Media and Comprehensive Policymaking
Television broadcasts a program about chips, examining its harms from various aspects. Right after the program ends, a commercial is broadcast: chips advertising!!
This paradox and contradiction can be examined from various aspects, from the impact of wealth on community health management; we no longer need to delve into why, despite all the harms of chips, this product is still produced and found in abundance in society—this very event illustrates the extent and magnitude of the dominance of wealth over society’s culture.
However, this is not our issue; the point of this note is to pay attention to the process in cultural policymaking. Culture is a whole and an interconnected set of habits, behaviors, and customs in various political, economic, social, and cultural fields.
If culture makes up the entirety of social life and encompasses its various constituent fields, then in the production and presentation of cultural messages by the media, this uniformity and consistency of procedure—which is rooted in media policymaking—must also be taken into consideration, regarding which paradigm the media operates on and in what discourse it seeks to produce messages.
The media’s perspective in the political arena must complement its economic and social perspective, and all three should emerge in the cultural arena in a balanced, harmonious, and complementary manner. A process-oriented view of culture must be considered not in the execution arena, but in the arena of policymaking and guidelines. If the macro vision of the media in the health sector is to promote community health, reduce harms, and prevent diseases—which is defined under the principle of “the necessity of preserving physical health” and derived from our religious foundations—this issue must be considered and incorporated into all production arenas. Therefore, the media’s guidelines in the production of messages must macro-scopically consider all stages of production; from pre-production to production to post-production and the presentation of messages to the audience, it must be taken into account:
In the realm of producing programs, the volume of produced programs and their formats must be considered from various aspects so that the set of media messages forms an interconnected whole that complements one another rather than neutralizing them. Therefore, the macro policy of the media must be based on the principle of systematic uniformity and coordination, leading to a multiplier effect and synergy, rather than having different components each conveying an independent or even contradictory message relative to one another. If a program promotes simplicity and contentment, a television series that advertises aristocratic life should not be produced.
Although on the surface such a precise and ironclad planning seems completely impossible to achieve because program producers each possess their own thoughts, beliefs, and specific viewpoints, explaining and precisely presenting the frameworks and macro goals of the media to producers—including writers, directors, and producers—makes achieving this goal possible. This is because although the diverse interests and tastes of producers may be considered a hazard and an obstacle against policymaking, with proper planning, the provision of guidelines, and various trainings, the diversity of producers’ viewpoints will actually become the origin of diversity in formats and methods of message production within the macro structure and under the main goals and macro guidelines of the media organization. In fact, this diversity will lead to covering the diversity of audiences’ tastes. In such a way that while preserving the media’s macro policies and determining the scope of activities and priorities of the organization, the variety of productions will form a prism that, while including attractiveness and plurality, falls under one or more general goals.
However, this is not the whole solution; precise planning in the production arena, monitoring produced messages, and gatekeeping the content of productions does not mean the end of policymaking in the organization. A significant part of media policymaking relates to the management of message broadcasting. In broadcasting messages, this uniformity, balance, and evolution must also be observed in proportion to the time, audience, and adjacent programs. Messages in the broadcasting stage and presentation to the audience must also be combined and presented in a totality that complements each other. The time allocated to each program, the network on which the program is to be broadcast, the broadcast time, the arrangement of the grid, and the programs before and after are indicators of the importance of each program from the perspective of media management, which clarifies the relationship between the program—and the message reflected through it—and the media’s macro policy.
However, part of the inconsistency in programs, both in production and broadcasting, stems from managerial mismanagement in the arena of commercial messages. The system of the Islamic Republic of IRIB in producing and broadcasting commercial advertisements is managed and policymakes in a structure separate from the Cinema and News Department. Ad acquisition and teaser production fall within the purview of the organization’s commercial sector. Although the Cinema Department, especially in the “Broadcasting” unit, has criteria for producing commercial ads and ads are produced based on these general criteria, the content and ruling spirit of commercial ads are based on profit and revenue. Unlike other production sectors of the organization, which are message-oriented, commercial ads are based on profit and revenue. This duality in policymaking leads to a duality in presenting messages whose contradiction and opposition are understandable and comprehensible even to any ordinary viewer.
Therefore, managing and aligning the content of media messages—even if possible in two areas: political messages, which are mostly managed in the Political and News Department, and other areas such as cultural, social, economic, etc., which are managed in the Cinema Department—is not possible in commercial ads. The reason for this is not the impossibility of cooperation between the Commercial Department and other departments, but rather the inherent difference between the goals of these sectors. The Commercial Department must pay attention to the customer’s goal; a customer who wants to advertise their goods and pays a hefty sum for it, and therefore has the right to visualize their ideas, and if they encounter an obstacle in this path, will present their ad in another medium.
Therefore, the solution to reducing the harms of contradictions between the media’s main programs and messages and commercial messages in commercial ad management is the method of content-driven (ideological) media policymaking. That is, messages should be managed in proportion to the general conditions governing the media, the network, and the set of programs for each time slot, and ultimately ads that do not fit into this structure should be displayed in another network independently.
Author : Mohsen Rabbani