For a Political Science concentrator with a focus on American politics, the repercussions of the media's failings resonate from the theoretical realm (why do we have freedom of the press?) to the politics of policy formation (how can uninformed constituents hold their representatives accountable?). I am interested in considering how the media conducts its work today, whether it always has acted this way, and how Americans can improve the field in the modern communication landscape while remaining faithful to the ideals of freedom of expression.

In “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers,” Roland Barthes asserts, “[…] all speech is on the side of the Law.” The context within which one speaks grants the speaker (or teacher) authority, as he or she delivers ephemeral, yet irreversible, words before a silent audience. The importance of identifying and understanding the dynamics of power in communication, as it pertains to Global Media, may be found in the role the modern media plays in the governance of people. Just as the teacher serves numerous functions (he or she is not here simply to relay information, but, as Barthes notes, to enter into a contract with the students based on a number of trivial goals, including: promoting Method, representing the “movement of ideas,” including the students in a “private language”) the media serves numerous functions, today, the least of which is a summary of the day’s news events. Reporting on the war in Iraq, American news outlets do not found their coverage on the war itself, but on the context of the war within the viewing audience’s society. In this way, above the scrolling stock numbesr at the bottom of the screen and below the American flag graphic in the top, left-hand corner, CNN does not provide a lens into lawless war (a perspective at life and death), it contextualizes it within a grander, American narrative. American forces are winning or losing, etc. The viewing audience is directed and governed by embedded reporters, politicians, and other television personalities holding some greater knowledge, which is always out of reach to the viewer, but may come closer “…when we return.”

Barthes asks that the regions of speech be made reversible. And some argue that the decentralized nature of the Internet makes it the ideal platform to break down the traditional lines of one-way communication and create an environment in which everyone (or at least, Barthes’s “proletariat representatives”) can receive and transmit. They may become the writers, detailing first-hand the events most intimate to them; the audience will no longer need to rely upon the summaries of commercial media. It remains to be seen whether or not the speakers at this time—mass media outlets like News Corporation, government agencies like the FCC, and Internet service providers like Verizon—will allow for such an exchange, unfiltered. Moreover, in accepting Barthes’s conception of the contract between the teacher and the pupils, we may also be undercutting the genuine contributions of the speaker—we may need CNN to verify information as a multitude of voices begin contributing to the global sphere of information.