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Those liberal
journalists
There is a lot of
talk about how journalists are liberal. Think of the ones who are best
known. Tom Brokaw. Peter Jennings. Katie Couric. Dan Rather. Bill O'Reilly.
Okay, maybe not Bill
O'Reilly, but the others are often seen as moderate to liberal in
their views.
Sociological theory
suggests that as people get more formal education, their views become
more liberal. We're talking probabilities here--this doesn't mean that
when you leave EOU you'll be a card-carrying democrat. It just means
that most people, given more education, tend toward more liberal views
on issues. Social theory also suggests that as people age, their views
get more liberal. Call it wisdom, experience, whatever. However, theory
also suggests that as people's incomes increase, their views become
more conservative. Why? Well, maybe they would like to hang on to more
of their money, but we don't know for sure. BUT . . . we ALSO know that
people's incomes tend to increase over time.
Confused yet? Well,
the point is that journalists generally have an above average level
of formal education. Their views are likely to be more liberal than
people with less than a college degree. However, some journalists get
by, others do fabulously well. Research also suggests that journalists
tend to be social liberals, but often fiscal conservatives
(The research is based on a 1981 study, results from which you can see
here.
A more recent 1998
study by David Croteau shows journalists' fiscally conservative
streak). They do tend to vote more often for democrats in election.
Does the way journalists vote mean they're biased toward liberals in
their presentation of the news?
What about their
bosses?
Let's look at the
other end of the spectrum: ownership. The owners of the largest TV networks
are all multinational corporations, with financial interests in a variety
of media industries, such as cinema, radio, print, as well as telecommunications
infrastructure (satellite services, cable TV, etc.). Here are some of
the larger media corporations, and what they own (here's a look at boards of directors of some major news corporations from Project Censored):
- Time Warner (CNN,
WB, TNT, TBS, HBO, Cinemax, Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Warner
Brothers studios, Six Flags theme parks, Atlanta Hawks/Braves, part
owner of PrimeStar satellite service)
- Disney (Disney
channel, ABC, ESPN, Disney/Miramax/BuenaVista studios, theme
parks, cruise line, Anaheim Angels/Mighty Ducks, interactive TV)
- Bertelsmann (European
TV channels, originally bought Napster, Bantam/Doubleday publishers,
Arista and RCA recording studios)--radio, publishing, and music
- CBS--formerly owned by Viacom and before that Westinghouse, now is its own corporate entity
- Viacom (MTV,
VH1, Nickelodeon, Showtime, large U.S theatre company-United
Cinemas Internat'l-Blockbuster, Simon and Schuster and Macmillan publishers,
5 theme parks)
- News Corporation (heard of Rupert Murdoch?): Fox cable network, Fox News channel,
major owner of satellite services, TV Guide, Harper Collins
publishers, Los Angeles Dodgers, 132 newspapers, 20th Century Fox
movie studios). Recently purchased the Dow Jones Stock Exchange (which includes the Wall Street Journal, one of the most influential financial news sources in the world)
- General Electric (owner of NBC, CNBC, MSNBC)--a defense contractor, also heavily
into insurance, appliances; Most everything
- Sony (movie
theatres, video games, owns vast library of films/music/TV [for digital
services] owner of Columbia and TriStar Pictures and major recording
interests), and
- Seagram (yes,
that Seagrams; owner of Universal film and music interests,
formerly MCA, theme parks, USA/Sci-Fi Networks)-now Vivendi Universal
- TCI (2nd cable
TV, partial ownership of 10+ cable channels, QVC, Fox Sports, Discovery,
E!, Home shopping network, BET)-now owned by AT&T
- Washington Post Group (Newsweek, Frommers Travel Publishing, Washington Post, some local TV stations, cable network systems)
These are the corporations
that those liberal journalists work for. The former CEO of General Electric,
owner of NBC, once made
sure the President of NBC knew who his boss was. Journalists who
cross the line are likely to lose their jobs. This happened
to reporter Peter Arnett in Baghdad (he had been a journalists' hero in the
1991 Gulf War), and also to Geraldo Rivera. These corporations are worth
tens and in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. As the above
shows, they each own various kinds of media outlets, and other types
of firms as well. They have a broad range of economic interests that
they certainly don't want to endanger by reporting news that may threaten
their bottom lines. And to top it off, even their news divisions are
expected to make money, meaning they have to sell audiences and high
ratings to advertisers, who aren't likely to take kindly to stories
that expose corporate scandal, excess, or that promote social change
and justice. They benefit quite nicely from the status quo, thank you.
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Concentration
of media ownership
Now, let's consider
corporate concentration of media over time:
- In 1983, 50 corporations
dominated most of every mass medium; the biggest media merger in history
was a $340 million deal. ...
- In 1987, 29 corporations
dominated mass media markets.
- By 1990, this
was down to 23 corporations.
- By 1997, 10 corporations
dominated; the biggest merger involved the $19 billion Disney-ABC
deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever.
- In 2000, AOL
Time Warner's merger-$350 billion-more than 1,000 times
larger than the biggest deal of 1983. (Bagdikian, 2000)
- From a study by the Center for Public Integrity:
- The three
largest local phone companies control 83 percent of home telephone
lines.
- The top two
long distance carriers control 67 percent of that market.
- The four
biggest cellular phone companies have 64 percent of the wireless
market.
- The five
largest cable companies pipe programming to 74 percent of the
cable subscribers nationwide.
It's no coincidence
that much of the recent media concentration occurred after the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 passed, which relaxed restrictions on ownership. For instance,
before 1996, no company could own more than 40 radio stations in the
country. Now Clear Channel alone owns 1,225. Does ownership affect what
we see, hear, read? With respect to conservative and liberal politicians,
republicans and democrats, who are media corporations likely to support,
or least likely to criticize, if they have their eyes on deregulation
of their industry?
Here are a couple
of telling quotes:
"The New
York Times (considered a liberal newspaper) is a corporation
and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don't make money
when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide
web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper.
But the audience is the product. ... You have to sell a product to
a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other
businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever,
they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations."
-- Noam Chomsky, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, Z Magazine,
June 1997.
"There is some strategy to it (bashing the 'liberal' media).
I'm a coach of kids' basketball and Little League teams. If you watch
any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the
ref will cut you a little slack on the next one"
-Republican party chair Rich Bond (Washington Post, 8/20/92)
As for concentration
of ownership:
"Corporations
have multimillion-dollar budgets to dissect and attack news reports
they dislike. But with each passing year they have yet another power:
They are not only hostile to independent journalists. They are their
employers."
-Ben Bagdikian. 2000. The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press.
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No one is saying
there aren't liberal journalists. In fact, most studies show that a
majority of journalists tend to vote democratic at election time--over 70% in some studies. But
there are conservative journalists, too (check out cybercast news service, run by L. Brent Bozell III), and they both work for large
profit-making enterprises, often vertically integrated, and multinational
in scope. These corporations would benefit from the status quo, wouldn't
they? Do these companies seem likely to be forces for social change?
Do we really think Dan Rather called the shots at CBS, or Peter
Jennings ran the show at ABC? Katie Couric is a power-hungry bleeding
heart liberal orchestrating NBC's news division (and CBS is trying to steal her away for its nightly news)?
Take the example
of Bill Maher. After 9/11 he said that it was difficult for him
to understand how the terrorists could be called cowards. After all,
they hijacked planes with box cutters, and flew them into the pentagon
and world trade towers. This took months if not years of planning, and
quite a bit of courage. We may not agree with it or even understand
it, but to call it cowardice is missing the point, said Maher. He went
further stating that the U.S. military were cowards when they dropped
bombs on people from thousands of miles away. And anyway, aren't these
the kinds of discussions we should have, especially in the media, if
we're to understand why this happened?
Apparently not on
ABC, who fired Maher shortly thereafter. Why did they fire him? After
all, it was a talk show, and that's what talk shows do--drum up controversy.
In this case, ABC no doubt was worried about the bottom line--what if
the White House criticized the network for airing such anti-American
views? What if groups around the country initiated a boycott against
the network as being unpatriotic? People were pretty hypersensitive
at the time. ABC could have lost viewers, and valuable advertising revenues
had it not done something. So it made the decision to support the bottom
line, rather than free speech. And stockholders were no doubt relieved.
Maher now works
for cable company HBO, and has more latitude to say what he thinks.
As Noam Chomsky
has said, the idea that the important question is whether the media
is biased toward liberals is ridiculous on its face. Multibillion dollar
companies are not liberal, don't espouse liberal views, generally don't
support liberal political candidates any more than they have to, and
can use massive marketing and public relations budgets--which amount
to a great deal of power--to influence public opinion. No, says Chomsky,
the real question to ask is, Are the media free to report the
news as they see fit? What would prevent the Media from reporting
news that might jeopardize a corporation or its stock value? There is
a project, Project
Censored, that each year attempts to uncover the 25 most underreported
news stories that corporate outlets didn't cover. Check
out their website and you're sure to be surprised by some of the
things our government and others are doing that apparently the corporate
news media didn't think would boost their ratings.
Some other concerns
about ownership concentration:
- It is likely
to lead to less diverse views in the media (biased in any direction?)
- There is greater
potential for control by politicians-interlocking interests,
less 'loose cannons' or independent journalists to worry about
- More power
among fewer individuals, corporations
- Increasing commercialism
- Vertical integration
is one goal--what is it?
- It means
controlling the whole process of bringing a medium to consumers--from
the satellite service, even the manufacture of fiber optic cables,
to the boxes in your house and the shows on your TV and in your
theatres.
- Horizontal
integration
- This means
owning different kinds of media
- Horizontal
integration allows cross-advertising (movies, TV, merchandising,
theme parks, concessions at stadiums, etc.). In other words,
Time Magazine (AOL Time Warner) might turn into a news magazine
that serves mainly as advertising for other media companies
owned by AOL Time Warner, disguised as a weekly news magazine.
See how cheaply you can get a subscription to it these days.
Who owns Newsweek? General Electric (NBC, MSNBC, etc.)
- Interlocking
interests--all those different companies, often sharing board
members (on the board of directors)
- monopolies--keep
in mind, we as a society have allowed some utilities to control large
parts of the market, but the trade-off was that they would be regulated
by public entities, so that they could not enjoy monopoly control
over their rates. How's your cable bill been lately? Going down??
- What can we do?
- be informed--know
who owns the news networks you frequent, or newspapers. Are they
commercial, public, non-profit? Follow the money to understand
forces that might influence their news broadcasts. And remember--it
isn't just what makes it into the news, but what is left out that's
important.
- be skeptical--you
can't assume that just because it's on the news, that it's gospel
truth. Hopefully your media assignment is showing you that news
casts can differ greatly. One PR professional has said that by
the time viewers watch the news on TV, it's mostly a public relations
product, what someone else wants us to believe is important news.
This is especially easy to see with local network affiliate broadcasts.
- Support public
access to the airwaves. Most cable companies are required to support
channels that the public can use. Do you ever watch them? Not
even out of a perverse interest in what's going on locally? We
are used to high-tech entertainment, and you won't find much of
that on the public access stations.
- What about
the Internet? Much of the anti-war protest of recent vintage was
made possible via the Internet. It is less driven by commercial interests and advertising. So news sites may have biases, but they aren't going to be the same kinds of profit-driven biases.
- Check out
different sources of news. Here's a page
of some sites I've put together--from across the political
spectrum.
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Why is ownership
important?
Media ownership
is important for a variety of reasons:
- Media deregulation-corporations
want the right to own more outlets, and different kinds of outlets.
At some point this is likely to reduce competition (think of your
monthly cable bill, and how it's been steadily going down, down, down
as a result of more competition since 1996 ... )
- Cross advertising--owning
different kinds of outlets allows companies to advertise from one
to another (for instance, Disney can advertise for ABC's programs,
CBS for MTV's, Time Magazine on CNN, etc.)
- Less tax burdens--corporations
can lobby for tax breaks from politicians, who it just so happens
need lots of money to pay for TV advertising for their re-election
campaigns.
- Large media corproations
are usually for profit, working for their shareholders to increase
their stocks' value. This has little if anything to do with ensuring
freedom of the press. They're not in the business of informing the
public, in other words. A well-informed public might disagree with
some of the things that large media corporations believe will increase
their profits and keep shareholders happy.
- Don't forget
how commercial media make most of their money--through advertising.
TV ratings are assessed, viewership determined, and networks use this
information to determine advertising rates. Advertisers look at the
'demographics'--who's watching what shows, where their advertising
will be most effective, etc. So as viewership declines, revenue declines
because networks can't charge as much for advertising. Anything that
negatively affects viewership is dangerous (to a corporation) in such a climate.
- A limited number of sources will mean a limited number of perspectives--a lack of diversity in programming on television, for instance. Concentration decreases that diversity. Radio has probably been an even bigger victim of corporate consolidation.
- If you've been paying attention to the liberal/conservative debate, you should have a pretty good handle on which side of the spectrum corporations generally fall. Think about their relationship to the government, their tax obligations, how closely their industries are regulated, etc. Corporations and industries spend millions of dollars to lobby Congress for relaxed regulations, maybe the right to own more media outlets, etc.
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On Saving Private
Lynch
Maybe you followed
the daring rescue of U.S. Private Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Iraq in 2003,
where she was apparently being held prisoner, during the early stages
of the war. Or maybe you were about 10 years old. Anyway, to give you a sense of how 'news' sometimes works, here's how the story played out in the press (from the BBC):
The above is a good
example of how the truth can be, well, squirmy. And how propaganda can take on a life of its own. Later the story of former NFL football player Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan was used by the Pentagon as a media event.
Ben H. Bagdikian,
The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000)
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