Crisis reveals broadcasting’s hidden symbiosis with power and dominant ideologies more than with profit

Evidence

It is thus in moments of polarization and conflict that broadcasting most openly reveals what otherwise is covert, tacit, taken-for-granted: its hidden but pervasive symbiotic relation to power and to the dominant ideologies. … We say “power and the dominant ideologies” rather than money and the profit motive because, although television has, since the ending of monopoly, provided a “frontier province” for the crudest commercial calculations, the role of broadcasting in reproducing the power relations and ideological structure of society appears to me far more central an issue than its incidental financial kickback. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 856

Categorization

• XREF: This foreshadows Hall’s encoding/decoding model and his later argument that hegemony works through consent, connecting to theories of ideology in cultural studies and economic thought.
• SEED: An essay angle comparing Hall’s ‘power-ideology-broadcasting nexus’ with today’s platform capitalism and algorithmic ‘neutrality’ assumptions.