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Media Power: The Double Bindby Stuart Hall

An English scholars analysis of the broadcastersrelationship to the power structure of societysuggests that balance withinthat structure preservesits definition of the political order.

British broadcasting institutions have a great deal of formal autonomyfrom the state and government, but their authority to broadcast derivesfrom the state, and, ultimately, it is to the state that they are responsible.What are usually understood as external influences on broadcasting arein fact the everyday working context for broadcasting.T h e study of such specific influences therefore is an inadequatemodel for examining the mediation between broadcasting and power. Itis predicated on a model of broadcasting which takes at face value its formaland editorial autonomy; external influences are seen as encroaching uponthis area of freedom.

I d o not mean to deny specific instance4 of pressure, influence, andcensorship to which broadcasters have been subject. Nor do I mean todeny the relative autonomy of broadcasting i n its day-to-day practice.Nevertheless, the real relationship between broadcasting, power, andideology is thoroughly mystified by such a model. One difficulty is thatwe have few ways of unders tanding how power and influence flow, howrelative institutional integration is accomplished, in societies which areof the formal democratic type. Institutions are conceived of a s eitherstate-controlled and dominated, in which case they belong within thecomplex of state power, or as free and autonomous. We cannot, from anexternal influences model, predict or comprehend the specific areas ofconjecture and disjunctu re which arise between different institutions i ncivil society. Thus, we would find it impossible to account for the factthat on some specific occasions broadcasters assert their editorial indepen-

Stuart Hall is Director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the Uni-versity of Birmingham, England Th is article is extracted from his contribution to theFourth Symposium on Broadcasting Policy a t the University of Manchester i n 1972.

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dence against clear political pres-sure, and at the same time ac-count for the mutual adjust-ments, the reciprocity of interestsand definitions, occurring fromday to day between broadcastersand the institutions of power.

The coverage of recent eventsin Northern Ireland has beensubject to massive internalwatchfulness and external con-straint. Specifically, this has op-erated with respect to the broad-casters right to interview repre--sentative spokesmen of the IRA. Here, clearly, the broadcasters have been

subject bo th to external influence and pressure a n d to internal institu-tional self-censorship. But, even had no specific representations on theissue been made to the broadcasters, can one envisage a situation in which,systematically, the broadcasters of their own accord gave precedence intheir current affairs coverage to the definition of the Northern Irelandsituation proposed by the IRA and its sympathizers? There seems to meonly one, distant but j u s l conceivable, contingency in which such a practicecould ever become widespread within the broadcast organizations: ifopinion were to crystallize so powerfully against government policies thatthe broadcasters could refer to an external authority alternative to thatof the state itsel, public opinion. Otherwise, whether the state inter-venes directly to censor broadcastings coverage of Ulster or not, the pre-vailing tendency of the organizations has been to orient themselves withinthe dominant definition of the situation. The broadcasters decision not tointerview IRA spokesmen is the free reproduction, within the symboliccontent of their programs, of the states definition of the IRA as an illegalorganization: it is a mirror reflection and amplification of the decision,to which both political parties subscribe, that the IRA do not constitute alegitimate political agency in the Ulster situation.Simpler, but more misleading, models are frequently advanced byboth the political right and the political left. On the right, spokesmentry to account For what they call a taste for agit-prop in the media bywhat they see as the leftist tendencies of the people who are recruitedfor work in broadcast institutions. Much the same proposition, in reverse,is advanced by those on the left.

Television certainly recruits from an extremely narrow social band,and those who work in television are powerfully socialized into the ethosand morale of the broadcasting institutions. But I do not believe thattelevisions built-in biases can be accounted for in terms of the overtpolitical inclinations-to left o r right-of its individual practitioners.What is far more significant is the way quite different kinds and conditions

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Media Power: The Double Bind

of individuals are systematically constrained to handle the variety of newsand accounts which they process daily within the framework of a limitedset of interpretations. Nor do I believe that the broadcasters are system-atically censored a nd pressured f rom extrinsic sources except in limitedand largely exceptional cases. Just as it is impossible to net the influenceof advertising in the press in terms of the number of times advertisershave explicitly threatened editors with the withdrawal of their custom,so it is impossible to net the real structure of interests in television orradio in terms of direct representations by government officials to broad-cast institutions. Certainly there are issues and areas where the system ofscrutiny is very precise-and it is important to identify where and whatthese are. But the relative autonomy of the broadcasting institutions isnot a mere cover: i t is, I believe, central to the way power and ideologyare mediated in societies like ours.Broadmsting accommodates itself to the power-ideology nexus by wayof a number of crucial intervening concepts. These concepts mediate therelationship of the broadcasters to power. They provide the structure oflegitimations which permit the broadcasters to exercise a substantialmeasure of editorial and day-to-day control without contravening theoverall hegemony. At the same time, it is essential to recognize that thisorientation of broadcasting within the hegemonic ideology is n o t a per-fectly regulated, fully integrated one-dimensional system.

The central concepts which mediate broadcastings relationship to thepower-ideology complex are balance, impartiality, objectivity, profession-alism, and consensus.

Broadcasting institutions are requiredto operate a system of balance

between conflicting interests and uiewpoints.Until recently, producers were expected to provide balance within

single progams, and whenever a topic is controversial this groundrule ismore strictly applied. Elsewhere, it has come to be more liberally inter-preted: balance over a reasonable period of time. T h e broadcasters arethus requ i red lo rrcognizp that conflicts of interest and opinion exist.Indeed, because controversy is topical and makes good, lively broadcasting,controversial programs flood the screen.

Thus broadcasting appears as the very reverse of monolithic or uni-vocal-as precisely open, democratic, and controversial. Yet balance iscrucially exercised within an overall framework of assumptions aboutthe distribution of political power: the conflict here is scrupulously regu-lated. A debate between Labor and Conservative party spokesmen-an areasubject to both executive and informal sanctions-is itself framed byagreements, set elsewhere but reproduced in the studio, on televisionspresentational devices and in its very discourse.

Political balance operates essentially between the legitimate mass parties

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in the parliamentary system. Balance becomes trickier when groups outsidethe consensus participate, since the grounds of conflict then become theterrain of political legitimacy itself-an issue on with Labor and Conserva-tive spokesmen stand together, against the others. In this way televisiondoes n o t favor one point of view, but it docs favor-and reproduce-onedefinition of politics and excludes, represses, or neutralizes other definitions.By operating balance w i t h i n a giuen Ttmct i i re , television tacitly maintainsthe prevailing definition of the political order. In one and the same mo-ment, it expresses and contains conflict. It reproduces unwittingly thestructure of institutionali7ed class conflicts on which the system depends.It thereby legitimates the prevail ing structure of interests, while scrupu-lously observing balance between the parties. It also, incidentally, offersa favorable image of the system as a system, as open to conflict and toalternative points of view. It is this last twist which keeps the structureflexible and credible.

Impartiality defines the way broadcastersnegotiate situations of conflict from within.

Broadcasters are not supposed to express personal opinions on con-troversial issues: they are committed to a rigorous impartiality betweenthe conflicting parties. In practice, of course, all broadcasters have views.The working compromise is to insist that the broadcaster must be the lastperson, if at all, to express a view. But a s all good producers know, thereis more than one way of cutting a pro

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Mrd in Power : Th e Double Rind

compromise: all faillires to compromise are signs of intransigence, ex-tremism, or failures in communication. The other way of neutraliiingconflict is to assert some overridin? interest which siiboi dinates the con-flicting parties. Thus a l l broadcastei s are safe in assertin? tha t Bi itainsperilous economic position oxerrides all intlii,trial conflict, even i f thesirikers have a good case.

This stake of the broadcaster in conflict resolution h a s the function oflegitimating those elements in a conflict wh i c h are realistic-which canbe abstracted from a qeneral case and built into a package. T h e casewhich is intrinsically not amenable to this process i s unrealistic antlunreasonable.

Broadcasting i s thus raised above the conflicts which it treats. Itseems to stand outside the real play of interests on which it reports antlcomments. Th e men antl women who pioduce programs are real socialindividuals in the midst of the conflicts they 1 eport. But this subjectivedimension i s repiesced in the objectivity of the proqram. The programsthey produce are outside these conflicts; they ieflect on and judye them,but they do not participate in them. This tendency of broadcasting tostand above conflict i 4 especially damaging for the viewer, who i q en-couraged to identify with the presenter antl who thus comes to see himselfas a neutral antl dispassionate party to a partisan and impassioned struggle:the disinvolvetl spectator before the spectacle of conflict.

Ifhe broadcaster is required to be impartialbetween witnesser, he is also enjoined to beobjective before the facts.

Objectivity, like impartiality, is an operational fiction. All filming andediting is the manipulation of raw data-selectively pei ceived, in terpreted,signified. Television cannot capture the whole of any el ent ; the idea thati t offers a pure transcription a reality, a neutrality of the camera beforethe facts, is an illusion, a utopia. All filmed a c c o u n t s of irality are selective.All edited or manipulated symbolic reality i s impregna ted with values, view-points, implici t theorizings, common-sense assumptions. T h e choice to filmt h i ~ spect of a n event rather t h a n t h t i s subject to criteria other thanthose embedded in the material itself: thir aspect rather than t h a t is sig-nificant, shows something s~)ecial, ut-of-the-ordinary, unexpected, typical.Each of those notions is ope rat ing against a taken-for-?ranted set o f under-standings and only has meaning within that context. Each decision tolink this piece of film with that , to create a discourse out of the dispara tefragments of edited material, makes sense only within a log ic of expoy i t ion .The identification of social actors, their projects in the world, is accom-plished against the prevailing schemes of interp i etatiori which we reggulai lybut tacitly employ for the recognition and decoding of social scenes: itpartakes of the stock of social knowledge at hand which men employ to makesense of their world and eients in i t . Such a stock of knowledge is riot

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a neutral structure; it i s Shot through with previously sedimented socialmean in7s.

T h e illusion of reality ckpenclc on such contexts of meaninq, suchback

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value-loaded system of relevancies. Such a system has gieat practical use,since it enables the editor to Fet his work done, iindei the condition ofheavil\ pressured scliedules, wi thout reference back to first principles.R u t the idea that s u ch seclimented social knowledge is neutral-a set oftechnical protocols only-is an illuGon.

Consensuy may be defined asthe lowest common denominator in the

values and beliefs which are widely sharedamongyt the population of a society.

Consc.nsns pi ox ides the basis of continuity a n d Eundamental agreementin common social life. The consensus i s the structure of common-senseidcologv m d beliefs in the public at large. I n formal democracies, a qreatdea l of what ho l d s the social order together consi5ts of those tacit, sharedagreements about fundamental issues embetldetl at the le \ el of commonsense ideology, rather than what is form;ill) written down in constitutionalprotocols and documents.

T h e consensus on any specific i s sue i s , however, extremely fluid anddifficult to define. T h e opinions of very few individuals will coincideexactly with it Yet, without the notion that comc shared bargain orcompromise h a s been I eached on fiintlamentals, it woiiltf be difficult eitherto govern or to broadcast in iormal democratic societies.

In modern, complex bu1 eaucratic class societies, consensus plays therole which public opinion was cast for in ideal democratic theory. Inpractice, since the major ity of people have li ttle real , day-to-clay accessto decisions and information, common-sense jdeologies are usually a com-posite reflection of the dominant ideologies, operating a t a passive a n ddiffused level in society.

Though the consensiis is extremel) difficult to locate, its existencea l so underwrites antl guai antees the lxoatlcaster in his day-to-day fiinctions.His sense of the state of play in public opinion piovides a sort of warrantfor his performance It olfers a rough-and-ready w a y of referring to whatpeople in general are thinkiny an t l feelinq about an issue. It is myimpression t ha t in their everyday profes\ional practice, broadcasters arenrow r o n ~ i r / c n t l y egulated by their sense of their aiidience than by anysingle other source.

Ru t , as we have noted, the consensus i s in fact an extremely fluid andanibil alent structure, a t best. In practice, the agencies ot government andcontrol, while I esponsible in some formal sense to the people/the elec-toiate/public opi nion/ the audience, are, for that very reason, driven totreat the area of conuensiis a s an arena in which the\ 7u2n consent for orassent to tlieii ictions and policies, their definitions m d outlooks

T h c elitcs are in a powerful position to min assent: (a) because theyplay a dominint role in cr)stallirins iwies, (b) because they provide thematei ia l a nd information which support their preferred interpretations,

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Med ia Power: The norrble Bind

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(c) because they can rely on thc disorganized state of public knowledge andlecling to Iilovide, by inertia, a sort of tacit agreement to let tlie existingstate of affairs continue. We are thus i n the highly paradoxical situationwhereby the elites of power constantly invoke , as a legitimation for theiractions, a consensiis which they themselves have powerfuIly prestructured.T h u s the process or opinion formation and attitude crystallization is, likeso many of the other processes we have been discussing, a process struc-tured in dominance.

We can now understand why broadcasting itself stands in such a pivotaland ambiguous position. For tlie media and the dominant institutions ofcommunication and consciousness-formation are themselves the primaryrouicp of a tti tudes and knowledge within which publ ic opinion crystalli7es,and the primary channel7 between the dominant classes and the audience.

At the same time, as the rift in the moral-political consensus in therociety widens, the consensus ceases to provide the broadcaster with abuilt-in ideological compass. The ruling elites thus have a direct interestin monopoli7ing the channels for consensus-formation for their preferredaccounts and interpretations, thereby extending their hegemony: theyalso have a kested interest in insuring that, when leEt to their own devices,the media will themselves reproduce, on their behalf, the tentative struc-ture of agreement which favors their hegemony. In such moments, themedia themselves become the yite for the elaboration o hegemonic andcounter-hegemonic ideologies and the terrain of societal and class conflictat the ideological level.Roth of televisions functions are locked in to this process: those oc-casions when it elaborates interpretations and accounts of the world on itsown behalf, and those many occasions when, via the skewed structures ofaccess, it is obliged to reproduce and validate the status of accreditedwitnesws, whose views i t i s obliged to attend and defer to, and whosestatements in other plates (in parliament, in conferences, in boardrooms,in the coiiit5) i t i s reqiiircd to transmit. T he media cannot long retaintheir credibility with the public without giving some access to witnessesand arcoiintS which lie outside the consensus. R u t the moment it does so,it immediately endangers itself with its critics, who attack broadcastingfor unwittingly tipping the balance of public feeling against the politicalorder. It opens itself to the strategies of both sides which are strugglingto win a hearing For their interpretations in order to redefine the situa tionsin which they aie acting in a mole lavorable way. This i s broadcastingsdouble bind.

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