Of Gennaro Scala

Source: The Antidiplomat
E’ There is a radical crisis in the Western media system underway, within an overall transformation of the political system of a global and epochal nature(1). The center of propagation of the earthquake is in the USA, but it also has its resonance in Italy, which could become an important laboratory at European level, in which new structures could be tested to cope with the ongoing upheaval. The earthquake, at the moment, It has the appearance of a bradyseism, with constant instability made up of daily controversies that go beyond the lines, but it could erupt into more dramatic movements. The transformation of social geography is already underway, What remains to be seen are the solutions implemented to deal with them. The crisis could result in a new system in which formal democratic guarantees could disappear, which could be the easy "solution" to the crisis of the "left", now more and more often mentioned (one example among many: Jason Brennan's book, “against democracy” which had a preface by Sabino Cassese, In the 2013 one of the PD candidates for the presidency of the Republic), or in a new system that instead exploits the potential of new means for a restructuring of democracy aimed at a different mass involvement, indispensable in the management of complex companies like ours.
The main factors of crisis in the media system, seen within the overall crisis of the political system are, first of all, the end of the “era of globalization”, actually a fairly short and transitory period, ended with Russia's return to the field, and with the definitive affirmation of China as a global power. The failure of globalization requires a radical rethinking of political strategies and the ideologies associated with them. The so-called “globalization” was that short period, if commensurate with historical times, in which the USA, at the head of the “Western countries”, when the USSR was already showing an irreversible crisis, they thought they could become the only world power. Context in which a globalist ideology was formed and became dominant based on political correctness, which we start symbolically with the "Live aid" of 1985 in which the Western world proclaimed through its "stars": “We are the world”.
Another decisive factor was the advent of new media linked to the internet which the majority of informed people now turn to as an alternative to information linked to TV and large newspapers which has now been discredited..
In the end, the degeneration of the intellectual class, responsible for the cultural and symbolic production that gives shape to the overall representation that a society has of itself, degeneration that gave rise to the “semi-educated middle class” (2). This degeneration, fruit of the fracture of the media world, and of the academic and intellectual world with other classes and social groups, made intellectuals “stupid”, with a lower sense of reality than those who do not professionally deal with the understanding of reality itself, as Costanzo Preve wrote.
The popular classes have repaid with growing aversion, which could lead to anger, towards a propaganda discourse increasingly detached from real problems centered exclusively on "civil rights" as opposed to concrete social rights, without which the former are mere chatter. This aversion was one of the factors that determined Trump's victory.
The main US media subjected President Trump to a barrage, from his election to today, without having had any practical effect so far, nor did it diminish its popularity, on the contrary, it has increased. The same thing happens in Italy, where, despite the propaganda against the current government unleashed by the main media, its consensus is growing, according to recent polls.
Right, the media guides, it is precisely their function, but you make a big mistake in believing that the "masses" are passive and that you can inculcate anything with the right manipulative "technique". The media is also based on consensus, when this fails, there is no media manipulation that matters, as we are seeing before our eyes in recent times, This conception of manipulation carried out by the media was one of the main defects of the "critique of mass society" which, although it had some interesting aspects, being the only one that tried to bring media analysis to a structural level, going beyond merely ideological criticism, however, it was too marked by old-fashioned nostalgia for European "bourgeois" culture, definitively waned with the end of the Second World War (3). The mass media was not just cultural degradation and manipulation, but in certain situations they have played an important role in cultural advancement, eat ad es. Rai until the seventies, whose quality was not comparable to the current one, who promoted literacy and achieved the linguistic unification of the Italian population. Pasolini's interviews denouncing the "new fascism" of the media, and they harked back to the pessimistic vision of the Frankfurt people, they were eventually broadcast by Rai itself.
The function that the intellectual class performs is fundamental, without systematic reflection, based on the intellectual tools developed throughout the history of thought, in order to understand the world in which we live, and without a healthy interaction of the intellectual world with political and economic power, every social system is at the mercy of events that it is unable to understand.
The disconnect between the media and intellectual world with respect to the popular classes (both medium and lower) could have very negative effects, if not resolved positively, forward, adapting the media system to today's world. The old media system has run its course, we need to build a new one. There are no recipes to apply for a desk solution to the problem, but creating a new structure, to be implemented in practice, that organizes cultural and symbolic production on new bases, with the aim of reconstituting a political culture suited to the times, that garners mass consensus and involvement, objectives that will require years of patient work, animated by a specific political will.
What determined the crisis of the system are factors of a structural nature, therefore there will be profound transformations in any case, what nature they will be will depend on how society as a whole is able to react.
1) http://www.gennaroscala.it/category/ceto-medio-semicolto/
2) http://www.gennaroscala.it/2017/01/30/endgame-of-globalization/
3) http://www.gennaroscala.it/2011/01/11/marxisti-reazionari-lukacs-adorno-e-la-cultura-di-massa/