But the industry is seen as resilient as the PWC research showed. Indeed, despite its revenue concerns, AOL received support in the financial markets.
The conglomerate dominated issuance in the primary US corporate bond markets in April 2002, increasing the amount of paper it sold from US$4bn to US$6bn in response to demand, a reflection of the faith investors still had for the entertainment economy.
television stations or satellite trucks – to send their reports, with all the delays and risks of censorship or interference that involved. As the tech- nology continued to improve the picture quality, commentators were expecting ‘another quantum leap in the immediacy and directness with which television can write that first draft of history’ (Tait 2002).
And yet, television, of all sectors of the media industry, is a poor medium for such a grand ambition. By its very nature television is selective:
‘ephemeral, sensational, over dramatic, simplistic, lacking in depth and interpretation’ (Kellner 1990, p 110). It is particularly subject to industry trends, reinforcing its limitations as a medium that ‘is not about analysing . . . [but] about perceptions’ (MacGregor 1997, p. 214).
Indeed, when it comes to the production of news and current affairs, rather than liberating those who supply the material, they are often bound to the technology, from live broadcasts to the necessary satellite bookings that enable reporters to appear ‘in the field’. MacGregor’s analysis of the television coverage of the al-Amarya Incident during the Gulf War, when the Western forces, led by the Americans, bombed a civilian shelter in Baghdad, provides evidence of how television journalists, in particular, are enslaved by technology and the increased commodification of news, like the media as a whole, due to corporate control of news organizations and con- vergence (MacGregor 1997, pp. 191–2).
Although reporters in the field had lightweight satellite technology, the expense of television news production and logistical considerations still determined what was covered and how. Satellite time and the demands of every-more hungry news rooms and multi-platform operations, as well as cosmetic contrivances such as stand-ups, sought to reinforce the fact that
‘we are there’, tying journalists to a location, and helping encourage the trend of reporters as celebrity (ibid., pp. 186–7).
And technology is only part of a wider picture. Other elements of televi- sion news production, such as reporting conventions, logistical considera- tions, national standards in questions of taste and decency in the reporting of death and injury, as well as the role of those back at base, from tape editors, to managers, are all susceptible to pressure. Resource constraints increase the susceptibility to pressure of those involved in the production process. From tape editors to copy editors, the young, the inexperienced and the overworked, are the staple of increasingly understaffed and under- resourced newsrooms.
Yet its influence is undisputed. Perhaps, the ‘most powerful cultural force since Gutenberg ran offthe first printed copy of the bible’ (Humphrys 1999, p. 154), television has altered the reality of events. The division between the real and the image seems to be dissolving, as events are changed by the pres- ence of the camera. The way people behave and conduct themselves is
televisual. From refugees crossing a border, through anti-globalization pro- testors, to the participants of televised debates in parliament or on camera courtroom considerations: ‘had there been no television, [the event] would be different. Their reality [includes] their televisuality’ (Fiske 1994, p. 2).
Despite its distortions, television has become our reality.2 The ‘TV effect’ – an image problem created by international television clips that distort the daily reality is created by the tendency noted by Fred Cate, Professor at the Indiana University School of Law, that ‘news is com- prised largely of negative stories, especially when it concerns developing countries’.3
Television is also seen to have a divisive social effect, contributing to the fragmented and anomic nature of modern society. Where once common experience held societies together television has contributed to the insular- ity of today’s atomized existence, as the BBC’s John Humphrys suggests:
‘The more time you spend staring at the screen in the corner, the less time there is for anything outside’ (Humphrys 1999, p. 51). In fact, as first VCRs enabled home recording, then television programming became possible, and now the emergence of digital television and the ability to set ‘record’
via mobile phone, even shared viewing seems to be disappearing. Television seems a poor substitute for the real thing, cheapening our emotional responses by allowing them no time to take root: ‘the things that television invites us to get emotional about pass fleetingly. We are moved, the images shift to something quite different, our feelings pass and we’re engrossed in something else’ (Humphrys 1999, p. 51).
Broadcast culture, moreover, has been dumbed down, and information presented as drama or entertainment, such that broadcast journalism increasingly promotes itself not so much on what it talks about but on the method it uses:
Broadcasting 24 hours a day, correspondents in over 50 capital cities, giving you all the headlines every 15 minutes, up to six generations of journalists gathered in one newsroom, making you feel all the news you want to feel, even on Christmas Day. Hi-tech software and speedy transmission makes everything instant news, but we lose sight of the skilled individuals who can process this random unstoppable flow of information and somehow construct a meaningful examination of it. (Ianucci 2006)
It is these limitations and this structure that are, subsequently, superim- posed on the political sphere. The mass media, as a whole, has had a pro- found impact on the political process and political institutions, altering the election practices of candidates and political parties, even ‘replacing churches, political parties and trade unions as a means of forming and representing opinions’ (Keane 1991, p. x). Elections have become media
events, ‘increasingly fought on the terrain of the media as candidates and parties rely increasingly on media coverage . . . in order to present them- selves and their policies to the electorate’ (Thompson 2001, p. 178).
Television has taken the political process and shaped it in its own image.
It is the image of the extreme close-up and the sound bite: the personal and conversational style of radio has, through television, intensified into the
‘mediated intimacy’ of political leaders as ‘the management of visibility and self-presentation through the media has become an integral and increasingly professionalized feature of government’ (Thompson 2001, p. 180).
Indeed, there is a strange symbiosis between politicians and journalists:
for their part, politicians start to think, speak and behave like journalists – a ten- dency epitomised by presidential statements containing one-liners designed to guide and ease the work of newspaper headline writers and to give television reporters pithy ten-second sound bites. For their part, journalists, despite their professional values, may be reduced to virtual channels of propaganda.
(Gurevitch and Blumler 1991, p. 279)
Not only do we get our news, entertainment, education, information and even our socialization through the television, several empirical studies,4 have shown that, in Western democracies, television is the most popular medium for political communication in general and election communica- tion in particular both as a primary battleground for politicians and a source of information for voters, particularly the floating kind.5
The sound bite, this hyperactive filament of the television era, is playing directly to the limitations of the medium. Sculpted by the communications professional employed by the modern political party, it is a ‘lethal result of vapid reaction units . . . a safe substitute for argument instead of a prelude to it . . . insulting the intelligence of voters, and encouraging them to tune out’ (The Economist12 May 2001, p. 60). Television has suffused the poli - tical process with the trends and techniques of ‘political marketing’
(Thompson 2001, p. 178). From psychology and commercial advertising to opinion polls and political campaigning, the multimedia strategies employed to get elected seem to ‘aim more and more overtly as forms of
“subliminal” persuasion’ (Zolo 2001, p. 415).