Journalism-Lecture 6- Commercial Media

Today's lecture was around the topic of Commercial Media.
 I thought this lecture was one of the most interesting ones yet. We firstly focused on the question, why does commercial media exist?
 Well essentially so advertisers can get their message out and seen to as many people as possible. Furthermore, when commercial media is defined it means profit driven media production which is not funded by the government. It is so production companies can create audiences to sell advertisements to and thereby creating a profit for them.

The major players in this industry are News Limited, Fairfax Media, APN, Nine Entertainment co etc. We then broke down the different companies into what forms of media they produce e.g film, television, newspapers and then which publications each ones own.

 I learnt things through this because I didn't know that some publications belonged to certain companies and that some are linked together.

The form of commercial media is organised into three groups; subscription eg. Foxtel, sponsored e.g Nine network, and subsidised e.g by the government.

The function of commercial media is mainly for social and propaganda purposes.

We then were asked what is commercial media's role in a democratic society?

 To which the answer on the screen read, "can commercial media deliver on both commercial(profit) and social ('public trust') functions? (or is it really just about the mighty $ dollar?)

Some opinions of what the social responsibility of the media in a democracy are "a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day's events in a content which gives them meaning; a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism, the projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society, the presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society, full access to the day's intelligence".

We then talked about the policing of the functions of commercial media and various quotes were shown making insightful points on how the media should be a government-free zone. 

If control were to be placed over commercial media, it would be in forms of the government agency regulating the content, state press subsidies and licensed journalism.
In terms of the style of journalism, many critique claiming it has little quality or substance which  may be true in some cases. Thus, results of the style of commercial media is the dumbing down of news on programs such as today tonight and a current affair and the tabloidisation of programs. 

There are many challenges that journalism and in particular commercial media are currently facing for example the advertising revenue is decreasing steadily and if that decreases the amount of money available for television will decrease. 

I really enjoyed this lecture because I learnt a lot about the different media companies and how much they really own and how many different forms of media they have access to. In a way it scares me how much control Rupert Murdoch etc have over today's media because he is able to manipulate the way the media is depicted and what is held back and what is not.
I also was surprised to hear that the advertising revenue is decreasing and as a result the television productions will fall. I think it is very sad and some things need to be put in place to ensure our television programs are able to keep producing to the public.