Transnational Media: Creating Consumers Worldwide

Author(s): Herbert I. Schiller

Source: Journal of International Affairs , Summer 1993, Vol. 47, No. 1, POWER OF THE
MEDIA IN THE GLOBAL SYSTEM (Summer 1993), pp. 47-58
Published by: Journal of International Affairs Editorial Board

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Transnational Media:
Creating Consumers Worldwide
Herbert I. Schiller

By the end of the 1980s, "globalization" had become the term for accelerating
interdependence.... The primary agent of globalization is the transnational
corporation. The primary driving force is the revolution in information and
communication technologies.1

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that recent advances in communications have led to the
emergence of the
"global village," I do not believe that globalization of the
media industries sector has resulted in the formation of an inter national civil society as such.2 Rather, this process
has resulted in an international order organized by transnational economic inter ests that are largely
unaccountable to the nation-states in which they operate. This transnational corporate system is the product of
a rationalized and commercialized communications infrastruc ture, which transmits massive flows of information
and has ex tended its marketing reach to every corner of every hemisphere. While the U.S. role in the
creation and reproduction of this world wide consumer society has lessened, the supporting institutions and
the content of the information still bear a heavy American imprint.

The Hegemony of International Media Industries

The reality of American global information mastery was ingly on display throughout the war in
the Persian Gu ing the actual hostilities, one account — that of the transn

Sylvia Ostry, "The Domestic Domain: The New International Policy Transnational Corporations 1, no.l (February 1992) p.
7.
For an opposing perspective, see Mike Featherstone, ed., Global Culture (Ne Park, CA: Sage, 1990).

Journal of International Affairs, Summer 1993, 47, no. 1. ©The Trustees of Columbia U In the City of New York.

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Journal of
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U.S.-based Cable News Network (CNN) — dominated television
screens around the world.3 Though press interpretations of the war
may have varied from country to country, the broadcast images of
high technology combat were identical worldwide. However
remarkable a demonstration of the American informa
tion monopoly — now challenged by an expanded British Broad casting
Corporation (BBC) World Service Television and France's newly created
Euronews programming — even this barely sug gests the vast capabilities
of American broadcasters and U.S. based cultural industries to define
reality.
CNN's broadcasts are but one kind of image, sound and symbol
production. Such output also comes to us in the familiar forms of films,
television programs, video cassettes, compact discs, books, magazines,
on-line data and computer software. The transmis sion of this production
is neatly explained by Walter Wriston, former chief executive officer of Citicorp:
The single most powerful development in global communities has been the
satellite, bom a mere thirty-one years ago.... Satellites now bind the world for
better or worse, in an electronic infrastruc ture that carries news, money, and data
anywhere on the planet at the speed of light. Satellites have made borders
utterly porous to information.4

Wriston properly makes no distinction between news, money and data:

"... [HJundreds of millions of people around the world are plugged into
what has become essentially a single net work...of popular
communication."5 Those global corporations and media-cultural
conglomerates that have the capability to use
the global satellite systems are indifferent to formal communica tion
boundaries; digitized electronic communication transforms all messages and
images into a uniform information stream.
This globalization of communication since the 1960s can be best
understood as the phenomenal growth of such transnational

Hamid Mowlana, George Gerbner and Herbert I. Schiller, Triumph of the Image: The Media's War in
the Persian Gulf: A Global Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).
Walter B. Wriston, The Twilight of Sovereignty (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1992) p. 12.
ibid., p. 130.

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Herbert I. Schiller

media-information corporations as Time Warner,

Disney, Reu ters, SONY, Murdoch and Bertelsman — based mostly in
the developed economies — in achieving a worldwide market share.6
While state, non-governmental and non-corporate organizations have
made good use of these new electronic networks, their use is dwarfed by
that of the transnational companies. The capability of the private,
resource-rich conglomerates to shift capital, cur rency, production and data
— almost at will — constitutes the
true levers of contemporary power.
Edward Herman describes the integration of broadcasting into a global
market in recent decades, achieved largely through "cross-border
acquisition of interests in and control of program production and rights,
cable and broadcasting facilities and the sale and rental of program stocks,
technology and equipment."7
This international economic expansion in broadcasting "[has] tended
to increase the strength of commercial broadcasting and reduce that of
public systems."8 Herman concludes that

the strength and momentum of the forces of the market in the last decade of the
twentieth century are formidable. It therefore seems likely that the U.S. patterns
of commercial hegemony over broad casting will be gradually extended over
the entire globe.9

Herman's predictions have been validated with astonishing rapidity

and singular effect. While the American cultural product — film, television,
fashions and tapes — still dominates screens, homes and shops
throughout the world, local outputs are also increasing. Yet, invariably,
they are fashioned on the American model and serve as the same kind of bait
with which to snare the
potential consumer. French television dramas, for example, re peat worn
U.S. formulae; Brazil's powerful television-production industry is at the
beck and call of the same transnational advertis

"America's Most Valuable Companies," Business Week, 1993 Special Bonus Issue,
passim.
Edward S. Herman, "The Externalities Effects of Commercial and Public Broadcasting," in
K. Nordenstreng & H.I. Schiller, eds., Beyond National Sovereignty: International Communications in
the 1990s (Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1993) pp. 108-9.
ibid., p. 108.
ibid.

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Journal of
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ers
who dominate North American television screens.10 The American pop
cultural product has obvious hegemonic proper ties, which can be
attributed to a century of marketing experience and the rapid utilization of
state-of-the-art technologies to achieve compelling special effects.11
As Wriston enthusiastically makes clear, efforts by individual states to
protect and insulate their societies from these stimuli have been futile.
Global notions of what constitutes freedom, individual choice, a good life
and a desirable future come largely from their output. Because of market
imperatives, institutional infrastructures in country after country have been
recast to facil itate the transmission of the American informational and cultural
product.
Clearly, the media industries' unexceptional quest for profit
ability has had a direct — albeit immeasurable — impact on
human consciousness. While the ultimate effect of their cultural packages on the
human senses is impossible to assess concretely, the existence of the effect
cannot be ignored. The worldwide output of America's cultural industries
probably has as great an impact as any other form of American power.
Already it has actively assisted in the transformation of broadcasting and tele
communications systems around the world. People everywhere are
consumers of American images, sounds, ideas, products and services.

The Silencing of Public Debate

In the United States, despite a seemingly thick netwo organizations and

social groups comprising a rich civil soc the voice of the corporate speaker
has succeeded in domin the national discourse. Although the corporate
perspectiv
held a privileged place in American society for generations, balanced in
earlier times by the opposing voices of far

îo. O.S. Oliveira, "Brazilian Soaps Outshine Hollywood: Is Cultural Imperialis

Out?" Paper presented
(German Society for Semiotics), Internationaler
at the meetings of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Se
Kongress, Universität Passa
October 1990. il. These and other factors are described in more detail in Herbert
Schiller, "La Culture Américaine au service des marchands," Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1992, p. 28.

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Herbert I. Schiller

movements, organized labor and civil rights organizations

on the national stage. Since the end of the Second World War, however,
structural economic change and the evolution of media industries
have contributed to a decline of opposing voices — such as the
American labor movement — and an eclipse of a comprehensive
adversarial view.12
Corporate control over the means of communication thus has
immediate political implications: The rising price of television air time has
caused the cost of political candidacy to spiral. In 1992, the New York Times
reported that

spending for House seats by 427 Democrats, 416 Republicans and 294
candidates not affiliated with either party totalled $313.7 mil lion, compared
with about $220 million two years ago.... The combined spending for
House and Senate seats increased to $504
million in 1992, $113 more than in the same period two years ago.13

This means that in order to wage a successful campaign, a political

candidate must either be independently wealthy or be able to convince
those who have resources to offer support. In either case, the electoral
process is transformed into a mechanism for representing the advantaged.
More broadly, corporations enjoy the protection of law. More than a
century ago, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations had the
constitutional rights of individual citizens.14 With such protection, it has
been exceedingly difficult to monitor and con trol corporate activities and
behavior. In the late 1970s, the corpo ration was once again the
beneficiary of a Supreme Court decision, which stated that corporations
had First Amendment rights, and that their speech — with some limitations
— was as protected as individual expression.15

Herbert I. Schiller, Culture Inc., The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression (New Y ork: Oxford
University Press, 1989).
"Spending on Races for U.S. House Soars to a Record $313.7 Million," New York Times, 2 January
1993, p. 12.
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886). First National Bank of
Boston et al. v. Bellotti, Attorney General of Massachusetts et al., 435 U.S. 765 (1978).

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Journal of
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This and related rulings codified the pre-eminent role of corpo rate
expression in the contemporary American cultural land scape.
Corporate expression literally has no serious competition. Public
television, which was supposed to be a non-commercial
alternative to advertiser-supported television, has been co-opted by
sponsorship. Cable television, although receiving most of its revenues
from subscriptions, is steadily drawing more support from advertisers.
Given the overwhelming reliance of American
radio and television on commercial advertising, the domestic
informational system has become, in effect, a marketing and
ideological apparatus of corporate influence. Robert McÇhesney finds
that the media are the national and ultimate interpreters of reality;16 it is a
reality fashioned according to their own corporate advantage.
Media and cultural power, already awesome, is further en
hanced by its capability to define and present its own role to the public.
This self-constructed picture never fails to emphasize the objectivity,
dedication to the public interest and fragility of the cultural industries'
activities. Its hegemonic effect is evident: Cor
porate ascendancy, untouched by social accountability or federal
oversight, has gone almost unchallenged and largely unremarked in
the fora of public opinion.
As could be expected, the realm of permissible debate has
narrowed appreciably in recent decades. For all the talk shows,
personal witness programs and endless hours of sports spectacu lars
and crime dramas, the national discourse is astonishingly bland —
except insofar as personal accounts of behavioral ex cesses are
concerned — and almost totally reticent about the structural
determinants of American existence. Programming that might shed
some light on the country's deepening social crisis does not seem to
impress the program decision makers as worthy of much attention.
Only after South Central Los Angeles burned did the cameras turn —
and only briefly — to the Ameri can urban condition.

16. Robert W. McChesney, "Off Limits: An Inquiry Into the Lack of Debate over the Ownership,
Structure and Control of the Mass Media in U.S. Political Life," Communication 13 (1992)
pp. 1-19.

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Herbert I. Schiller

Arid so it goes. While single-issue

constituencies sometimes receive prominence and some public issues
generate a modicum of excitement, consensus on the essential features of
the social order prevails within the media industries. The main business of
corporate America — marketing — proceeds without interrup tion.
Fundamental institutions have been reshaped to accommo date the
dominant presence of the corporation in American life, thereby offering
seeming confirmation that their hegemony must be the outcome of inescapable
natural forces.
The rich fabric of American history, a story of unceasing strug gles against
plutocratic privilege and continual efforts to achieve social dignity and
equality for working people — including
women and African-Americans — is rarely visible to a national audience;
the little that does get noted is generally either decontextualized or
fragmented. This thin and largely expur gated presentation of the national
experience is the underside of the daily retailing of corporate images and
messages, and the endless affirmations of commercial culture. In recent
years, these highly selective accounts of society and history are no longer
confined within national boundaries; they have become global ized
through the massive export of American television programs and films.1

Corporate Strategems

There is nothing unanticipated about the increasing aut of

corporate media actors. These powerful private econo
glomerates are moved by common impulses: the search
kets,
cheap and non-union labor, low taxes, com governments
and secure property rights. Corporate ent insists on concessions
in these areas wherever it underta
ations. In the period following the Second World War,
tions
demanded "deregulation," which was essenti removal of
limitations from the unrestrained pursuit of The achievement of this
freedom has been a successful and indis
pensable achievement of the international corporate system; the

17. Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Communications and American Empire (New York: A. Kelley, 1969; 2nd ed.,
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

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Journal of International Affairs

American contribution to this trend has been substantial and decisive.

 In particular,, the transnational corporate order places the high est priority
on deregulation in the broadcasting and telecommu nications spheres.
Telecommunications provide the means of linking and coordinating
globally dispersed operations, a crucial requirement for transnational
corporate operations. Broadcast
ing, when deregulated, enables the super-companies and their
advertising agencies unrestricted access to national television
screens. Utilizing this access, they can transmit in ever-increasing volume
their advertising messages and general programming, the latter of
which is no less a carrier of the sales message.
Consequently, there exists today a corporate-induced and
-administered global environment of consumer capitalism that follows
identical prescriptions and uses a uniform rhetoric.18 This includes the
espousal and protection of corporate speech and the justification of
whatever programming is produced and transmit ted as the proof of
consumer choice and sovereignty. Interna tional efforts to combat or
counter the now-pervasive condition of corporate dominance have been
defeated by the counterattack of the transnational corporate order and its
national surrogates.

The Decline of Opposing International Voices

In the 1960s and 1970s, a group of post-colonial Third states

made mostly rhetorical efforts to create a New Information and
Communication Order (NWICO) that ch the Western — mostly
American — domination of worl
and information and cultural flows. The NWICO prop views
have been summed up by Zimbabwean prime m Robert
Mugabe:

In the information and communication field, the Non-Align Nations and

other developing countries are adversely affecte the monopoly which the
developed nations hold over the wor communications systems.... The old
order has ensured the co ued dependence of our information and
communication i

18. Leslie Sklair, Sociology of the Global System (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins U Press, 1991).

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Herbert I. Schiller
 structures and systems on those of the developed nations. Such
dependence constitutes a serious threat to the preservation of our respective
cultures and indigenous life-styles.1

Third World efforts on behalf of the NWÏCO agenda crested in 1978; the
concept, however, was overwhelmingly rejected by the United States and its
few developed allies. Further, the unity of NWICO advocates was
shattered by a U.S. offer of limited assis tance for a development
program in communication technolo gies, calculated to win some Third
World support. This was complemented by a frontal assault —
concentrated in the West ern mass media — on the U.N. Educational,
Scientific and Cul tural Organization (UNESCO), which was an important
locus for NWICO advocates.20 This campaign culminated in the U.S. with
drawal from UNESCO in 1984, and was part of the Reagan
Administration's agenda to browbeat the international commu nity into
accepting U.S. global information policy.
Global corporate actors have sought to cripple other interna tional
agencies and state structures that might have served as shields against
unlimited transnational corporate power. For ex ample, in Europe there has
been unrelenting pressure to eliminate or marginalize the Post, Telephone
and Telecommunications enti ties (PTTs). These governmental bureaucracies,
for all their faults, at least represented in part national public communication
interests. Branded by their transnational corporate adversaries as "monop
olies," however, their authority has been eroded by liberalization and
privatization initiatives — advanced by the transnational corporate
sector and its allies. Their capability to monitor and prescribe the
behavior of the communication companies oper ating in their national
space has been largely lost and their survival is threatened. As the
Financial Times describes with manifest relish:

Speech delivered at the official opening of the Second Conference of Ministers of Information of
Non-Aligned Countries, Harare, Zimbabwe, 10 June 1987. A good summary of NWICO
argumentation and positions can be found in "Many Voices, One World," International
Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (New York: Unipub, 1980).
William Preston, Jr., Edward Herman and Herbert I. Schiller, Hope and Folly: The United States and
UNESCO, 1945-1985 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

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Journal of
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 The European Commission will soon decide whether to abolish the
telephone monopolies which exist in most member states. Its deci
sion will not only be a watershed for telecommunications but will
also define its overall attitude to public monopolies.... The Com
mission has already taken small steps down the path of liberaliza
tion. . .but Europe has already waited long enough and nothing less
than full competition will do.21

Another example of growing corporate hegemony in transna

tional information flows is the evolution of the International Telecommunications
Union (ITU). Founded in 1865 as the Interna tional Telegraph Union, the ITU
was renamed in 1932 and charged with regulating the international allocation of
the radio spectrum. Recently, however, the ITU has been restructured in
order to diminish the possibility of Third World influence and enhance the role
of the private sector in its policy making.22 Its very exis tence as a
U.N.-specialized agency is being contested. One report, reflecting corporate
sentiment, wondered "what role the U.N. intergovernmental agency will play in
an evermore commercial world."23 Similarly, a spokesman for an international
telephone company questioned "the role of an inter-governmental organi
zation in a global business that is overwhelmingly a private-sec tor business.
"24 Still another voice in the same chorus admonishes:
"As more and more [of its] members become commercial, so must the ITU, all
the way to the top."25
The creation of the trade-in-services area of the Western
dominated General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is additional
evidence of the transnational corporate onslaught against international
efforts to oversee its activities. The cre
ation of this trade category was intended to safeguard the increasingly
important electronic data flows, including intel lectual property, that are so
crucial to transnational corporate

"Free Speech in Europe," Financial Times, 4 February 1993.

Eileen Mahoney, "The Utilization of International Communications Organizations, 1978-1992," in
Nordenstreng and Schiller, pp. 314-34.
Malcolm Laws, "ITU to Reorganize," Communications Week International, 18 January 1993, reproduced in
Teleclippings, International Telecommunications Union, no. 901 (February 1993) p. 4.
ibid.
ibid.

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Herbert I. Schiller
 operations. Writing from a Third World perspective, which derives
from centuries of colonial oppression, Chakravarthi Raghavan explains
this seemingly benign move:

.. .among all the fora for dealing with such issues, the Third World countries are
the weakest inside GATT, in terms of collective orga nization and
bargaining.... Unlike UNCTAD [U.N. Conference on Trade and
Development], U.N. or other parts of the U.N. system, inside GATT there is
only a tenuous informal group of less devel oped contracting parties
[countries] that meets from time to time to exchange information....27

The extreme sensitivity of the corporate order to the global information

climate was further demonstrated by the successful effort to expunge the
subject of transborder data flows (TDF) from the language and the agendas
of international economic meet ings. For a brief period in the 1970s, TDF
— the term for mostly electronic data crossing national frontiers — was a
subject of great debate. Yet its implications for the examination and pos
sible oversight of the data flows of the global companies came too close to
the nerve centers of the transnational business
system. For this reason, the term itself was neatly shelved and subsumed
under the opaque and innocuous trade-in-services category of the GATT.28
Having neutralized international and state opposition, the media
super-companies can carry on their worldwide operations, almost completely
outside of any scrutiny; their activities are completely ignored in the
general discussions of American economic public policy. International
organizations like the United Nations, the ITU, UNESCO and the U.N. Centre
for

26. Chakravarthi Raghavan, Recolonization: GATT, the Uruguay Round and the Third World (London:
Zed Books, 1990).
27. ibid., pp. 60-1.
28. William Drake, "Territoriality and Intangibility: Transborder Data Flow and National Sovereignty," in
Nordenstreng and Schiller, pp. 259-313.

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Journal of International Affairs

Transnational Corporations have either been bypassed, restruc tured,

weakened or neutered.29

Conclusion
Publicly unaccountable media-cultural power toda tutes the
ultimate "Catch-22" situation. The public in mands information
that is, however, dependent on priv providers whose own interests
are often incompatible.3 to confront this condition is the one of the
greatest cha the next century.

29. The U.N. Centre for Transnational Corporations was reorganized and pu

Transnational Corporations and Management Division of the Unit Department of

Economic and Social Development in March 1992. 30. C. Edwin Baker, "Advertising and a
Democratic Press," University of Penns Review 140, no. 6 (June 1992) pp. 2097-243.

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