Ron Burgundy, Horkheimer and Adorno

Horkheimer and Adorno's piece discussing the culture industry exposed some very interesting critiques of mass media today. In the first couple of pages, the authors make striking comments as they explain how the concentration of the mass media in the hands of few is really demonstrated through the content of film, TV, and radio. They explain how the fabricated structures of these programs are no longer being concealed but instead exposed for all to see. In this way, “film and radio no longer need to present themselves as art.... the truth that they are nothing but business is used as an ideology to legitimate the trash that they intentionally produce” (42). Although it is a bold statement to say that our media companies do not care about what type of content they are producing for the masses as long as the buck is earned, I completely agree with this statement. I feel that many times with trash programming or awful reality TV shows the broadcasters themselves push the boundaries not keeping in mind the idea of maintaining a healthy public sphere but instead getting viewers, and thereby increasing profits. In my course, Political Economy of the Media, we learned the two main models of the media industry that run the policies, etc. The models were the public sphere model, which serves the best interest of the people by promoting citizenship and has a mix of diverse programming, and the market model which relies solely on profit to determine media policy and content. In the course we have studied that currently our media industry follows the market model much closely than the other which is leading us to monopolies that offer limited, and often poor, programming options. Horkheimer and Adorno seem to agree with this and continually criticize the media industry for this as they see a danger as the media is concentrated into the hands of the dominant class. When this occurs, they are able to practice hegemony, a concept explained by both Marx and Althusser, perpetuating the ideas that benefit them the most onto the lower social classes.