‘Press Freedom’: a Socialist Strategy

Abstract

It is not the main intention of this article to convince the reader that we do not have a ‘free press’ in Britain. The starting point of our argument is that the mass media in general are owned and/or controlled by a minute, unelected section of the population. In turn, they are almost totally run in the economic and ideological interests of a fractionally larger, similarly unelected minority, the owners of capital — what has been classically termed the ‘ruling class’. The proprietors and managers of the large majority of these media are indeed part of that same ruling class. It is our contention that such ownership and control has led to systematic misrepresentation in the reporting of the lives and activities of the large majority of the population, including several significant, oppressed minorities. This is the result of a process of exclusion or distortion of a wide range of views from the mass media, and the presentation of a general ‘consensus’ world-view which corresponds with the needs of capi­talism to maintain its hegemony. We should add that, except in the minority of cases, there is no implication of a vast, conscious ‘conspiracy’ here. In the view of most trustees, proprietors, editors and journalists, what is presented in the media is sincerely seen as ‘objective’, natural truth — hence the smug righteousness which surrounds their claim to be the upholders of a ‘free press’.