Broadcasters’ editorial freedom is bounded by the state’s ideological hegemony

Evidence

In this paper, I try to expand a proposition which seems to me obvious and true, but which is widely neglected and repressed. In Britain, the broadcasting institutions have a great deal of formal autonomy from the state and government: but their ultimate authority to broadcast derives from the state and, in the last instance, it is to the state that they are responsible. That part of the proposition is probably not contentious: but what I consider its necessary corollary probably is. The broadcasting institutions exercise a wide measure of editorial autonomy in their programs: but ultimately they operate within the mode of reality of the state, and their program content is, in the last instance, governed by the dominant ideological perspective and is oriented within its hegemony. What are usually understood as “external influences on broadcasting” constitute in fact the everyday working context for broadcasting: the study of such specific “influences” therefore provides a quite inadequate model for examining the mediations between broadcasting and power. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 841

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Gramsci’s hegemony concept central to Hall’s work and to the book’s overall concern with ideology critique. — connects to: The BBC’s political coverage encodes unspoken rules suppressing political seriousness — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 738; State actors manufacture folk devils that the media then amplify as secondary definers
• DEFINE: Defines the relation between editorial autonomy and state ideological control as a core framework for understanding media power.