News 'filters' (from Herman and Chomsky)

1. Ownership--
   • Size, cost, and profit orientation. And expense. The financial stakes are high.
   • Expansion of media industry has led to corporate concentration
   • No family businesses anymore--market forces, takeovers and mergers, what happens to news divisions??
   • Politics and ties with government (the need for licenses, renewals), govt. as source of discipline, or is FCC a captured agency?
2. Advertising
   • Pressure, others
   • Fox, cows, and Monsanto
3. Source
   • How many correspondents cover the White House, Pentagon, Capitol??
   • David Barstow's NY Times story (subsequent media coverage)
   • Gen. McInerney: Iran taunting US (NYT piece), PBS, WH
   • Bill Moyers' special
   • news media outlets and source bias (using phony 'experts')
   • Pay for play: clients purchase advertising in return for conent
     • Fake news videos--the most blatant example of the above
   • Fox and ACORN
   • Over-reliance on official, self-interested sources (CBS called Jeb Bush's office to ask about the 'felon purge')
   • Editorial discretion
4. Flak
   • Media Matters, PR firms, AIM, O'Reilly on Moyers, Olbermann and Carlson on O'Reilly, Wolf Blitzer and Michael Moore, Glenn Beck on Michael Moore
5. Anti-communist/terrorism
   • Bill Maher, Peter Arnett, Hugo Chavez, (this from Fox, this from Jon Stewart), Ahmedinejad

Other filtering factors

• Mutual back-scratching--24 hour news pressures create symbiotic relationships between powerful newsmakers, powerful news outlets (remember the need for content to drive advertising revenue)
• Costs--investigative journalism is expensive, doesn't help with filling the paper or the newscast or the website on a regular basis, could disrupt the relationships implied in point no. 1, and in the face of declining ad revenues, may seem like a bad business bet in the commercial newsroom
• The corrosive influence of careerism--if you want to advance in the field of journalism, working in commercial outlets is preferable, and making waves is a risky strategy

What do we end up with? What gets filtered? Commercial vs non-commercial pressures--are they different? What happens to those who stick their necks out (classic scene from Network)?

Where does the news 'not fit to print' go (non-commercial sources, Project Censored, independent media ....)?