Commanders of the social order
art) and of public spectacle (sport) have been
colonized by corporations – particularly in the
US, but increasingly in the rest of the world. See
audience: active audience; berlusconi
phenomenon; consensus; elite; hegemony;
manufacture of consent; power elite;
press barons; public sphere. See also topic
guide under media: ownership & control.
Commercial confidentiality A censorship
device employed to prevent the media transmit-
ting, or the general public receiving, information
on the grounds that such information might be
commercially damaging (regardless of whether
that information might be in the public interest).
One particularly sensitive area of commerce
which is shrouded in mystery is the arms trade.
For example, Britain is among the world’s top
arms-trading nations. Its government maintains
an arms marketing and advisory service, the
Defence Exports Services Organization, yet this
organization is notoriously secretive whenever
journalists seek to find out about its work,
invariably answering that information cannot
be supplied for reasons of ‘commercial confi -
dentiality’. Louis Blom-Cooper, Chairman of the
Press Council in 1990, expressed the view that
‘traditional English law places a higher value on
commercial interests than on the public’s right
to know’. See freedom of information act
(uk), 2005.
Commercial Laissez Faire model See liberal
press theory.
Commercial radio: origins Although pirate
radio attempted to buck the broadcasting
monopoly of the BBC during the 1960s, legiti-
mate commercial broadcasting in the UK was
not in operation till the 1970s, following the
Conservative government’s Sound Broadcast-
ing Act of 1972. Th e Independent Broadcasting
Authority (IBA) had, by 1983, thirty-seven
commercial radio stations operating under
licence throughout the UK and plans for over
sixty more.
In the US the fi rst commercial radio station
was KDKA of Pittsburg, which went on the
air on 2 November 1920. In 1921 there were
eight commercial radio stations; by 1922, 564.
Development of radio in the US was spectacular
and chaotic. In 1927 (the year that the BBC, by
Royal Charter, was given a monopoly of radio
broadcasting in the UK) Congress passed a
Radio Act setting up the Federal Communica-
tions Commission to allocate wavelengths to
broadcasters.
Four radio networks were created as a hedge
against monopoly – National Broadcastingweeklies, however: in the new, ‘better technique,
more scientifi c interest, more bloodshed, more
leaderworship’; in ‘social outlook there is hardly
any advance’.
As life appears to have become more complex,
and society more complicated, the stereotype
of the hero has had a sustaining appeal. Picture-
strip heroes such as Clark Kent, alias Superman,
who fi rst made his appearance in Action Comics
(1938) in the US, have not only led popular (and
charmed) lives on the printed paper but have
also translated into immensely popular film
heroes. The debate concerning comics, and
comic books, centres around the extent to which
they seem to legitimize dominant social values.
A comic which has reversed this tendency is
Viz, started up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1979
by brothers Chris and Simon Donald and Jim
Brownlow with a fi rst issue of 150 copies. In a UK
Guardian article ‘All in the worst possible taste’
(18 November 2004), William Cook described
Viz as ‘a brilliant hybrid of punk fanzine and
kids’ comic’; the comic proved immensely popu-
lar and circulation temporarily rose to a million
copies.
Viz mercilessly (and hilariously) satirizes the
UK tabloids, public fi gures and politicians, issu-
ing spoof news stories and adverts. Among its
many comic characters have been the Fat Slags
(Sandra and Tracey), Spoilt Bastard, and Roger
Mellie the Man on Telly.
Among the Viz annuals have been the Five
Knuckle Shuffl e, the Full Toss, the Pork Chopper
and the Dogs’ Bollocks. In Cook’s opinion, Viz
‘changed the sense of humour of the nation’. In
2009 an exhibition of the original artwork of Viz
was held at London’s Cartoon Museum.
▶William Cook, Th e Silver Plated Jubilee – 25 Years of
Viz (Boxtree, 2004).
Commanders of the social order Term used by
Herbert I. Schiller in Culture, Inc.: Th e Corporate
Takeover of Public Expression (Oxford University
Press, 1989), referring to the vast transnational
corporations which, he argues, have come
to dominate and shape culture; establish
prevailing discourses; set political, economic
and cultural agendas; and call the tune of mass
media. Schiller talks of the privatization of
public space: in a literal sense (public areas being
transformed into privately owned and controlled
shopping malls and pleasure domes); and in
an intellectual sense, through the ‘corporatiza-
tion’ of arts, literature and media. He cites the
extent to which the entire world of information
(libraries, museums, universities, mass commu-
nication), of expression (architecture, music,