GALTUNG V5N2395
***** GALTUNG ********** EJC/REC Vol. 5, No. 2&3, 1995 *****

PROSPECTS FOR MEDIA MONITORING:
MUCH OVERDUE, BUT NEVER TOO LATE!


Johan Galtung
University of Hawaii
Universitt Witten/Herdecke
European Peace University
Universidad de Alicante
and TRANSCEND


        Abstract:  International journalism has
     recently shown inadequacy in connection with two
     major conflicts:  the Second Gulf War and the
     Yugoslav War.  The public relations agencies have
     appeared as a new element in news manipulation.
     That is why the monitoring of the media has become
     more crucial to keep the action of the media in
     proper way.  This article presents and clarifies
     some dimensions that should be taken into account
     in any effort to establish a system of media
     monitoring.  To monitor is to understand in order
     to act in an informed, well reasoned way.


                   Media Monitoring: Why?

     Two theses from the sociology of professions:

_Thesis 1:_ A characteristic of a profession, like a
guild in medieval and early modern times, is self-control,
based on a contract with surrounding society, entitling the
profession to set their own standards, to monitor their
members, and to enforce those standards when necessary,
including the use of reward and punishment.

_Thesis 2:_ The mechanisms of _Thesis 1_ do not work.

     The reasons for the latter are obvious.  What
professions demand, and often get, is the same as what
nations often demand:  sovereignty, autonomy.  But nations
within a multi-national world can separate themselves from
the other nations, drawing a territorial border around
themselves, and become increasingly self-reliant, maybe even
independent.  A profession cannot do that; it depends on
clients outside the profession for its livelihood (not like
some psycho-analysts analyzing each other).

     The criteria of the surrounding inter-human society,
and not only of the clients, will always play a role.  A
profession will never be permitted to be self-contained,
being accountable only to itself.  Actually, neither will
nations:  surrounding inter- nation society also imposes
standards and demands accountability.  And there will be
paradigm shifts within the profession, pitting younger
generations with new standards against the interests of the
older generation.  In short:  watchful eyes everywhere.
Monitoring.

     International journalism has recently shown its
inadequacy in connection with two major conflicts in a way
which should have led to major revolts and agonizing
reappraisals.

     In the Second Gulf War, 17 January to 27 February 1991,
the problem was not the infamous Pentagon pooling system,
based on journalists they could trust, thereby engineering
the outcome [1].  To blame a machine made for war "with all
necessary means" (Security Council Resolution 678) for
including manipulation of the news process among those means
is like blaming a lion for not being vegetarian.  The
problem is the high level of acceptance among journalists,
the low number who tried to obtain, often at considerable
risk, _independent_ access to the events.  And that
acceptance seems to have run through the whole news chain,
via agencies and editors to the end users.  No massive
refusal among journalists to use the pool system, no massive
rejection of the highly orchestrated news conferences, no
massive protests among readers/viewers/listeners have been
reported.  And this in presumably free societies!  In
countries occupied by Nazi-Germany during the Second World
War there was at least massive skepticism of the official
media, and in addition an alternative, illegal press
assembled and distributed at even higher risks.

     Whereas this was a clear case of the State manipulating
what will reach Civil Society via the Media, the Yugoslav
War offers another, equally or more discomforting picture of
how Capital can manipulate.  The classic techniques are
obvious:  buying space (or time) for publicity; buying space
for an article; buying a journalist; buying an editor;
buying a paper; a radio or TV station; buying a whole news
chain; buying a cartel of news chains.

     But this time something else has entered the news
chain:  public relations agencies, with States as clients,
constructing a virtual reality by systematically planting
non-events as news, or changing focus and discourse in favor
of their clients.  This section of the Merlino-Harff
interview should be printed or aired by all decent media for
people to understand what is happening, not at the beginning
of the news chain but toward the end:  [2]

     Question:  What achievement were you most proud
     of?

     Harff:  To have managed to put Jewish opinion on
     our side.

     Question:  But when you did all this, you had no
     proof that what you said was true.  You only had
     the article in Newsday!

     Harff:  Our work is not to verify information.  We
     are not equipped for that.  Our work is to
     accelerate the circulation of information
     favorable to us, to aim at judiciously chosen
     targets.  We did not confirm the existence of
     death camps in Bosnia, we just made it known that
     _Newsday_ affirmed it.

     Question:  Are you aware that you took on a grave
     responsibility?

     Harff:  We are professionals.  We had a job to do
     and we did it.  We are not paid to be moral.

     The interests of the State (or states) are very
clear.[3] But there is a new element:  privatization of news
manipulation.  The Pentagon worked like a massive, heavy
machine, something like the US Mail.  The public relations
firms use "a card file, a computer, and a fax", "at the
right time with the right person", targeting actors that are
not only news-makers but event-makers, with the efficiency
(and no doubt the fees) one would expect from Capital as
opposed to State.  The victims are in Civil Society, led by
the nose into a virtual reality very remote from the
empirical or conventional reality some of us still seem to
prefer as basis for opinion-formation, individual and
collective, not to mention as a basis for action.  But there
has been no massive protests or investigation.  The system
seems to have no steering, no negative feed-back.[4] The
media are, put simply, out of control.

           Media Monitoring: What Does That Mean?

     Monitoring goes beyond merely recording.  To monitor is
to characterize something according to a criterion.  In
other words, monitoring means evaluating.  We are doing it
all the time:  mapping others, individuals or
collectivities, media, sometimes ourselves, mapping events
like meals, contexts like restaurants on dichotomies of
good-bad or on more refined scales of judgment.  We cannot
live without doing this.  And of course, by definition,
evaluation is judgmental.  Equally obviously, the criteria
chosen for the evaluation, _the value-dimensions_, are
subjective, coming out of the attitudes/assumptions of some
individual or collectivity.  But given the value-dimensions,
the mapping may be consensual.

     If we should monitor monitoring, would the term
"objective" be useful?  Maybe as a term, but then that term
has to be understood properly; anchoring "objective" in what
is _intersubjectively communicable and reproducible_.  This
means:  (1) _the value-dimensions used for evaluation must
be explicit_; (2) _the mapping process on the
value-dimensions must be explicit_.  Only by making the
whole process explicit, openly formulated and accessible, is
communication among subjects possible, and only under that
condition can other subjects, using the same definitions and
the same procedures arrive at the same results, i.e.,
mappings on the value-dimensions, evaluations, monitoring.

     But who are these subjects?  Are they the media
researchers supposedly doing the job of monitoring?  They
would definitely be among the subjects communicating
criteria and mapping media, presumably being competent to do
so.  But the whole process is too important to be limited to
researchers as the competence group.

     Consequently, a third criterion could be added:

(3) _The value-dimensions should be meaningful for the news
chain_.

     In other words, not only researchers who have the news
chain as their subject area but the subjects along the news
chain, event-makers, news-makers and news-consumers
(readers, listeners, viewers) should understand and
preferably agree that the dimensions are not only meaningful
but important.  Of course, that does not mean that there
will be consensus about the dimensions.  The goal is not
consensus but a fruitful dialogue among everybody concerned,
adding and subtracting dimensions:

(4) _The goal is good dialogue, not consensus, about the
criteria_

     A good example is the monitoring of "development" of
countries.

     There is no consensus that "GNP/capita" is the only or
the basic value-dimension.  But by making this dimension
explicit economists have done a great service to the debate:
those who have read and understood the definition to the
point of being able to carry out the operations agree
atleast on what they are talking about.  Out of this fifty
years old debate has grown a vast range of additional
value-dimensions, many of them reflected in the very
interesting _Human Development Report_ issued annually by
the United Nations Development Program.  But having said
that the other side of the coin should also be mentioned:  a
dialogue focussed on development indicators (another term
for the more precise "value-dimension") may become
philosophically flat, losing the deeper aspects of what is
being discussed.  A definition in extension, listing many
aspects of "developed countries", "good media" can never
fully substitute for a definition in intension, trying to
get at the deeper meaning.

     How do we realize these four criteria in practice?

     Task (1) is easy at first glance, but more problematic
in the longer run.  Listing the dimensions makes them
explicit, and explicitness may then stimulate a usually very
important dialogue about how the criteria, or the whole idea
of good media, are to be understood.  The demand for
explicitness quickly leads to a demand for higher levels of
precision.  And one way of defining is through an
operational definition, in other words by carrying out the
evaluation, meaning Task (2) above.  If the goal is
inter-subjective communicability and reproducibility then
any difference in interpretation, for instance due to
vagueness, will quickly show up, whether the discrepancies
are due to differences in interpretation, or in operation,
or in both (there is also the interesting possibility that
the criteria may be understood differently and the
evaluation done differently, and the two differences may
cancel each other).[5]

     Take a very well known case of monitoring:  the _Guide
Michelin_ for restaurants.  What is being monitored is the
quality of the _cuisine_, as showing up in the _meals_
offered.  There are five values:  ***, **, *, no-star,
no-mention.  But there is also an evaluation of the context,
the _restaurant_ itself, its _decor_, _ambience_, on a
similar seven-point scale, defining with precision the
possibilities of splendid meals in plain restaurant and
lousy meals in brilliant contexts.  And both.  And neither.

     But the criteria are not made explicit.  They are, of
course, embedded in the vague (but open!) concept of
"taste", _in casu_ the taste of the tasters or testers, who
travel all over and enter unannounced, presumably using all
their senses to monitor.

     Thus Task (2) can be fulfilled even if Task (1) is not,
among other reasons because the tasters/testers may share a
culture within which their criteria are implicitly
communicated.  And Task (1) may be fulfilled and yet Task
(2) not:  researchers communicate very well to each other
what they are looking for but are unable to translate it
into operations such as content analysis with a high level
of reliability (intersubjectivity).

     That leaves us with Tasks (3) and (4).  Of course,
nobody wants to leave out an analysis only meaningful to the
specialists in communication research.  However, for this to
be useful there should be ample consultation along the news
chain to ensure not only shared understanding, but also a
sharing of interest:  that it matters to people along the
chain how the findings turn out.  And the commonality of
understanding should be sufficient for a fruitful dialogue
about the relevance of the value-dimensions.

     So, how do we define the process of monitoring media?
By means of the four tasks defined:  explicit
value-dimensions, an explicit mapping process of media on
those dimensions, by seeing to it that the dimensions are
meaningful along the whole news chain, and by having a
permanent dialogue about these dimensions.  This differs
from an angry person canceling his subscription or switching
the channel or frequency in anger:  his reaction is
subjective as opposed to explicit, and private as opposed to
inter-subjective or public.  Monitoring is a public process.
And the purpose is, of course, to improve media performance:
to serve as a feedback, and not necessarily negative.  But
whether it has or not is not a part of the definition, but
of how it is done, and the whole social context.

             Monitoring Media: An Image of How

     Imagine somewhere in the world there is a very big
matrix recording the evaluation of _m_ media on _n_
value-dimensions; both _m_ and _n_ being very high.  The
media may operate with hourly, daily, weekly, monthly,
annual or other frequencies, so each cell in the matrix
accmmodates evaluation on one value-dimension over time.  In
each cell therewould be a curve with time on the horizontal
and the value-dimension onthe vertical axis.  In principle
there could be any possible curve shape:  an optimistic
upwards tilt, a downward trend, "the best/worst is behind
us", no trend at all.  A comparison can be made with charts
for economic growth, trade balance, unemployment, or any
economic indicator, or with human rights monitoring of all
countries on all articles in the human rights
declaration/conventions.

     A nightmare?  In terms of work input, yes.  But also in
terms of Big Brother alone having access to the matrix with
the power to tilt all curves upward; his definition of the
value- dimensions being the only one.  Contrast this with
organizations of voters in a democracy keeping track of the
voting of their representatives in a number of issue areas.
They would have no reason to keep their criteria and
mappings for themselves, in fact, they want them to be
public for the feedback mechanisms of democracy to function,
_from below_.  The organization making those data easily
available does democracy a favor.  So would the organization
making that matrix available in an easily understandable
form.  For what could be more important to mass society
democracy than the media, presumably making State, Capital
and Civil Society and their interrelations transparent?

     _Some words on the _m_ media_.  Some criteria are
easily agreed on:

     - all three media, papers/TV/radio should be
       monitored
     - those with the largest circulation/audience
       should be included
     - those usually considered elite/high quality
       should be included
     - media seen as competitors should be included,
       also to stimulate interest in the monitoring
       process
     - different areas of the world should be included
     - from each area representative local media should
       be included

     Even to monitor one medium, like "the world's news
leader" (by self-proclamation) might be interesting.  Add to
that another TV station from a different civilization for
contrast (like monitoring how major US and Japan TV channels
report on the same US-Japan relations), and the process of
monitoring becomes more than just a set of data.  There is a
story, even a drama unfolding, one more variation on the
perennial theme nobody has presented more masterly that
Kurosawa in _Rashomon_.  Same story, but it is all in the
eyes of the beholder. . . .[6]

     To be fair to the media and to the users, the
definition of media should be kept open.  Most studies are
done of newspapers at the expense of magazines and journals,
of newscasts less than of commentary, and the major source
of information for most people, other people, in formal
meetings as well as informal gossip, are usually left out
(except in the very fruitful two-step flow of information
tradition).  This is in line with the focus on literacy
rather than orality and on visuality rather than literacy.
But studies should also be made to give people a voice as to
their sources of information.  There may be some surprises.

     _Some words on the _n_ dimensions_.  A short catalogue:

_I. The medium as organization_

     - Ownership pattern
     - Employee distribution by gender, race, nation.
     - Accounts:  Break-down of the income on sources.

_II. The medium as form_

     - How much of the space/time is used for
       advertising?
     - How much of the space/time is made available to
       readers/viewers/listeners?
     - How much of the space/time is for news/comments?
     - How much of the space/time content can actually
       be predicted knowing the general inclination
       (difficult)?
     - How much of the space/time content of a news
       story is independent of what happened/could have
       been written back home?
     - How much of the space/time is given to actors
       seeking the media as opposed to the media
       seeking the actors (difficult)?

_III. The medium as content_ [7]

     - For conflict:  how much ability to report all
       sides?
     - For conflict:  how much focus on solution,
       transformation?
     - For gender conflict:  how much voice given to
       women?
     - For race conflict:  how much voice given to
       non-dominant?
     - For national conflict:  how much voice given to
       "minorities"?
     - For war/violence:  how much focus on how it
       could have been avoided, on peace-making, on
       reconciliation, etc.?
     - For development:  how much focus on distribution
       (not only growth), on popular participation, and
       on alternatives? for environment:  how much
       focus on identity of polluter/depleter, on
       popular initiatives and alternatives?

     Of course, these are very general dimensions.
Particular issues would call for more specificity.  But even
so this more general form of monitoring might be useful.
Some retroactive monitoring back to earlier decades, even
centuries, might also be interesting.  Could there be an
increasing tendency toward more concentrated ownership and
sources of income, toward more advertising and less
interaction with the users, toward more partisan media, more
sensationalism in general?  Less focus on possible
solutions, more on problems; less on resolutions, more on
conflicts?  We shall never know the extent of influence from
outside the media.  But we can know something about the
result, the face showing to the public, the entry into
public space.

     Thus, monitoring should be done in such a way that it
is comparative, and not only across media space today, but
through time, diachronically as well as synchronically.
Only in this way can certain tendencies be uncovered that
would make monitoring not only useful but absolutely
crucial.  We may argue over how good or bad is the present
situation, but agree on the need to do something should the
tendencies continue in the same direction.  And the same
applies to space:  if the patterns differ from one
civilization to the next, even among countries in the same
civilization, then monitoring may be an invitation not so
much to social control as to social learning.

     Will the media pay attention?  Maybe not so much as the
French chef reported to have committed suicide when his
restaurant lost one star.  But like most others, media are
interested in themselves.  And even if they do not want to
publish bad tidings about themselves, their competitors may
. . .

     Finally, a word of warning.  The purpose of this paper
has only been to clarify some of the dimensions that would
have to be taken into account in any effort to establish a
system of media monitoring.  It is written in an
actor-oriented style:  editors and journalists act, people
monitor to register media behavior.  Writing this way by no
means implies a general actor orientation in analyzing media
in particular and communication in general.  Actors are free
to act, but only up to a certain point.  The rest is
determined by structure and culture, and other factors.  Not
only event-makers, news-producers, and news-consumers are
influenced by deep structure and deep culture, by
conflicting interests, profit motives, poor vs rich
discources in the general culture, etc.  So is the monitor;
so is the author of these lines.  Nobody is totally free,
above such factors.

     But the idea behind monitoring is not to theorize, but
to provide data that may serve as raw material for such
theories.  More particularly, with rich material the analyst
can use a very powerful method:  differential analysis:  why
is Media A different from Media B, in countries C and D, but
not in E and F; and why does that difference seem to
increase over time?  The richer the statistical material,
the deeper the findings that can be extracted; and above
some dimensions about the media rather than the items
appearing have been indicated.  Monitoring is much more than
trend-watching:  to monitor is to understand in order to act
in an informed, well reasoned way.  Monitoring is beyond
mirroring what happens in the fourth pillar of society (in
addition to State, Capital and Civil Society) [8].  To
monitor the media is to make them transparent:  a basic
condition for democracy to function.

                        References

     1. Professor Wilhelm Kempf with a group of students at
the University of Konstanz, Germany, has done very important
work on this particular case; he is also a member of the big
research group headed by Stig-Arne Nohrstedt of the
University of Orebro, Sweden to explore _Journalism in the
New World Order_.

     2. Intelligence Digest, 4 February 1994.

     3. Not only in the obvious sense of the client states,
the customers, but also in the sense of, for instance, the
USA as the key power in the "New World Order".  See Johan
Carlisle, Public Relationships:  Hill & Knowlton, Robert
Gray, and the CIA, CovertAction, Spring 1993.

     4. Of course, there are critical voices inside media
mainstream, such as the _Columbia Journalism Review_, trying
"to assess the performance of journalism".  But this kind of
work is at best based on spot checks, not on systematic
monitoring.  Also see the _St.  Louis Journalism Review_.
The series _CENSORED_ (1994 edition by Four Walls Eight
Windows, New York) also performs a valuable service, but
again there may be doubts about how systematic the work
behind such efforts is.

     5. See Johan Galtung, "An Inquiry into the Concepts of
'Reliability', 'Intersubjectivity' and 'Constancy'", Papers
on Methodology, Copenhagen:  Ejlers, 1979, pp. 65-81.

     6. For one example of monitoring see the work done in
the United Nations to analyze the press coverage of the UN
operations in Somalia and Cambodia based on 14,606 articles
clipped during 1993, in Raquel Cohen-Orantes, "DPI's
Analysis of Press Coverage", Evaluation Bulletin, Spring
1993, pp. 25ff, published semi-annually by the Central
Evaluation Unit, Department of Administration and
Management, United Nations, New York.

     7. For more dimensions along these lines, see Johan
Galtung and Richard C. Vincent, Global Glasnost:  Toward a
New World Information and Communication Order?, Cresskill,
NJ:  Hampton Press, 1992, last four chapters before the
epilogue.

     8. See Johan Galtung, State, Capital and Civil
Society:  A Problem of Communication.  Paper for 6th
MacBride Round Table, Honolulu, Hawaii, 20-23 January 1994.
------------------------------------------------------------

Author Information:  Johan Galtung
                     51 Bois Chatton
                     F-01210 Versonnex
                     France
------------------------------------------------------------
                      Copyright 1995
   Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, Inc.

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