Media theory

Daniel Punzn del lamo

A CRITIQUE ON JRGEN HABERMAS

Frankfurt School media theory is wide and broad, and analysing it

as an unified set would have the same misleading effect than trying
to criticize anarchy, for example, avoiding the fact that those two
names include a very large range of different ideas, which would be a
pretty big error.
Thus, I have chosen a concrete Frankfurt School thinker, Jrgen
Habermas, for being able to make a deeper and more concrete
critique of his ideas without the risk of falling into the simplicity or
confusion that treating Frankfurt School as a whole could make. On
the critique to him, I have taken some ideas from John B. Thompson,
mainly, and also developed some others for myself.

-The theory of public sphere

Habermas rolls back the distinction between public and private to

the Classic Greece. In the antique Greece city-states, polis1 sphere
was separated from the private domain of the oikos2. Public life was
constituted in the market square and in the assemblies.
In the Middle Ages, according to Habermas, it didn't exist a
differentiated public sphere: back in that age, publicness was more
like a status of kings and lords, in which public figures exhibited as
1 Polis in its meaning of public body of citizens.
2 Oikos is the ancient Greek equivalent of households.

Media theory

Daniel Punzn del lamo

representatives of a superior power (the best example of this

representative publicness is the courtier life of the XV and XVI
centuries).
The development of mercantile capitalism on the XVI century,
with the institutional change of the forms of politic power, made the
conditions to the arising of a new sort of public sphere at the
beggining of the modern Europe. The public authority started to relate
to the activities of a state emergent system which had legally set
jurisdiction spheres and a monopoly over the legitimate use of
violence.
Within this context, it arised a new public sphere: a burgoise
public sphere formed by private individuals which met to debate
about the civil society regulation and the State administration. The
arising of the burgeoise public sphere was provided by two facts: in
first place, the development of periodic press; and in second place,
the development of a variety of new social centers in the towns and
villages of the modern Europe, such as coffee houses and salons.

-Press as public discussion

I will stop here with the purpose of zooming this last opinion of
Habermas about critic discussion. According to Jrgen Habermas,
press estimulates the critical discussion, as joining individuals
together into a rational debate which results into the improvement of
individual and common knowledge.

Media theory

Daniel Punzn del lamo

If, on one side, this could be true, we should also consider that
debate depends, chiefly, of the topics related. The contents of the
debate have to be considered in any posture about the influence of
press on the development of modern societies, and Habermas seems
to have forgot. Let's see this with an example.

There are, indeed, lots of political debates on the social realm of

modern democracies, which, according to Habermas, should favor the
public discussion. Let's focus on those debates potentiated by the
media, and see if this debate is really potentiated, and, specially,
what is the validity of this debate.

In Spain, for example, the political debate taken and spreaded

through the media is, basically, a partisan debate, which drags all the
attention to the parties without talking about ideologies anymore.
This partiality does not stay here, the media also takes just the two
bigger parties of the country, forgetting about the rest of the political
forces. Not even here it stops: the debate sustained by the own
politicians and some journalist is based on insults to the person, to
the past, but with no mention to the real basis of parties, their
political agenda.
As it is plausible by observing this, the media does not mention
ideologies anymore. There is no room for marxism, no room for real
socialdemocratic ideas, there seems just to be room for neoliberalism,

Media theory

Daniel Punzn del lamo

neolanguage, and a superficial debate about useless topics. The real

debate, the one about the possesion of the means of production,
about the global compromise, about the integrity of politicians or the
submission of politics to economic power, shall not be taken.
Going further, it seems to be that the media (corporations, after
all) do not want people to take the real debate, because it implies the
questioning of the statu quo that favors them, and therefore they
(privileged politicians, big capitalists, and the media) create this
superficial and illusory debate as a way of keeping people away from
the real questioning of societies.

This example has just been overdrawn with the intention of

demonstrate how, if press is able to create a real debate, the interests
behind the media can shape the debate into a superficial talk with no
real consequences upon the development of societies, which seems
to be the reality nowadays.

-Burgeoise public sphere

When talking about

the development

of

modern Europe,

Habermas seems to focus just on the influence that the burgeoise

public sphere had in the shaping of institutions and society. Here
Habermas tend to forget about the signification of other forms of
activity and public speech which existed during the XVII, XVIII and XIX

Media theory

Daniel Punzn del lamo

in Europe, forms that didn't fit in the burgeoise sociability, and which,
in some cases, were excluded or opposed to it.
These were social and politic movements which cannot be
assumed as derivations of the burgoise public sphere, just as
Habermas did.

-The audience passivity

According to Habermas, the comercialization of the media

changed its character in an essential way: that what before was a
good example of rational and critical debate became just another field
of cultural consumption.
This media have also the purpose to endow the public authority
with a prestige and aura that transform politics into a directed show
in which the political leaders pretend, from time to time, the
plebiscitary

acclamation

of

an

depoliticized

population.

This

population is manipulated, through media, as a resource, which allows

the politicians to get, with the massmediatics techniques, enough
assent to legitimate their own political agenda.
As a critique to this it is remarkable that the reception of media
products

is

consumption

hardly
act.

viewable
Habermas

as

vision

manipulated
is

and

exagerating

irreflexie

individuals'

passivity and takes the reception process too much for granted; in
reality, this process is much more complicated that Habermas
thought.

Media theory

Daniel Punzn del lamo

To conclude is it necessary to say that, if one one side, the

Frankfurt School critical theory was key to stablish a critique against
the negative aspects of the media, its theorists (Habermas, in the
case we just saw, but also some others, like Adorno or Horkheimer)
maybe took to much assumptions, too much things for granted, and
focused too much in the negative aspects of media, forgetting about
the positive ones.