Оппозиционность и квазиоппозиционность «четвертой власти»

Abstract

The article considers the oppositional and quasi-oppositional or almost oppositional potential of the modern Russian media as the fourth power. The authors come to the conclusion that the modern Russian media sources’ oppositionism does not stem from the illusion that they are the fourth estate, but from the role they play in the system of the relations between the state and the civil society, between the individuals as the members of the civil society and the individuals as the members of the state. The oppositionism of the media is the reflection and expression, and simultaneously it is the symptom of the civil society’s oppositionism. It is its dissatisfaction with the system of the relations that are generated by the modern capitalist mode of production which turns a person into the slave of his needs which are cultivated and imposed on him by the production and the trade. The expansion of the unnecessary wants’ supply includes the media in this whirlpool of the unnecessary for the individual goods’, services’, thoughts’, ideas’ production and by doing so it does become counterpart and hostile to the society. The antagonism of the commercial media towards the society revives the public media, which in reality and according to its social content is now becoming oppositional, or euphemistically described as “the rose among the thorns of the modern times’ morality”. The oppositionism of the emerging media and the quasioppositionism of the commercialized media which, in fact, are cultivating the individual’s selfish opposition towards the civil society, do find its limits of the opposition in the different grounds. The first one finds its limit in the oppositionism of the society itself, in the needs of the people for the change of the existing relations between the authorities and the civil society, the second one does it in the dividends received from the false oppositionism.