THE MEDIA STRIKING A BALANCE
The media’s focus on its main functions
and the challenges from the commercial interest and promotion of media freedom.
Commercial
Interest
A commercial interest here means the interest the media currently has on
making profits more than its major purpose on educating, informing and
entertaining the public. It appears that the media today is interested more on
how it will appear on the public’s ratings, and how many advertisers will come
to them in accordance with the high ratings, viewership, listenership or
readership.
“The entry of commercial interests in the media has affected the
sobriety, the maturity, the sense of duty and responsibility, the idealism and
the missionary, spirit and zeal which were the mainstay of the media in the
past” this is according to the Press Council of India Chairman Justice P. B
Sawant.
The above is just to explain how the true mission of the media has been affected
by the commercial interest which has taken centre stage. The media owners are
now more concerned with the ratings and the number of advertisers at their
core. This only explains how selfish the media has become to the need of the public’s.
They have forgotten the specific needs of the consumers of their contents and
only give it little coverage.
According to the Media Council of Malawi, “For many years now, globally,
the media has assumed and reinforced its important rule as a legitimate
reflection of public interest and opinion” this means that clearly, the media
has neglected its basic function which is to educate and inform the people. On
the other hand, it has given much concentration on the third part which is
entertainment.
This same council goes on to say, “the various competing interests of
the media are; government or national interest, political interest, audience,
owners, media(gatekeepers), journalists self interest, the public’s interest
and even the advertisers. It is clear that every single body that surrounds the
media has its specific interest. The media in itself and its general internal
public has its own selfish goals and that is how the media is so corruptible.
Advertising
The purpose of advertising throughout
history has been to inform and persuade people to buy a product, service or an
idea. It was stimulated by the increase of mass production and hence the need
for mass purchasing. It has emerged with emerging mass media strengths that
keep growing as technology changes.
Advertising today has become an integral part of political, social and
economic systems. This automatically means that it cannot go unnoticed to the
consumers and businesses as it is a very important communication system.
Consumers have learnt to rely on advertising and other forms of information
need to make purchasing decisions.
Institutions and businesses pay advertisers a lot of money for them to
do their advertising as well as buy the advertising space for them, making sure
their message is relayed to the consumers.
Advertising
revenue
In Nation newspaper, to advertise it costs the advertiser 280 shillings
per line. It is approximated that an advertiser will pay close to 500,000
shillings to advertise on a whole newspaper page. That is just but an example
to show how advertising can be really expensive. This goes to explain why the
media owners and editors would do so little to publish or air anything
sensitive about one of their big advertisers.
A very good example in Kenya would be Safaricom, which even sponsors
some of the media houses events. The
journalists in the media houses will not have their news see the light of day,
if it touches on a very sensitive issue that will affect their publicity. This
is how much the current commercial interest of the media has affected the true
nature that the media is expected to serve to the public.
Cost
Cutting Measures
I borrowed some tips on cost-cutting measures from an American company’s
website, www.snakeoilinc.com.
They are not necessarily direct to the journalistic and adverting rules but
make sense, I will go ahead to explain this later.
The first one is reduce legal expenses. If things are handled legally,
it will save a lot as you will not be called to court to answer questions which
may end up in negative publicity and worse bail. It is important to have a
corporate lawyer, who is to advice you on what is legal and what has exceeded the
limit.
Second is the importance of using layoffs. This is important as it to a
great extend reduces corporate expenses.
Any corporate society whether media or flower farm is always looking
forward towards profit. So, it is only logical if little is spent and more
gained. Consider ii critical for any coin spent there is double amount that is
received.
Also important is stock. You must have close watch with stocks of the
company. Like I said in the above paragraph, for any company to experience
profits they must protect what they put into the accounts. Therefore, there has
to be someone who watches the account and its progress who is directly
supervised by the CEO or the Director, whoever is in charge.
To add on to that list is ‘cut of the break’.
These means you modify your company’s premises so that you do not need to seek
expertise from outside but find a way to accommodate it in the premises and
save the costs of outsourcing. Again, if need be for profit and self-reliance.
The last in this list is
workforce reduction. It is important to limit the company’s workforce. This
does not mean that you show everyone the door but keep those who can
multi-task, the experts and eliminate those who the company doesn’t necessarily
need.
The above are just but tips
to cost-cutting. I find the relevant to this topic as media is a corporate
institution which needs to be managed. The media as a corporate society is in
need of profits and that is why I think it needs critical management so as to
have high ratings and attract more advertisers.
Role of Marketing
and public relations
Marketing is about making money through continuous marketing and selling
of products. It is also about effectively competing in the market place. It is
important that advertising be placed in the marketing mix, so that it enables
people to accept products, services and ideas and purchase them as often as
they can.
In a media point of view, marketing a media house is important. It is
the role of the Public Relations Officer to put the media house at a favorable
judgment and positive publicity in the eyes of the public. This is called
personal advertising or even institutional advertising. The company goes out of
its way to show the public what is best at and what they do differently. This also
involves their programming which should be what the public demands and also
what they view informative, educative and entertaining enough in the public
eye.
Functions of
the media
Education
This is the key purpose of the media. The media is responsible of
educating its publics about what is happening in their environment and in all
major field of the different taste of the audience. It is expected that in all
its programming, news features, documentaries and shows, the media is expected to
have some educative values to the public’s or it will be rated under pure
entertainment which still education is expected.
Persuasion
This can mostly be achieved through advertising. For any media to be at
the top of the ratings board, they must convince their public they are doing a
great job. For instance, an individual can always be watching news on a
specific channel, and have a favorite program in another. It is important to
convince the public that you are worth their time and attention, as that is how
your strength and weakness is easily noticed.
Information
This is as important as education. It is believed that information is
the key to almost everything on earth. Without information, there is no
communication and communication is where everything else starts. Whatever
happens in the media that is meant for the public should be informative and of
substance to the intended public. Even music should be informing people about
something for them to listen and relate to. Much more is expected of news, and
other programs.
Entertainment
For people to be glued on the screen, radio, or even the newspaper, the
educative and informative package should have some entertainment value in it so
as to capture interest in them. Life in itself is too complicated and tough,
everybody needs something to get them away from the reality of life into
fiction. This is where entertainment comes in, when you listen, see or read
that other people are going through the same things like you, if not worse, it
is a sort of consolation.
Promotion of
freedom of the press
Censorship
This was on Kenyaexpressions.wordpress.com on
December 12th, 2008;
Kenya’s Media Owners Association (MOA) has called on President Mwai
Kibaki not to assent to the Kenya Communications (”The media today says ‘Mr.
President, save our country. Please do not sign this Bill into law. Mr. Prime
Minister, save our country. Please do not agree for this to go any further’.”
Lawmakers collectively passed the Bill on Wednesday ignoring pleas by media
stakeholders for them to delete Section 88 of the Bill, which gives the
government powers to confiscate broadcasting equipment during national
emergencies.
The new law hands power to the Information Minister to dictate broadcast
content. It proposes that stations commit a minimum amount of time to locally
produced content in lieu of which they will pay a fine to be used to “develop
the Kenyan production industry”.
According to the Nation Media in the Jamhuri Day
edition of 2008 wrote
Parliament is today a new
aristocracy that has no regard for civil liberties, but is willing to go the
extra appalling mile to nurse its own vanities and mask its corruption and emptiness.
Kenyans need to know that parliamentary dictatorship is as evil as any form of
dictatorship and is to be fought and vanquished at all costs.
This is an example of how censorship can affect the relationship between
a government and the media. I personally believe that censorship keeps the
media on check with the government, but at the same time the media should not
use it as an excuse to block the media freedom. While at that the media cannot
go without censorship as they might go beyond boundaries and use that power
which might overpower ethics and news values which govern and limits the media
to its rightful purpose.
External interference
in media work
There is a lot of external interference in the media. Political heavy
weights have a direct influence in the media as their money and power cannot be
challenged in a court of law and their relationship with the owners and the
editors is scary to an individual journalist. On the other hand the media
owners are gatekeepers in their own way, as nothing against their liking can be
aired or published, which is very limiting.
The government as a body is powerful and thus has an immense effect on
the media. It is now that in Kenya a journalist can challenge the government,
but still there are limits one cannot dare go beyond. On the other hand, the
audience too affects the media as they decide what is to air or not, some
things might not be really informative and educative, but you have to give the
audience what they want.
These interferences in the media affect the normal operation of the
media. It also determines the workings and programming of the media which in
the end affects the ratings and the advertisers.
Advertising
Advertising is what give all
types of media their biggest revenues and profits. It ia what pays the
employees, and runs some of the daily businesses of the media. Without
advertising, the media will not survive the day of expensive publishing and or
programming. Advertisers but space and pay for their advertising in media with
large amounts of money. They in turn have a sort of power over the media for
they keep the media surviving with the advertising.
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