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Essay
„Politics and Economics of Media Production‟
Student Name

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It has been seen in most of the studies which were conducted in the past that there has been a
domination by the political economy of the intellectual considerations of the media production
industries. At the same time, this model which is similar to the one mentioned above has also
become very popular amongst a wide regions of sub-approaches which are largely based on
different adaptations and interpretations (Peterson 1982). The politics and the economics behind
the production and the consumption of media is regarded as the area of both strong continuities
and also as an area of rapid historical changes. It might be argued by many that since the early
days of mass-market newspaper in the 19th
century little has changed which were used to
propagate the ideas of political party in Britain to the publish and discredit opponents and at the
same time were often owned by members of the political party in Britain.
It is from a long time that the news is regarded as editorial and brand experience which is more
than just obtaining facts and information (Crewe 2003). It has been seen that modern media
doesn‟t show the trend of being transparent; which in the earlier newspapers were present as they
were fairly transparent regarding their masters and motives. Much of the global media has
become conglomerated and multinational business in the later 20th
and the early 21st
century.
This encompass of complex chains of holdings and ownership which generally include different
kinds of media. The importance of informed citizen debates and free speech has been recognized
by the democratic societies (Peterson 1982). Another crucial question which is of great
importance is that whether they also consider the manner in which news media hinder or support
the ideas in the rising global political economy.
There are various drawbacks or limitations which could be seen in the critical approaches of the
political economy to the industries of media production which leads to general inattention to
entertainment programming, consistent focus on the lager level of operations of media
institutions and also the imperfect clarification of the human agent‟s role. This is true other than
for those at the highpoint of the companies pyramid in focusing, interpreting and redirecting the
forces of economy which render for the contradiction and complexity within the industries of
media production (Johnson 1986). There seems to be a usual neglect overall of competing goals
and the quotidian practices which defines the experiences of those who work in the industry and
it doesn‟t seem to be overlooked by the regular and direct management of corporate owners. At
the same time, there is a reductionist tendency to treat any kind of popular culture in the arena of

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political and economic analysis as yet any other kind of commodity culture which operates only
as per the interests of the capital. There seems to be a very little window for the purpose of
creativity in the media production and it also brawls over the representative practices from the
vantage aspect.
The science of industrial relations amongst the economic laws and the people which governs the
development of the consecutive formation of socio-economic is known as the political economy.
In case of the media production, the main point to be taken into consideration are the analysis of
the how the power associations in the general public form the distribution, production and
consumption of resources (Stabile 1995). It is because of the special role of the media in the
society and also because of the dual nature of the Media production it is essential to focus on the
fact that there is a special political economy in the study of economic convergence.
With the exception of the public broadcasters which are either fully or partly funded by the state,
the majority of the western organizations of media are profit-making, private businesses which
are bounded to render the stakeholders of their company with certain returns by means of selling
of the space for advertisement (Garnham 2005). Hence, it becomes very crucial for the private
media companies to maintain a good relationships with the other advertisement companies. It has
been argued by many researchers and scholars in the study conducted by them especially Edward
Herman and Noam Chomsky, that there are difficulties in operating and structural procedures
which as a result results in the individual journalist to present the real news contrary to the
interest of the businesses which support their industry due to the existence of conditions of
certain conditions (Turow 1990). This kind of pressure sometimes involves issues like difficulty
in financing the sources of news which are perceived by the advertisers to be anti-capitalist or
radical and most of the times this pressure is not overtly oppressive.
High running and start-up cost has made it very difficult for the small media outlets which have
very little funding to survive, especially in the age of television and them print journalism
dominance. As a matter of fact, the advancement in the news agencies occurred largely to render
first the wire services and then the photos and packages of the audiovisual footages to the news
firms (O‟Regan 1990). The development was basically seen in the big threes which are Reuters,
Associated Press and Agence France Presse which did the same so as to cover more and more
possible news at a high speed across the great distances. Based on their being able to thrive in the

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large economies of scale these agencies have been able to survive. In order to present the world
to audience the large economies of scale was necessary in the past; it was also the goal of most
of the news organizations and they achieved the same by means of adoption of innovative
technologies for the purpose of distribution of news to consumers.
Smaller and specialized agencies of photography continued to contribute and survive many
memorable photographs to the image economy alongside the big threes. Magnum photos which
was created as a co-operative after the World-War II with the agenda of rendering more editorial
control to the photojournalist over their own images, remains a crucial player in the arena of
photojournalism. There are various other small agencies whose sole agenda is to act as the
technologically enables and efficient hubs for distribution for photojournalism. This, at the same
time acts as a signal of a wide-ranged awareness in the society of the significance of regularly
improving and rendering the flow of images to the society.
A major staff of a media production might get about more than 6000 agency images per day with
the advancement of technology and the introduction of internet and there is a competition
amongst many organizations so as to render the images which could be used by some of these
news outlets (Hesmondhalgh 2006). At the same time, the media production industries of the
current world tend to face some form of pressure from the political parties in order to show what
they want to show to the public in order to gain public support and sometimes the agenda is to
degrade the image of the opposition party. In cases like these the media production loses their
ability to display what is right and under the pressure of the political party they show what is not
correct.
In the last 15 years two other giants have emerged besides the small boutique agencies like
Magnum and VII and the older ex-wire services; they have been emerged so as to play a crucial
role in the media production and mostly in the photojournalistic industry. Throughout the 1990s
much of the smaller photo agency competition has been brought up by the Getty and Corbis
Images which are distributors of the still and moving images. It was Bill Gates who is the
founder of Microsoft who created Corbis and Mark Getty was the one who started Getty images;
the basic agenda was to bring together the business of fragmented stock photography into the
digital world. The interest of both these companies in images is diverse which include sports and
fashion photography and also stock photography for advertisement; they tend to reach well

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beyond the conventional editorial and news photojournalism. As witnessed by Corbis‟ purchase
of the historic Bettmann archive, the rights of many collections of the old iconic photograph have
been acquired by them of the 19th
and the 20th
century. There were many photo agencies which
were purchased by either Getty or Corbis as a part of their consolidation trend; these agencies
belonged to the period of 1960s, 70s and 1980s and they also possessed very firm record in
editorial and news photography together with photography of celebrity like Saba, Sygma and
Liaison.
It is hard to overstate the significance of internet in the field of media production in rendering
more and more fresh alternatives for the purpose of circulating and displaying the work which is
done wither at a more micro level or by the efforts of the large businesses. There has been
important debates amongst photojournalist on the industry forms like The Digital Journalist
website as to by which approach the interest of the photographer and that of the media
productions is served the best. An alternative means and ways of working could be rendered to
those who are not comfortable to work in the ever-rising commercialized media production. The
alternative available to them is presenting their work in the exhibitions, book and in the gallery
spaces which are collaborated with organizations which are non-governmental. It is since the
time of 1970s that these outlets have been developing. It is in the media and audiovisual
production online that both Magnum and VII has ventured into (VII in Multimedia and Magnum
in Motion) where by means of combining still images, text, recorded video footage and
voiceover they present stories.
There is a rapid expansion in this field; it was in the year 2005 that a project which was named
Media Storm was re-launched which was started in the year 1994 at the University of Missouri‟s
School of Journalism. It started as a firm which was solely focused on the production of
multimedia online production for clients like Council for Foreign Relations and also Starbucks.
In demand for training workshops the desire for skills in multimedia productions is also clear
which is established by many organizations and businesses. Journalists and photographers who
wishes to develop their skills of multimedia for utilizing in the feature of paper‟s website have
been attracted by these courses.
One of the most crucial part of the many of the technologies of the online world is the fact that
they are readily available to the non-journalist too. Because of this, there establishes a possibility

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that there is a platform for the distribution and creation of their own news and stories. Due to the
ability of many citizens to photograph, witness and showcase their work at ease, the work of the
professional photojournalist in the media production is often regarded to be at risk. There are
many cases which are missed by majority of the media or like 7/7 bombings in London where
they have to take out information from the professional so as to get fast-breaking stories. On the
other hand it has been argued by many professionals that across the world there is still demand
for media production who have recognized experience, credibility and excelled track record.
In conclusion, it could be said that the media professionals and the firms are trying to redefine
the industrial common sense or their conventional practices in the time where there is
convergence of technology, acceleration of the worldwide distribution and production strategies
and DIY media projects (Boddy 1990). Members of the media production industry are
negotiating ways to simultaneously apply old rules to a new game as new content window
proliferate and there is a fragmentation of the audience; and at the same time trying to exploit the
possibility to transform both economic and content gain.
References
1. Boddy, W 1990, “Fifties television: The industry and its critics.” Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 12-52.
2. Crewe, B 2003, “Representing men: Cultural production and producers in the men‟s
magazine market.” Oxford: Berg, 114-22.
3. Garnham, N 2005, “A personal intellectual memoir.” Media, Culture & Society, 27(4),
469–93.
4. Hesmondhalgh, D 2006, “Bourdieu, the media and cultural production.” Media, Culture
and Society, 28(2), 211–32.
5. Johnson, R 1986, “What is cultural studies anyway?” Social Text, 16, 38–80.
6. O‟Regan, T 1990, “Too popular by far: On Hollywood‟s international popularity.”
Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, 5(2), 302–351.
7. Peterson, RA 1982, “Five constraints on the production of culture: Law, technology,
market, organizational structure and occupational careers.” Journal of Popular Culture,
16(2), 143–152.

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8. Peterson, R A 2004, “The production of culture perspective.” Annual Review of
Sociology, 30, 311–344.
9. Stabile, C 1995, “Resistance, recuperation, and reflexivity: The limits of a paradigm.”
Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 12, 403–422.
10. Turow, J 1990, “Media industries, media consequences: Rethinking mass
communication.” Communication Yearbook, 13, 478–501.