It is argued that the first condition would be met by the absence of a monopoly (in a democracy) of the means of propaganda, and by the free interplay of various propagandas. True, compared with the State monopoly and the unity of propaganda in totalitarian States, one finds a great diversity of press and radio in democratic countries. But this fact must not be stressed too much: although there is no State or legal monopoly, there is, nevertheless, indeed a private monopoly. Even where there are many newspaper publishers, concentration as a result of “newspaper chains” is well established, and the monopolization of news agencies, of distribution and so on, is well known. In the field of radio or of motion pictures the same situation prevails: obviously not everybody can own propaganda media. In the United States, most radio and motion picture corporations are very large. The others are secondary and unable to compete, and centralization still goes on. The trend everywhere is in the direction of a very few, very powerful companies controlling all the propaganda media. Are they still private? In any event, as we have already seen, the State must make its propaganda, if only under the aspect of disseminating news.
Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (pp. 236-7)
No comments:
Post a Comment