Corporate media

Corporate media is mass media production, distribution, ownership, and funding dominated by corporations and their CEOs. Characterizations of mainstream media as "corporate" may be pejorative insinuations that such media systems do not serve the public interest.[1]

Corporate board interlocks between various U.S. corporations/institutions, and four of the major media/telecom corporations (circled in red), in 2004.

Background

Media critics and public figures such as Robert W. McChesney,[2] Ben Bagdikian,[3] Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower,[4] Noam Chomsky, Thom Hartmann, Edward S. Herman, Amy Goodman, Tulsi Gabbard[5] and Bernie Sanders[6] suggest that such a media system, especially when allowed to dominate the mainstream media, inevitably will be manipulated by these same corporations to suit their own interests. These critics point out that the main national networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, as well as most if not all of the smaller cable channels, are owned, funded, and controlled by an interconnected network of large corporate conglomerates and international banking interests, which may manipulate and filter out news that does not fit their corporate agenda. Media companies are slowly understanding how to accelerate the fluidity of media content across delivery channels to "expand revenue opportunities, broaden markets and reinforce consumer loyalties and commitments".[7] Users are then understanding how to master these various media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact/co-create with other users. Sometimes, these two forces reinforce each other, creating closer, more rewarding, relations between media producers and consumers. Sometimes the two forces conflict, resulting in constant renegotiations of power between these competing pressures on the new media ecology.

Propaganda model

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman developed a propaganda model which purports to explain this bias. The common misinterpretation of this model is that all bias is conscious and centralized. The hypothesis is that the process is decentralized and operates as a confluence of factors, that includes the overt pressure from owners and advertisers, but also by the gradual internalization of the biases and values of the corporate owners, leading to self-censorship.

American journalist Glenn Greenwald accused mainstream U.S. media of "spreading patriotic state propaganda".[8]

Other factors include the tendency of journalists to avoid doing original research, instead obtaining news from the same few wire services, such as Reuters and Associated Press, which themselves tend to cover the same news under the same perspective. Due to the desire to reduce operation costs, the mainstream media favor news pieces that are pre-made by these news agencies instead of conducting their own reporting.

Impact

On social justice

Critiques have pointed to the ownership of major news outlets in USA by corporations. Bernie Sanders, an American anti-establishment politician, contends that media are an arm of the ruling class. In his view, "corporate media by definition has conflict of interests." He points to alleged low pay of workers in media companies such as Disney which biases them against publishing specials on minimum wage and wealth and income equality. There have been allegations of corporate media's manipulation of presidential campaign facts against Sanders.[9]

Public relations on news and public affairs programming

This same economic pressure makes media susceptible to manipulation by government and other corporate sources through the widespread use of press releases, often created by industry-funded public relations firms.

Impact on world events and society

The point of view and statements made by governments, officials, military, police, national security organizations (such as the FBI and CIA), as well as various other political offices are regularly reported as facts and are published without any (or very little) fact checking by the corporate media. Perhaps the most infamous current example of the impact of the propaganda model on world events and societies was during the two-year period following the 2001 US attacks. During this time, according to a five year in-depth research project conducted by the Centre for Public Integrity; the President of the United States George W. Bush and seven high-ranking officials in his administration made at least 935 false statements about the threat posed to the world and to US national security by Saddam Hussein. These false statements were virtually uncontested by the corporate media and presented as a sound rationale for both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the "War on Terror".

In Buying the War on PBS, Bill Moyers noted 27 Washington Post editorials supporting George W. Bush's ambitions to invade Iraq. National security correspondent Walter Pincus reported that he had been ordered to cease his reports that were critical of Bush administration.[10] According to author and journalist Greg Mitchell, "By the Post's own admission, in the months before the war, it ran more than 140 stories on its front page promoting the war, while contrary information 'got lost', as one Post staffer told Kurtz."[11]

The result was the "manufacturing of consent" for the invasion of Iraq and "The Global War on Terror/ism" in which hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives to date. As an example, Jessica Yellin on Anderson Cooper 360 admitted being pressured by corporate executives to present positive stories during the run up to the Iraq war.

Anderson Cooper 360 Transcript of Jessica Yellin reporting:

COOPER: Jessica, McClellan took press to task for not upholding their reputation. He writes: "The National Press Corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. The 'liberal media' -- in quotes -- didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served." Dan Bartlett, former Bush adviser, called the allegation "total crap." What is your take? Did the press corps drop the ball?

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I wouldn't go that far. I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives—and I was not at this network at the time—but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president. I think, over time...

COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?

YELLIN: Not in that exact—they wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.

Factcheck.org (Factcheck.org), created by the Annenberg school of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, found hundreds of misrepresentations in political ads that were never corrected by the mainstream media. Studies also show that those who rely on the media for their information have a poor understanding of the issues and are unable to discern misrepresentations in political advertising.

As documented by authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, it is becoming increasingly common for video news releases (VNR) to be created by government and corporations, mimicking TV news story-format, to be used straight into broadcasting in a newscast. Other factors include the cost of litigation. Large corporations tend to sue over any news that are against their interests, causing great expense for the news editors. Even if the litigation is lost, the cost of time and pressure will certainly bias a reporter towards avoiding such possibility.

In March 2018, American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore criticized the "corporate media", saying "You turn on the TV, and it's 'Russia, Russia, Russia!' These are all shiny keys to distract us. We should know about the West Virginia strike. What an inspiration that would be. But they don't show this".[12]

Interlocking corporations, corporate power, and its social influences
See also: Media bias in the United States § Corporate control

To illustrate the growing problem of monocracy, Bagdikian notes that in the 1980s, "less than 1 percent of all corporations, have 87 percent of all sales. [The corporates] are the aristocrats of the American Industrial economy; the remaining 359,500, in terms of their national power, are the peasantry." This conflict continues to arise as "dominant media companies are further [integrating] into the ruling forces of the economy." The directorates of major companies interlock with others and control the content of multiple dominating media and information distribution (i.e., newspapers, magazines, radio and television companies, book publishers, film industries, and even multinational banking investors). They become directly influenced by still other powerful industry, creating the "Endless Chain" of mass media and economic aristocracy (Wardrip-Fruin, 479).

In 1993, 90% of media was owned by 50 companies. Today, starting in 2011,the same 90% is controlled by 6 companies. These 6 companies include Comcast, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. These 6 media companies are broken down into sub companies, for example, News-Corp is broken down into Fox, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post. Disney is broken down into ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Miramar, and Marvel Studios. Viacom is broken down into MTV, Nick Jr, BET, CMT, and Paramount Pictures. Time Warner cable is broken down into CNN, HBO, Time, and Warner Bros. Lastly, CBS is broken down into Showtime, Smithsonian channel, NFL.com, Jeopardy, and 60 minutes. 232 media executives control what media 277 million Americans consume. To put that into perspective, that's 1 media executive to 850,000 media consumers. These six big companies control 70% of cable and can make up to 275.9 billion revenue (2010 revenue for the big six). The media we receive by these 6 companies include movies which in 2010, their box office sales hit 7 billion, which is double what 140 smaller movie studios made.[13]

Several issues arise from the fusion; under law and business ethics, the director of a firm is obligated to act in best interest of the company he or she is involved in, and failure to oblige under some circumstances can be a federal crime. This creates a dilemma in the governance of mass media: the same person may be trapped in a situation where working for the best interest for one may damage the other corporation. Another problem which arises is that the same person can abuse his or her power to get away with injustice as exemplified by Bagdikian: "When Sears was accused by the Federal Trade Commission of dishonest advertising and promotion, the Tribune was one of the major papers that failed to carry a word of it... (Wardrip-Fruin, 481)." Here, a market industry was able to conceal their crime of fraud since it was also interlocked with the news media, one of the main distributors of such significant information.

In summary, the concentration of massive media firms that control American public information is troublesome for the potential for deception misleads the public away from reality. The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs state that these facts raise fundamental issues as they can bear on social issues and possibly control the shape and direction of the nation's economy. It is further derived that "the summits of American business now control or powerfully influence the major media that create American public opinion" (Wardrip-Fruin, 483).

gollark: I guess you could just standardize on using, say, the leftmost goose's direction.
gollark: This is going to cause significant problems for goose-based divination.
gollark: Also, they have increasing amounts of reach into stuff.
gollark: If the stuff about ridiculous manipulation and monopolization of advertising markets is accurate, then that seems very bad. Regardless, Google has repeatedly shown itself to be very monopolistic generally and to have no regard for privacy.
gollark: There might be worse companies, but I don't think that makes Google very good.

See also

Notes
  1. Croteau, David and Hoynes, William (2006). The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest Pine Forge Press. ISBN 1412913152 p. 33
  2. McChesney, Robert. "Rich Media, Poor Democracy" Archived 2006-12-10 at the Wayback Machine, ISBN 0-252-02448-6, University of Illinois Press, 1999; "The Problem with the Media", ISBN 1-58367-105-6, 2004
  3. Bagdikian, Ben, "Media Monopoly", ISBN 0-8070-6179-4, Beacon Press, 2000
  4. Hightower, Jim, "What Liberal Media?", "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road Except Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos" Archived 2006-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, ISBN 0-06-092949-9, Harper Perennial Press, 1998
  5. Peterson, Beatrice (October 10, 2019). "Tulsi Gabbard threatens to boycott upcoming debate claiming DNC and corporate media trying to rig 2020 primary".
  6. Sanders, Bernie (January 26, 2017). "How Corporate Media Threatens Our Democracy". In These Times. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  7. Jenkins, Henry (2008). "Convergence Culture". Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 14 (1): 5–12. doi:10.1177/1354856507084415.
  8. "Trump’s Support and Praise of Despots Is Central to the U.S. Tradition, Not a Deviation From It". The Intercept. May 2, 2017.
  9. Hanley, Brian (2016-03-29). "Bernie Sanders Is Exactly Right: The Media Is an Arm of the Ruling Class of This Country". Huffington Post.
  10. "Transcript: "Buying the War"". PBS. April 25, 2007. Retrieved December 13, 2009.
  11. "Eleven Years On: How 'The Washington Post' Helped Give Us the Iraq War". The Nation. March 12, 2014. Archived from the original on March 4, 2017.
  12. "Michael Moore blasts “corporate media” for only talking about “Russia, Russia, Russia”". Salon. March 20, 2018.
  13. Lutz, Ashley (14 June 2012). "These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America". Business Insider. Retrieved 2017-11-17.

References
  • Long, Paul and Wall, Tim : Media Studies: Text, Production and Context, Pearson Education, 2009, https://web.archive.org/web/20101231231643/http://www.doingmediastudies.com/
  • CNN Anderson cooper 360 May 2008 Jessica Yellin reporting/The Huffington Post
  • Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN 0-262-23227-8. "The Endless Chain" by Ben Bagdikian, pp. 471–483.
  • Pew Research Center: Journalism & Media Staff. "How News Happens." Pew Research Center's Journalism Project. N.p., 10 Jan. 2010. Web. 13 Dec. 2016. <http://www.journalism.org/2010/01/11/how-news-happens/>.
  • Barbour, Christine, Gerald C. Wright, Matthew J. Streb, and Michael R. Wolf. "The Media." Keeping the Republic: Power and Citizenship in American Politics. 4th ed. Washington, DC: CQ, 2009. 675–720. Print.
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