most cable services in America are supported by the sale of advertising time. Of all advertising dollars spent each year, television takes about 22 percent and radio another 7 percent. Cable advertising is negligible thus far -- perhaps 1 percent of the total. For comparison, newspapers account for about 29 percent of all advertising dollars. The largest portion of broadcast advertising revenue comes from sales to local advertisers.
Most commercial television stations devote between 10 and 12 minutes per hour to advertising, usually less in prime-time hours. Radio stations carry more advertising -- often 18 to 20 minutes per hour. Cable advertising is relatively undeveloped thus far.
The electronic media industries are not large. About 100,000 people work directly in radio or television broadcasting, mostly for local television stations. The typical radio station may have just two or three employees in small markets and up to several dozen in bigger cities. Increasing use of automation has cut the size of station staffs.
Television outlets have anywhere from 25 to several hundred employees. Cable systems have many employees in customer relations and repair, but only a few are needed in technical operation and program categories.
Most of this article deals with commercial broadcasting, since that is the most widely available and most listened to service. But there is an alternative service in both radio and television -- noncommercial service.
The first noncommercial radio stations went on the air in the 1920s (and, experimentally, even earlier). Many school systems and universities operated stations -- but most had given up their licenses by the early 1930s under financial pressure, lack of sure need for the facilities, and demands for their frequencies from commercial operators. By the end of World War II, there were only about 25 AM educational stations on the air.
When the FCC approved FM radio on its present spectrum in 1945, it set aside the lowest 20 channels for noncommercial operation.
Beginning in the late 1940s, and growing steadily ever since, the noncommercial radio industry had expanded to some 1,400 outlets by 1990.
Key to that expansion was a rising federal government funding role. Prior to 1963, there was no federal funding for noncommercial radio. The chief national supporter, through grants, was the Ford Foundation. Formation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in 1967 and its creation of National Public Radio (NPR) a year later gave the noncommercial stations their first nationwide identity.
Noncommercial television stations lacked reserved channels until 1952 and got them then only after several years of government debate over the idea. The first stations, mainly on the UHF band, went on the air in 1953 and 1954. Early years saw the slow growth of stations, usually for lack of financing. Well into the 1970s, many major U.S. cities and some whole states lacked even one noncommercial station.
As with radio, Ford Foundation funding was central to the survival of the pioneering noncommercial stations, most of which were run by universities or community organizations.
The creation of CPB and its formation of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) helped give the scattered noncommercial television stations a national identity. Increased federal funding and those national programs pushed the number of noncommercial stations to well over 300 by 1990. Several states operate networks of public TV stations, enabling statewide coverage of important events.
Until recently, about half of all money helping to support the noncommercial stations and networks came from taxes -- federal funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting or state taxes in support of stations in that state. Tax support by 1990 amounted to under 40 percent of total revenues. The remainder comes from businesses providing program grants (called underwriting), individual donations, foundations, and other sources.
Public broadcasters agree that their chief problem is and always has been to raise sufficient money to operate. They note that public radio and television in the United States operate with a fraction of the revenue of commercial broadcasting. Some critics have suggested that the lack of a clear agreement on the role of a noncommercial service in the largely commercial American system is at the heart of the continuing quest for funds.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the two network operations, National Public Radio for radio and the Public Broadcasting Service for television, largely represent noncommercial broadcasting in the Washington policy arena. NPR connects some 250 noncommercial radio stations -- the larger and better-financed outlets. It provides popular news programs in the early evening and weekday mornings. NPR produces much of what it provides to stations.
On the other hand, PBS only operates the interconnection of the television network. All PBS programs are produced by a few major public TV stations (such as those in Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington), overseas broadcast systems (especially those in Britain), and independent producers. Through a complicated "Station Program Cooperative" voting process each year, PBS member stations vote their support dollars for programs they want.
Proponents of public service broadcasting have argued for years that only noncommercial stations can offer the culture, education, and other programs to balance the largely entertainment fare offered by the networks and cable.
Critics say that as the number of channels received in most houses increases, and as VCR ownership surges past two-thirds of all American homes, noncommercial broadcasting is too expensive to continue to support. Those who desire such programs can receive them less expensively by means of videotapes or other methods, while the channels now held by noncommercial stations could be put to far more efficient use by others.
The development of children's, science, and other specialized cable networks has only added pressure on noncommercial broadcasters to justify why they should continue to enjoy reserved channels and other exemptions from rules that apply to other broadcasters.
The chief and continuing problem for the electronic media generally is the appetite of stations and channels for program material. The entertainment programming that occupies most network time (and makes up the majority of syndicated programming) is produced by independent companies, most based in southern California.
Prime time is the most important competitive showcase for television network programming and is largely devoted to comedy and drama programs. Schedules are set early each year to begin the new TV season in September. Unsuccessful programs (those with low ratings) are replaced throughout the year as needed.
Local network affiliates simply carry network programming in prime time and many daytime hours. Remaining time is nearly all filled with other entertainment programming (chiefly game shows and reruns of network material) offered to stations on a syndicated basis (the station buys the rights to air a program two or three times over a given period, usually exclusive rights for that city).
Virtually no television entertainment programming is produced locally -- it is far too expensive.
The vast majority of radio programming consists of various types of recorded popular music. In major cities, some stations emphasize news and talk formats, but most exist to play records and provide short newscasts -- and lots of advertisements! Radio networks were important until the 1950s, when television competition killed them off. In recent years, use of satellites to distribute radio program formats has revived some degree of national programming.
Some surveys suggest that most Americans get most of their news (especially national and international coverage) from television. With the rise of CNN and other cable information services, this may be even more true. Many Americans get their view of the world from five-minute radio newscasts or short items on network or local station programs.
News is popular with audiences and advertisers. The evening network half-hour newscasts get most of the news viewership. In recent years, CNN's two news networks have become something of a viewing habit with many Americans, given their 24-hour availability in homes that have cable television.
Other serious information programming -- interviews, public affairs programs, documentaries -- are in decline because audiences are small.
The content of all these programs is largely determined by the networks (or local stations for their own local evening newscasts -- major attractions for advertisers and audiences). National news agencies provide considerable input, but most American networks have their own reporters and use stringers in more remote areas.
Certainly the best-known American television program for children is "Sesame Street," a product of the Children's Television Workshop in New York, which first aired on public television in 1969. "Big Bird," "Kermit the Frog," and other characters are known around the world in various national versions of this highly successful combination of live action, animation, and lessons.
The television networks all reach children Saturday mornings with action-adventure cartoons.
Professional and college football is the most popular continuing sports coverage on television. Radio and television also present hours of baseball and basketball coverage, with less time given to other sports. The general public also gets very interested in Olympic coverage. There is some evidence (falling audience ratings) that audiences may have reached the saturation point with certain sports coverage.
Since about 1930, ever-better means of researching and reporting audience listening and viewing habits have had a major impact on program trends. A.C. Nielsen (a division of Dun & Bradstreet) and Arbitron (part of Control Data Corporation) are the major national ratings firms. Nielsen reports network and local market TV ratings, while Arbitron reports local market television and radio ratings. There is no ownership connection between these companies and any broadcasting entity.
Ratings are gathered because advertisers need to know who and how many are watching programs -- this information being crucial in deciding which media to "buy" for a given product. Broadcasters (and increasingly cable networks) "sell" audiences to advertisers, using ratings to measure their reach -- how many of the potential audience are in the actual audience.
Ratings are based on the principle of sampling. For example, Nielsen draws its national ratings from a sample of about 4,000 homes scientifically selected to represent various geographic regions of the country, along with different economic and social groups. These ratings are said to be a fair representation of national listening patterns, plus or minus about 3 percent.
Ratings are gathered by different methods. Most recent -- and controversial -- is the use of the people meter, a device requiring viewers to punch in on a remote control device when prompted by a computer in their receiver.
Older methods include telephone surveys of various kinds and keeping paper diaries of listening or watching activity over a week or so.
In the United States, the electronic media play a vital role in the election campaigns for both local and national office. Television time is expensive and makes up the largest portion of election campaign budgets.
It is now traditional (but certainly not required) for presidential candidates to debate one another on television a few times during the campaign. These "debates" are usually in the form of candidates answering questions rather than directly arguing with one another.
The media in the United States and elsewhere are also said to have an agenda-setting effect on listeners. If the media cover a given event or problem area, then surveys show that most viewers more readily think of that issue as a serious matter.
Two provisions of the American Constitution govern the regulation of communications. The Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8) gives Congress the right to regulate commerce between and among the states and between the states and foreign countries. The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and the press. From these two precedents, both over 200 years old, comes all governmental activity in communication.
Congress first passed laws regulating wireless in 1910 and 1912. Only in 1927 was the first law passed specifically to regulate the licensing of broadcasting stations. That law created the all-important "public interest, convenience, and necessity" (PICON) standard by which licensing and other regulatory decisions are judged.
Congress felt broadcasting needed regulation, in part because the industry itself had requested it to reduce interference on the air, but also because there was (and is) insufficient spectrum to accommodate all who wish to broadcast. Further, the electromagnetic spectrum is held to be a natural public resource, and thus government oversees its use by licensing services needing spectrum.
In 1934, Congress passed the more comprehensive Communications Act, which brought telephone and broadcasting regulation under one agency and which still governs federal regulatory policy, though it has been amended several times since. That law continued the "PICON" standard and established the FCC.
The Federal Communications Commission consists of five commissioners who are appointed by the president and approved by the U.S. Senate, and some 1,800 civil servants who provide the legal, engineering, and economic expertise required to regulate modern telecommunications. The FCC's annual budget is about $110 million, relatively small by federal government standards. The FCC's Mass Media Bureau of some 300 people oversees broadcasting. Its chief function is to license stations.
Broadcast stations are licensed for seven years (radio) or five years (television), and these licenses may be and usually are renewed time and again. The licensing of services is the single most important function of the FCC. Cable systems, on the other hand, are franchised by local communities, and there is little federal regulation of cable.
The FCC has the authority (delegated by Congress) to set technical standards for telecommunication services. Until the early 1980s, companies and industry groups would test competing systems for a given standard and would recommend a standard to the FCC which would usually then approve (mandate) that standard. The standards for black-and-white and color television (the NTSC system) and stereo FM were derived in this fashion.
With its decision on AM stereo broadcasting in early 1982, the FCC moved away from that approach, leaving it to the undefined "marketplace" to decide on a specific standard. The very limited success of AM stereo suggests that the marketplace approach does not work well in this case.
There is little regulation of programming in America. The primary reason for this is the First Amendment to the Constitution. There are federal limits on the use of obscene program materials, and there are requirements on access by candidates for political office.
Otherwise, the amount and type of programming provided by stations and cable systems are a matter of managerial choice, not government fiat. Most particularly, there is no government control over the broadcasting of news and public affairs programs.
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Christopher Sterling is a professor with the National Center for Communications Studies at The George Washington University in Washington.
Original Location of this Article
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Electronic Media
The Right to Know
– Richard A. Bumstead
Constitutionally protected free speech. Freedom of the press. They represent, as former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once wrote, "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."
But something is missing. How can spirited and informed debate on public issues take place, particularly debate that embarrasses officials, if the public does not know what is going on -- if government cloaks its activities in secrecy and evasion? The historical record shows that, at one time or another, government at all levels -- federal, state, and local -- stands guilty of this charge.
It is the self-appointed role of the American press to inform the public about government activities, thereby sparking debate. Reporters continually look for stories that will play on the front page -- stories about corrupt government officials, or agencies that fail to do what is required by law, or government policies gone wrong. The press maintains that it gets little cooperation from government. Officials prefer to release information that reflects favorably on their activities -- and to duck embarrassing questions. The relationship between government and the press is, at bottom, adversarial, and most reporters prefer it that way.
Over the years, reporters have developed ways of getting at the truth. They rummage through records that are unquestionably public, such as the Congressional Record or the minutes of meetings held by public boards. Reporters develop sources in government, officials they trust and who trust them, and who will talk "off the record" about what is really going on. They exploit the "leak," information given to them surreptiously by sometimes disgruntled government employees who want to draw attention to illegal activity. They build stories by interviewing scores of people, none of whom knows the real purpose of the questions posed.
In 1966, the U.S. Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving reporters a new way of getting information on government activities. By law, they can demand to see government records -- not just the ones that have traditionally been open to the public, but, with a few exceptions, all that are records generated by government operations.
What kind of records? On the federal level, records such as a study done for the Atomic Energy Commission on cancer rates among 30,000 workers in an atomic weapons facility, federal audits issued two weeks before the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's 1986 Challenger disaster that revealed improper equipment monitoring at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and audits of defense contractors that disclosed federal tax dollars being used for travel and entertainment expenses.
Before the Freedom of Information Act became law, such records would never have been made public. The law favored the government's right to say who could examine and copy its records. In 1789, when the federal government was first established, department heads were given responsibility for keeping and safeguarding records and, by extension, prescribing their uses. In the beginning, officials relied on the common-law practice of opening public records only to those who had an interest in them, commonly called the need-to-know doctrine. State and local governments followed this common-law rule as well.
Over the years, the power of state and local government officials to deny access to records had been whittled down by legislation and court decisions, generating a patchwork of law and regulation that few reporters could master. All too frequently, a reporter found that he or she had no clear-cut right to certain information. On the federal level, Congress made an attempt to liberalize rules of access to federal records in 1946. The Administrative Procedure Act of that year said that matters of official record should be made available to the public, but added that an agency could restrict access to its documents "for good cause found" or "in the public interest." The need-to-know doctrine still lived.
How did this need-to-know principle work in practice? A government official would make a judgment -- yes or no -- on whether someone requesting a particular document or report needed to know what was in it by virtue of his or her position, or job, or what he or she intended to do with the information. And there was no appeal from some official's denial of access to the records.
As a practical matter, this put a reporter -- or a citizen -- at the mercy of some officious clerk. Here is an example from my own experience. In the early 1970s, I was working as a free-lance writer in the northeastern U.S. state of Massachusetts, trying to put together a story on the costs of running state-supported colleges, whose campuses are scattered throughout the state. I had a hunch that some colleges were receiving a disproportionate share of the budget at the expense of other schools -- a theory that, if true, would have made a good story. I wanted to compare each college's expenditures to determine if any campus was favored.
I appeared at the one place that had these figures in a central file -- the state board of higher education in Boston. "I'd like to see the college budgets for last year," I politely said to each of the several people I was shunted to. Invariably I was asked two questions: "Whom do you represent?" and "Why do you want this information?"
I replied, truthfully, that I represented myself, and what I wanted the information for depended on what I found -- answers that no one found satisfactory. Finally, the assistant to the deputy chancellor for education in the state suggested that I write a request to the chancellor himself, and he would consider it in due time. The classic brush-off.
I had gotten this kind of response before and had learned to keep my temper in check. Whom I represented and what I was going to do with the information had no bearing whatsoever on my request. A new Massachusetts law had given me -- in fact, any person -- the right to examine and copy any document generated by the state government in going about its business (with certain understandable exceptions, such as law enforcement records).
I wrote a letter to the chancellor, citing the law, and asked to be shown these documents two weeks hence. On the appointed date, a clerk ushered me into the board room and gave me the documents I wanted to examine, no questions asked. It was, I believe, the first brush of a rather obscure state agency with the Massachusetts open-records law. No longer was a person in Massachusetts required to establish a need to know what was in records. He or she had the right to know.
Today, all states have right-to-know statutes. They include three essential elements: presumption of a public right of access to government records, placing the burden of proof on government officials who want to withhold information; enforceability of this public right in court; and statutory exemptions to disclosure of certain information, such as tax returns.
The preamble of the right-to-know law in the state of California catches the democratic spirit that underlies such legislation: "In enacting this chapter, the Legislature finds and declares that the public commissions, boards and councils and other public agencies in this State exist to aid in the conduct of the people's business. It is the intent of the law that their actions be taken openly and that their deliberations be conducted openly.
"The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created."
The right-to-know laws enacted by state legislatures invariably were accompanied by another kind of law that made the job of monitoring government activities much easier -- the open-meetings law. Such a law requires that any government agency run by a board must give public notice on when and where it meets, must open the session to the public, and must conduct no public business (with certain exceptions) outside this session. The state board of higher education in Massachusetts, for example, a group appointed by the governor to coordinate state higher education, was compelled by the Massachusetts open-meetings law to do its business in public.
The open-records and open-meetings laws have made an amazing difference in how reporters and state government officials operate, says an editor on the Arkansas Gazette: "The attitude has changed -- not only of reporters but of public officials. School boards that have never been covered now provide not only notice of their meetings but a desk and chair for the press. Small towns as well as large ones are opening their meetings to the press, some of them before being asked. Many reporters have reproduced copies of the laws and carry them around with them in their billfolds. They are much more militant than before. When the Alcoholic Beverage Board left the state capitol and tried to hide in a member's private office downtown to conduct business, the press marched into the office and demanded to be admitted. Just last week the state real estate commission and the private real estate board tried to hold a closed joint meeting on the guise that the state board was merely a guest of the private group, but the reporters put the pressure on and were admitted."
The federal government was not immune to this nationwide movement to open up government records and meetings. Prodded by newspapers and by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Congress held several committee hearings on the subject over an 11-year span. Not one administrative official testified in favor of proposed right-to-know legislation, seeing it as a threat to executive prerogative.
Nonetheless, Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act in July 1966. It applied the right-to-know principle to federal records. President Lyndon Johnson was said to have signed the legislation reluctantly. Eight years later, the act was amended to make it more effective. That same year, another statute, the Privacy Act of 1974, was enacted, giving individuals the right to access information contained in their own federal records. And in 1976, the Congress passed, and President Gerald Ford signed into law, the Sunshine Act, the federal equivalent of state open-meetings laws.
The FOIA established that "any person" has a right, enforceable in court, to access records of executive branch agencies of the federal government. It does not apply to records maintained by the U.S. Congress, the federal court system, or the president's executive staff in the White House. Other, more restrictive rules govern the accessibility of such records.
To get information from the federal government under the FOIA, any person -- a reporter, citizen, even a foreign national -- files a request in writing describing the information he or she wants and addresses it to the FOIA officer in the agency that has the records. One can ask to inspect the records or to receive copies. The agency may charge reasonable search and copy fees. The agency has 10 days in which to provide the records sought or to state the exemption in the FOIA that allows it to refuse.
Information that falls within certain categories is generally withheld; these restricted categories are national security, trade secrets and confidential commercial information, internal agency memorandums, records that invade a person's right to privacy, law enforcement investigations, and information specifically exempted by prior law (for example, information contained in tax returns). If a request is denied, one may appeal the decision first to the agency for another review, and finally to a federal court. The government bears the burden of proof thatthe information requested is indeed exempt.
Over the history of the FOIA, however, many government officials have construed the act as narrowly as possible, forcing requesters to go to court for clarification. Numerous court cases have been filed over what constitutes a reasonable fee for search and copying expenses. In 1990, a reporter from the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, was told by the U.S. Department of Energy that her newspaper must pay $1 million in search and copy costs to obtain the travel records of the former Secretary of Energy. Often an agency, citing the volume of FOIA requests, fails to meet the 10-day response deadline, and the courts have been reluctant to insist on compliance.
In addition to procedural roadblocks, innumerable cases have been adjudicated over substantive issues. What, in fact, constitutes a public record? How does the Privacy Act of 1974 impinge on the Freedom of Information Act? Which prevails -- the president's security classification system, by which certain documents are marked "secret" or "top secret," or the FOIA? Such questions have generated a cottage industry on FOIA case law. Each year, the U.S. Justice Department publishes a case list for what must now be an army of FOIA attorneys. The most recent list contains 371 pages of citations, plus a 260-page annotated guide to the FOIA's legal history.
The upshot is that many journalists avoid using FOIA procedures. Says an investigative reporter at the Fresno (California) Bee: "Generally, I avoid FOIA at all costs. I don't have a lifetime to wait on the information coming through FOIA."
Any reporter who believes his or her FOIA request is not being handled properly can seek help from the Freedom of Information Service Center in Washington. It is a project of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to monitor government's compliance with the FOIA and educate reporters in FOIA procedures. The press associations in each state also monitor how well state and local governments are complying with local open-records and open-meetings laws.
"People don't use FOIA as often as they should, because they believe it is too cumbersome and time-consuming," says Rebecca Daugherty, director of the center. "And it's a shame. There are terrific stories being produced from use of FOIA. And we know there are many other stories waiting to be written."
One such story was published in 1989 by the Constitution, the leading newspaper in Atlanta, Georgia. It suspected that local banks were not lending an equitable amount of money to blacks to buy homes in black neighborhoods -- a form of discrimination prohibited by federal law. But how to prove it? Asking bank officials would have produced a noncommittal but politic answer, something like "I am sure our bank's lending policies conform to the law." And, indeed, their records may not have been organized to provide a ready answer even if bank officials volunteered to research the question.
But there was one untapped source. Under federal law, banks are required to report each home loan to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council. Here was a federal record of bank home loan lending practices in Atlanta, accessible under FOIA rules.
The Constitution filed a FOIA request for the data and received seven computer tapes listing 109,000 real estate loans made in Atlanta over the prior six years. The newspaper then arranged for a computer center to match the data with census tracts, which give the racial composition of inhabitants. The findings startled Atlanta, which prided itself on its race relations: Whites received more than five times as many home loans from Atlanta's banks as blacks of the same income.
"The numbers you have are damning," said the chairperson of a leading Atlanta bank. "Those numbers are mind-boggling. Atlanta bankers are discriminating against the central city, but it's not a willful thing."
After months of "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" public debate, Atlanta banks revised their lending practices and committed millions of dollars to home mortgages in black areas. And the Constitution won a Pulitzer Prize, one of America's highest journalistic awards, for making imaginative use of the right-to-know law.
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Richard A. Bumstead is a Washington-based writer with the U.S. Information Agency.
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Original Source of this Article
Thursday, April 24, 2008
The Journalism of Assertion
Marshall McLuhan was wrong. If the medium really were the message, Americans would always elect the most able television communicator. Pat Buchanan would have beaten George Bush. Richard Nixon might have been commissioner of baseball but never president.
That, however, is not how America operates. In the fifty years since television became a force in politics, only two masters of the medium have been elected leader of the country -- Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy. Arguably, Bill Clinton might be a third. Buchanan's skills on television take him only so far. His ideas, while they energize some voters, alienate others. Much the same is true for another gifted communicator, Jesse Jackson. Citizens weigh countless factors in making their decisions, including ideology. The most clever ads often do not correlate into votes. The message, not the medium, is the message after all. No doubt the medium and the media shape what message are sent and how they are put together. But how, and how much? To what extent does the culture of news define our politics? The principle focus of this work is to examine the contours of the new media culture, which we call the Mixed Media Culture, and to explain its effect on contemporary political debate.
That task is made more difficult -- and more necessary -- because the culture of news is changing so rapidly. Journalism is in a state of disorientation brought on by rapid technological change, declining market share, and growing pressure to operate with economic efficiency. In a sometimes desperate search to reclaim audience, the press has moved more toward sensationalism, entertainment, and opinion. In only the last year, journalism has suffered a host of embarrassments over press ethics and still further declines in audience size and public confidence, and has engaged in new levels of self-examination. No event signals the changing norms as much as the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal that led to the impeachment proceedings against William Jefferson Clinton. To that degree, this work will try to understand the new media culture through that event.
The ordeal of Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton, Kenneth Starr, and the impeachment trial they precipitated were part of a kind of cultural civil war in America in which the press plays a peculiarly important role. As a consequence, this work will also try to assess the role of the press in contributing to that growing conflict that has gripped politics over the last several decades. Finally, this work will attempt to offer some modest suggestions for how journalists might try to cope with this new Mixed Media Culture of news.
At least in its broadest outlines, the sex scandal involving Clinton was not unprecedented. In the summer of 1964, high-ranking law enforcement officials armed with secret tape transcripts made the rounds to selected journalists in Washington. The tapes had conclusive evidence that one of the nation's most respected and powerful political figures was cheating on his wife.
When the transcripts weren't enough, no less a figure than the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation got involved directly. J. Edgar Hoover invited some reporters to FBI headquarters to actually listen to the tapes themselves. There, you can hear it. He's having sex there. Out of wedlock. Adulterer.
The man caught on the tapes was controversial in his own right. A minister. A man who used the Bible in nearly every speech. A man whose primary tactic was to use guilt, morality, and an appeal to goodness as forces for persuasion. To Hoover, the hypocrisy was overwhelming; it was proof that Martin Luther King, Jr. could be considered a fraud and a hypocrite. This is precisely the kind of criticism of officials that journalists in the 1990s feel they are obliged to make.
Hoover's intent was to "expose" King, the FBI director said, to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize" the black leader.
Not one reporter wrote a story, even those friendly to Hoover and unfriendly to King. Evidence of the campaign against King and the direct use of the tapes did not emerge for nearly two decades.
How different would American history be had the press operated differently in 1964? It is impossible, of course, to place the behavior of a political figure from one period into the context of another period, or impose the judgments of one time on those of another. Perhaps King would have behaved differently.
But imagine Hoover sharing his tapes with professional Internet gossip Matt Drudge. How would CNN handle the leaked tapes if the network knew MSNBC was about to be given the same information? Would rumor of King's extramarital activities be "Issue One" on the McLaughlin Group? Or ferried into a debate on talk radio or Crossfire? What would the attorney general have done if a special prosecutor were investigating evidence Hoover was peddling of King connections with the Communist party, and King were asked under oath about adultery?
Harris Wofford, the former Pennsylvania senator who had known King since the early 1950s, first wrote about Hoover's efforts in 1980 in Of Kennedys and Kings. He believes that in the media culture of the 1990s, one of the most important Americans of the twentieth century would have been destroyed and American history would have been quite different.
Bill Clinton is not Martin Luther King, and Kenneth Starr is not J. Edgar Hoover. The King incident did not involve a lawsuit, a special prosecutor, or allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice. Nor was King an elected official. But the basic issue of what the press is willing to publish today compared with a generation ago is unmistakable. And no doubt it matters.
While the press may not tell people what to think, it gives them a list of things to think about. In so doing the news culture still shapes the lines of the political playing field and the context in which citizens define meaning for political events. The rules of the political and media culture alter not only how politics is conducted, but increasingly who participates, why, and the nature of what can be accomplished.
The Lewinsky story did not change everything in the American media culture. Instead, it represented a convergence of long-standing trends, which came together with the political culture and clarified in part the consequences of both.
To understand these changes, it is helpful to recognize what the Clinton scandal represented for the press: the moment when the new post-O.J. media culture turned its camera lens to a major political event for the first time. What do we mean by the post-O.J. media culture? It is a newly diversified mass media in which the cultures of entertainment, infotainment, argument, analysis, tabloid, and mainstream press not only work side by side but intermingle and merge. It is a culture in which Matt Drudge sits alongside William Safire on Meet the Press and Ted Koppel talks about the nuances of oral sex, in which Hard Copy and CBS News jostle for camera position outside the federal grand jury to hear from a special prosecutor.
Previous major political scandals such as Iran-Contra predated this merging of news cultures. Other recent incidents such as Gennifer Flowers were too fleeting to offer more than a glimpse of the new world of competition that batters down the very notion of journalist as gatekeeper. After Monica and Bill, the cultures were merged into one, not merely in the minds of a distracted public but in fact. NBC News owned MSNBC, which merged its own identity with the Clinton scandal. Its Meet the Press program turned Internet gossip pamphleteer Matt Drudge into a pundit, and Fox News made him into a TV show host. Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff covers the story for Newsweek and is under contract with MSNBC and NBC to offer punditry about it -- to the delight of his managers at Newsweek, which encourages reporters to become pundits and pays them for each radio and TV appearance. From NBC Nightly News to MSNBC's "The Crisis in The White House" to Dateline's infotainment as journalism to Matt Drudge -- the line is more blurred than the Mixed Media Culture likes to admit.
We will base our critique of the Mixed Media Culture on a variety of work we conducted throughout 1998 in our positions as chairman and vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a group of reporters, editors, producers, publishers, and educators concerned about the direction of the craft. This work included three major content studies of the Clinton scandal coverage, as well as three public forums we sponsored involving key journalists who covered the story. We will also draw on numerous interviews we conducted throughout the year with journalists inside and outside of Washington.
We will argue that in the new Mixed Media Culture the classic function of journalism to sort out a true and reliable account of the day's events is being undermined. It is being displaced by the continuous news cycle, the growing power of sources over reporters, varying standards of journalism, and a fascination with inexpensive, polarizing argument. The press is also increasingly fixated on finding the "big story" that will temporarily reassemble the now-fragmented mass audience. Yet these same characteristics are only serving to deepen the disconnection with citizens, diminish the press's ability to serve as a cohesive cultural force, and weaken the public's tether to a true account of the news. The long-term implications for the role the Founders saw as most important for the press -- that of being a forum for public debate and as such a catalyst for problem solving -- is being eroded.
The way in which the new Mixed Media Culture has diluted the stream of accurate and reliable information with innuendo and pseudofacts had an impact on the Clinton scandal. It partly explains why the impeachment left so many Americans estranged, as if it were a TV show rather than a political crisis. The notion that author Daniel Boorstin introduced in The Image in 1961, in which what was true was becoming less important than what one could make seem true, had thoroughly saturated the political culture by the late 1990s. Politicians had created an environment in which lying became respectable by calling it spin. They invented "doctors" to administer it. The effect was acute. Pointing out one of the principal differences between the Watergate scandal and the Clinton scandal, journalist Benjamin C. Bradlee observed, "People lie now in a way that they never lied before -- and the ease with which they lie, the total ease.... People expect no consequences .... This word spinning... is a nice uptown way of saying lying." That was at the heart of the disconnect of the Clinton impeachment: a political establishment that had so perfected and celebrated dissembling lacked the authority with the public to evince outrage and try to convict someone for lying. The irony of it was manifestly plain to most Americans, but it was largely missed inside Washington.
During the Clinton scandal, the press, the group with the biggest stake in maintaining the integrity of facts and accuracy, further succumbed to the ethos of pseudofacts. The Mixed Media now elevate to the status of celebrities, and in some cases embrace as journalists, the same spin doctors and dissemblers -- people like George Stephanopoulos or Tony Blankley -- once paid to manipulate them. They create pseudoexperts, people who look good but have limited expertise, to appear on their talk shows. They create news networks without reporters, relying instead on argument to pass as journalism. In the process, the Mixed Media Culture contributes to the blending of fact and assertion, real events and pseudoevents, news and entertainment -- what journalist Richard Reeves has called "the Oliver Stoning of America."
The new Mixed Media Culture has five main characteristics:
1. A Never-Ending News Cycle Makes Journalism Less Complete: In the continuous news cycle, the press is increasingly oriented toward ferrying allegations rather than first ferreting out the truth. Stories often come as piecemeal bits of evidence, accusation, or speculation -- to be filled in and sorted out in public as the day progresses. The initiating charge is quickly aired. Then journalists vamp and speculate until the response is issued. The demand of keeping up with and airing the to and fro leaves journalists with less time to take stock and sort out beforehand what is genuinely significant. Ironically, it means the news is delivered less completely. This gives the reporting a more chaotic, unsettled, and even numbing quality. It can make tuning in to the news seem inefficient. It also makes it more difficult to separate fact from spin, argument, or innuendo, and makes the culture significantly more susceptible to manipulation.
2. Sources Are Gaining Power Over Journalists: The move toward allegation over verification is compounded by a shift in the power relationship toward the sources of information and away from the news organizations who cover them. Sources increasingly dictate the terms of the interaction and the conditions and time frame in which information is used, and set the ground rules for their anonymity. They shop stories from outlet to outlet, striking bargains to their own best advantage, whether it is a celebrity trying to promote a new movie or a leaker negotiating which newspaper or prime time magazine to give the interview to. This shift in leverage toward those who would manipulate the press is partly a function of intensifying economic competition among a proliferating number of news outlets -- a matter of a rising demand for news product and a limited supply of news makers. It is also a function of the growing sophistication in the art of media manipulation.
3. There Are No More Gatekeepers: The proliferation of outlets diminishes the authority of any one outlet to play a gatekeeper role over the information it publishes. One of the key features of the Mixed Media Culture is that the press is now marked by a much wider range of standards of what is publishable and what is not. On one hand, journalism is richer, more democratic, more innovative, and, given the possibility of narrower targeting of audiences, has the potential of becoming closer to its audience. On the other hand, the loss of market share, fragmentation of revenue, and disorientation has meant an abandonment of professional standards and ethics. Information is moving so fast, news outlets are caught between trying to gather the information for citizens and interpreting what others have delivered ahead of them. In practice, the lowest standards tend to drive out the higher, creating a kind of Gresham's Law of Journalism. What does the news organization that requires high levels of substantiation do with the reports of those with lesser levels of proof?
4. Argument Is Overwhelming Reporting: The reporting culture (which rewards gathering and verifying information) is being increasingly overrun by what Deborah Tannen has called the "argument culture," which devalues the science of verification. The information revolution is a prime force behind the rise of the argument culture. Many of the new media outlets are engaged in commenting on information rather than gathering it. The rise of twenty-four-hour news stations and Internet news and information sites has placed demands on the press to "have something" to fill the time. The economics of these new media, indeed, demand that this product be produced as cheaply as possible. Commentary, chat, speculation, opinion, argument, controversy, and punditry cost far less than assembling a team of reporters, producers, fact checkers, and editors to cover the far-flung corners of the world. Whole new news organizations such as MSNBC are being built around such chatter, creating a new medium of talk radio TV.
5. The "Blockbuster Mentality": As the audience for news fragments, outlets such as network television that depend on a mass audience are increasingly interested in stories that temporarily reassemble the mass media audience. These big stories might be analogous to a hit movie or song that crosses over traditional audience divisions, and their appeal creates a "Summer Blockbuster" mentality in the media. These blockbusters tend to be formulaic stories that involve celebrity, scandal, sex, and downfall, be it O.J., Diana, or Monicagate. Part of their appeal to news organizations is it is cheaper and easier to reassemble the audience with the big story than by covering the globe and presenting a diversified menu of news.
These new characteristics of the Mixed Media Culture are creating what we call a new journalism of assertion, which is less interested in substantiating whether something is true and more interested in getting it into the public discussion. The journalism of assertion contributes to the press being a conduit of politics as cultural civil war. The combatants in that war can employ the piecemeal nature of news and the weakened leverage of the gatekeepers to exploit the varying standards of different news organizations. These combatants also flourish amid the growing reliance on polarized argument. The role the press has played in the fight over values is not new. Television is well suited to symbolic, polarizing issues. And the growing heterogeneity of the press, while it more accurately reflects the diverse interests of the audience, makes it difficult for the press to find cultural common ground.
The solution, to the extent that one can be identified, is not in trying to enforce a lost homogeneity on journalism. Rather, it is in individual news organizations becoming more clear-headed and courageous about what their own purpose and standards are, and then sticking to them.
Those who fare best in this new culture, at least in classic journalistic terms, are those who do their own research. These news outlets are governed by their own internal standards because they are having to make their own judgments about when a story is verified, what is true, and what is relevant. They are less susceptible to repeating others' mistakes, and they are most careful about accuracy because they bear sole and original responsibility.
Increasingly, news organizations will be forced to distinguish themselves not by the speed and accuracy of their reporting, their depth, or even the quality of their interpretation. The perpetual news cycle will synthesize virtually all news reporting and interpretation into a kind of blended mix. Scoops remain exclusive for only a matter of seconds. Instead, news organizations will have to distinguish and establish their brand by the values and standards they bring to the news. When and how do they use anonymous sources? Will they publish charges they cannot substantiate simply because others have? When is someone's private life publicly relevant? This means news organizations should do more to think through in advance what their news values and policies are on a variety of key journalistic matters. And as newspapers did a century ago, in a time of similar intense competition, they will do well to articulate and market themselves to the public according to those values.
Whether traditional news values -- such as verification, proportion, and relevance -- survive depends ultimately on whether they matter to the public. News outlets that aspire to high standards on such matters as proof of accuracy and proportionality distinguish themselves by more than self-censorship. They offer the public reliability and save people time. In a world with growing choices, and one where the depth of information is potentially infinite for every user, the highest value may be given to the source whose information is most accurate, most dependable, and most efficient to use.
In the end, the importance of having an accurate, reliable account of events is profound. "Public as well as private reason depends on it," Walter Lippmann noted eighty years ago. "Not what somebody says, not what somebody wishes were true, but what is so, beyond all our opinion, constitutes the touchstone of our sanity."
The question before us now is whether the search for what is so, the journalism of verification, will be soon overwhelmed by the new journalism of assertion.
From America in the Age of Mixed Media - Chapter 1
Find Detail (CLICK HERE)
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Stuart Hall on the Eye of Daniel Chandler
Stuart Hall, now Professor of Sociology at the Open University, was a major figure in the revival of the British political Left in the 1960s and '70s. Following Althusser, he argues that the media appear to reflect reality whilst in fact they construct it.
Janet Woollacott (1982: 108-110) offers a useful critique of Policing the Crisis, a key work by Stuart Hall et al.(1978). The work reflects an analysis of the signifying practices of the mass media from the perspective of Marxist culturalist theory inflected through Gramsci's theory of hegemony, and 'an Althusserian conception of the media as an ideological state apparatus largely concerned with the reproduction of dominant ideologies', claiming relative autonomy for the mass media. For Hall et al. the mass media do tend to reproduce interpretations which serve the interests of the ruling class, but they are also 'a field of ideological struggle'. The media signification system is seen as relatively autonomous. 'The news' performs a crucial role in defining events, although this is seen as secondary to the primary definers: accredited sources in government and other institutions. The media also serve 'to reinforce a consensual viewpoint by using public idioms and by claiming to voice public opinion'.
Stuart Hall has also addressed theoretically the issue of how people make sense of media texts. He parts from Althusser in emphasizing more scope for diversity of response to media texts. In a key paper, 'Encoding/Decoding', Stuart Hall (1980), argued that the dominant ideology is typically inscribed as the 'preferred reading' in a media text, but that this is not automatically adopted by readers. The social situations of readers/viewers/listeners may lead them to adopt different stances. 'Dominant' readings are produced by those whose social situation favours the preferred reading; 'negotiated' readings are produced by those who inflect the preferred reading to take account of their social position; and 'oppositional' readings are produced by those whose social position puts them into direct conflict with the preferred reading. Hall insists that there remain limits to interpretation: meaning cannot be simply 'private' and 'individual'.
Hall's emphasis on ideology has been criticized for being at the expense of the importance of ownership and control.
Base and superstructure
Economism (also called 'vulgar Marxism') is a key feature of 'classical Marxism' (orthodox or fundamentalist Marxism). In economism, the economic base of society is seen as determining everything else in the superstructure, including social, political and intellectual consciousness. Theories positing economic relations as the basic cause of social phenomena are also called materialist theories, and Marx's version is also known as 'historical materialism'. Economism is related to technological determinism. Marx is often interpreted as a technological determinist on the basis of such isolated quotations as: 'The windmill gives you society with the feudal lord: the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist' ('The Poverty of Philosophy', 1847).
Mass media research in this fundamentalist tradition interprets the 'culture industries' in terms of their economic determination. According to this view, 'the contents of the media and the meanings carried by their messages are... primarily determined by the economic base of the organizations in which they are produced' (Curran et al. 1982: 18). Consequently, 'commercial media organizations must cater to the needs of advertisers and produce audience-maximizing products (hence the heavy doses of sex-and-violence content) while those media institutions whose revenues are controlled by the dominant political institutions or by the state gravitate towards a middle ground, or towards the heartland of the prevailing consensus' (ibid.). Marxists of the 'political economy' variety (such as Graham Murdock) still see ideology as subordinate to the economic base. The base/superstructure model as applied to the mass media is associated with a concern with the ownership and control of the media.
Critics regard economism as reductionist, failing to account for diversity. Althusserian Marxists propose 'the relative autonomy of the superstructure with respect to the base... [and] the reciprocal action of the superstructure on the base' (Althusser, cited in Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 5; my emphasis). According to this view ideological practices such as the mass media are relatively autonomous from economic determination (see Stevenson 1995: 15-16). The notion of 'relative autonomy' has been subject to criticism (e.g. by Paul Hirst in 1977: see Lapsley & Westlake 1988: 13-14; Curran et al. 1982: 25).
Under the influence of Althusser, Stuart Hall and other 'culturalist' Marxists reject the base/superstructure formulation, arguing that there is a dialectic between what Marx termed 'social being' and 'social consciousness' (Curran et al. 1982: 27).
From – Marxist Media Theory By Daniel Chandler
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Hot Tips for Writing Captions
By Kenny Irby
Photo captions are integral part of newspaper story telling, but they are often the most underdeveloped element in the mix of words, graphics and photographs in a newspaper.
A poorly executed caption can destroy the message of a photo or the story package of which it is part. The reader/viewer expects nothing less than accurate, complete, and informative information, including captions.
Here are a few suggestions to follow when writing captions:
Mass communication
Mass communication is the term used to describe the academic study of various means by which individuals and entities relay information to large segments of the population all at once through mass media. It is usually understood to relate to newspaper and magazine publishing, radio, television, and film, as they are used both for disseminating news and for advertising.
Mass communication research includes media institutions and processes, such as diffusion of information, and media effects, such as persuasion or manipulation of public opinion.
With the Internet's increased role in delivering news and information, mass communication studies -- and media organizations -- have increasingly focused on the convergence of publishing, broadcasting and digital communication.
The term 'mass' denotes great volume, range or extent (of people or production) and reception of messages. The important point about 'mass' is not that a given number of individuals receives the products, but rather that the products are available in principle to a plurality of recipients.
The term 'mass' suggests that the recipients of media products constitute a vast sea of passive, undifferentiated individuals. This is an image associated with some earlier critiques of 'mass culture' and Mass society which generally assumed that the development of mass communication has had a largely negative impact on modern social life, creating a kind of bland and homogeneous culture which entertains individuals without challenging them. However, with the advancement in Media Technology, people are no longer receiving gratification without questioning the grounds on which it is based.[1] Instead, people are engaging themselves more with media products such as computers, cell phones and Internet. These have gradually became vital tools for communications in society today.
The aspect of 'communication' refers to the giving and taking of meaning, the transmission and reception of messages. The word 'communication' is really equated with 'transmission', as viewed by the sender, rather than in the fuller meaning, which includes the notions of response, sharing and interaction. Messages are produced by one set of individuals and transmitted to others who are typically situated in settings that are spatially and temporally remote from the original context of production. Therefore, the term 'communication' in this context masks the social and industrial nature of the media, promoting a tendency to think of them as interpersonal communication.Furthermore, it is known that recipients today do have some capacity to intervene in and contribute to the course and content of the communicative process. They are being both active and creative towards the messages that they are conveyed of. With the complement of the cyberspace supported by the Internet, not only that recipients are participants in a structured process of symbolic transmission, constraints such as time and space are reordered and eliminated.
'Mass communication' can be seen as institutionalized production and generalized diffusion of symbolic goods via the fixation and transmission of information or symbolic content. It is known that the systems of information codification has shifted from analog to digital.This has indeed advanced the communication between individuals. With the existence of Infrared, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, cell phones are no longer solely a tool for audio transmission. We can transfer photos, music documents or even games and email at any time and anywhere. The development of media technology has indeed advanced the transmission rate and stability of information exchange.
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