Rule of Law and the Media?
I'm struggling to see a connection between Hayek's piece and new media. I understand the arguments on a broader political level, and it certainly seems to fit in with other post-Marxist works, but what does it have to do with media? So I'll try to apply it to something I can relate to, which I'm starting to feel like I can only write about: film.
Does our political system provide a Rule of Law for media, specifically film, or is it one of, as Hayek calls it, "moral" arbitrariness? I'd argue most definitely the latter. Our constitution provides freedom of speech and press, and film certainly won a huge battle when it was granted first amendment protection. Yet as it has played out, it's a tenuous freedom of speech.
To shorten a long lesson of film history, a governing body was created a handful of decades ago as film was coming into its own and really beginning to say something. This body, the Motion Picture Association of America, sought to create a set of guidelines by which to approve the content of film. Today, we know these guidelines as ratings: G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17.
So far so good. Seems like a fine start to establishing a Rule of Law for film. Clear rules are being established and enforced in a consistent manner so that the system can become self-governing. Only problem is, the transparency stops at the letter of the rating. There is no defined list of what material constitutes what rating. None at all. The rating for each film is a pure moral judgement call on the part of the ratings board, and it's led to some terrible and puzzling decisions. The whole subject is discussed quite nicely in the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated.
On the surface it's a thin Rule of Law, but in actuality the film industry of America is ruled in a completely arbitrary fashion. Factor in the also arbitrary obscenity laws and freedom of speech suddenly isn't so free. An NC-17 rating is a kiss of death for a film, regardless of the message it contains. Such a rating makes it nearly impossible to distribute or sell.
But is this a bad thing? Is it really so wrong for a moral system to control film? I truly don't know. I certainly agree with the MPAA in making it more difficult for younger audiences to see more mature content. But then there's that arbitrary cutoff of what content is too mature even for mature audiences, and it all falls apart. I don't think a more clearly defined Rule of Law would be good for the industry, but when it's already so steeped in moral judgement how could a new system even begin to steer away from that?
I don't know. Maybe it's impossible at this point. Maybe it's meaningless. Maybe the connection I'm trying to make between Hayek and the MPAA is tenuous at best.
I think what you say about a tenuous freedom of speech is especially enlightening. Though the application of first amendment rights is definitely a step in the freedom direction, there are too many obstacles in the world that can find loopholes in its application. One such obstacle is so big that it is necessary to take into account: the market. This kind of goes back to Barthes and others that assume that, though we are thought to be in a free society, we still live in a bifurcated system of proletariat and bourgeoisie. The market is controlled by the latter and thus fed to the people as reality – controllers are the official judges about what is good and what is bad, what should be allowed and what should not. In this way, it is sort of a self-regulated system which favors bourgeois thought. Those that control the big production companies decide what we see even though there may be hundreds of scripts or already-made films that never make it to ‘main-stream’ market. Same with books; thousands of manuscripts are sent to publishers but very few ‘make the cut.’ J. K. Rowland was rejected by eight publishing houses before she was finally discovered. Can you imagine a world without Harry Potter…I can’t. It’s scary to think how controlled everything is. For a few weeks now I’ve been extremely bothered by television networks. I can’t help thinking that they’re feeding me this information, that they’re dictating what I can watch. It all seems very totalitarian to me – though I know that’s a stretch.
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