The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behaviour that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfil this role requires systematic propaganda. The relationship between media, democracy and the public sphere has been the subject of intensive and increasing academic debate over the last few years in this context. The present paper is an attempt to analyse the changing function, role and involvement of media in the public sphere of Kerala, where the state is consumed more newspapers per capita than any other part of India
Most contemporary conceptualisations of the public sphere are based on the ideas expressed in Jürgen Habermas' book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Public Sphere encompasses a variety of meanings and it implies a spatial concept, the social sites or arenas where meanings are articulated, distributed, and negotiated, as well as the collective body constituted by, and in this process, "the public". Public sphere is considered as a corrective against the oppressive state, a curative of the irrationalities of civil society and a deterrent to the exploitative market. Jurgun Habermas (1989) remarks that public sphere can ensure undistorted communication evolving critical public opinion. According to Kellner (2007), public sphere is an arena closely linked to the organic life world in which people would be able to discuss public issues in an egalitarian and non-instrumental manner.
While dealing with public sphere propaganda model theory is apt in the context of Kerala. The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes.(Systemic bias is the inherent tendency of a process to favour particular outcomes). First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the "Propaganda model" views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the people. Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature". Propaganda model focuses on the inequality of wealth and power and its multilevel effects on mass-media interests and choices. It traces the routes by which money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public.The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are:
Kerala society has become a ‘media society’ where a large majority of the people depend on the media both visual and print for their idea formation. So the role of the media in the formation of ideas in the public sphere is crucial. The public sphere in Kerala was traditionally characterised by two qualities—one its democratic nature and second its secular nature. However, today, the mainstream media in Kerala appears to be negating these basic qualities of the public sphere. The mainstream media act with a specific view point and that is one of rightist view point
The public sphere in Kerala, which evolved as a composite product of the renaissance, the freedom movement and the Left political interventions, is practically dead today and that the major challenge before movements and individuals in the coming days should be its revival. The most tragic aspect of life in Kerala today is the withdrawal of individuals from society and the reluctance of the majority to intervene in societal issues. According to K N Panicker "Public sphere is not the concern of a few institutions, it embraces the whole society, but the tragedy of Kerala is that the majority has chosen to distance from it,"Media, he said, was playing a crucial role in the denudation of the public sphere and pointed out that the quality of media content should be closely and critically examined
Whatever remains of the public sphere in Kerala has been coloured by caste and communal thinking and there was a very powerful force behind this process. The dynamics of the public sphere in Kerala was now being determined by the culture industry through the mass media. In order for the public to renew their stake in media, it is essential that media ownership and control be regulated so as to prevent existing media monopolies from increasing their stake in the media industry. The government should increase its commitment for community radio and television at district and local levels. Citizens’ movements that are committed towards reforms in the media industry should be encouraged. It is a fact that the press, television channels and the entire media could be a business. But the journalists per se are not for trade or business. Journalism is a social responsibility. It is a struggle to gain public space within the private sphere.
Over the years the corporate sector has developed its own press and channels. The political parties have their own newspapers. The governments in this country have also promoted their own medium of mass communication. But the voluntary organizations, groups engaged in movements, associations of the oppressed castes and the citizens engaged in promoting alternative politics which have grown manifold in the post-independence era in terms of its sheer number and the area of operation, have not been able to develop their own press or television channels with a mass reach and sound credentials. It may be noted that different civil society formations have developed and are running their own medium of communications, like small magazines or newsletters. But these do not have an impact on a macro level and have not been able to develop a professional form. The challenge to develop a reliable TV channel, a TV programme, a radio programme or at least a magazine is before all those who are engaged in various ways to promote and support alternative movements, alternative social groups and alternative models of development.
Most newspapers have to attract and maintain a high proportion of advertising in order to cover the costs of production; without it, they would have to increase the price of their newspaper. There is fierce competition throughout the media to attract advertisers; a newspaper which gets less advertising than its competitors is put at a serious disadvantage. Lack of success in raising advertising revenue was another factor in the demise of the 'people's newspapers' of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The product is composed of the affluent readers who buy the newspaper — who also comprise the educated decision-making sector of the population — while the audience includes the businesses that pay to advertise their goods. According to this filter, the news itself is nothing more than "filler" to get privileged readers to see the advertisements which makes up the real content, and will thus take whatever form is most conducive to attracting educated decision-makers. Stories that conflict with their "buying mood", it is argued, will tend to be marginalized or excluded, along with information that presents a picture of the world that collides with advertisers' interests. The theory argues that the people buying the newspaper are themselves the product which is sold to the businesses that buy advertising space; the news itself has only a marginal role as the product
Now the elite media are sort of the agenda-setting media. They set the general framework. Local media more or less adapt to their structure. And they do this in all sorts of ways: by selection of topics, by distribution of concerns, by emphasis and framing of issues, by filtering of information, by bounding of debate within certain limits. They determine, they select, they shape, they control, they restrict -- in order to serve the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.
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