Mercantile Media

In today's lecture we discussed the role and purpose of Commercial Media within the Australian Media Landscape. Personally, I didn’t find this episode in our journalistic studies as exciting or intriguing as I usually would but it is interesting to see the material nature of advertising and how commercial media really is driven by ‘the mighty dollar.’ Commercial media is essentially license-funded media in which the aim is to sell the eyes and ears to advertisers whom are the real customers. The profit-driven media function is monopolized by major stakeholders such as News Limited, Fairfax Media, APN, Channel Nine, Southern Cross, Channel Ten, Telstra, Optus, Austar and countless others who produce commercial media in the form of regional newspapers, digital media, radio and outdoor advertising. It is delivered in the form of subscription (e.g. Foxtel), sponsored (e.g. Channel Nine) and subsidized (Government funding). We then discussed the role that commercial media plays in our democracy and it’s social responsibility, questioning whether it can deliver both commercial and social functions or if it is essentially just concerned with profit. According to the Hutchins Commission Report in 1947 the modern media has a moral and utilitarian obligation to report ethically and consider the overall needs of society when reporting to achieve the greatest outcome.

We then moved on to discuss contemporary controls on global landscape of commercial media such as the regulating of content by government agencies (e.g. Chinese censorship), which was strongly opposes by the recent Wikileaks organisation and movement against censorship in Australia, State press subsidies and licensed journalism (as seen in Indonesia and East Timor). Bruce outlined how the predominance of commercial media can sometimes lead to the ‘dumbing down’ of news, increased tabloidization and increased ‘desire to please’ which creates a lack in efficient reporting.