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Corporate Pressures to Shape and Censor News
The references to corporate pressures to shape and censor news has prompted e-mail that ranges all the way from—
It's their station [or network], why shouldn't they be allowed to and shape the news the way they want, including whatever increases profits. After all, isn't that why they are in business?
to—
By regularly caving into corporate interests TV news represents a betrayal of the public trust.
A survey of the Internet on the subject of TV bias shows that there is almost an equal number of complaints from the left as from the right. However, as a person who worked in news for many years—this includes TV, radio, magazines and newspapers—I've recently seen some disturbing examples of corporate influence over news content.
And, I'm not alone.
A 2001 survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (Columbia Journalism Review, 11-12/01) found that 53 percent of local news directors "reported advertisers try to tell them what to air and not to air and they say the problem is growing."
About one-third of respondents in a 2000 Pew Center for the People & the Press poll of 287 reporters, editors and news executives agreed with the statement that news that would hurt the financial interests of the media organization or an advertiser goes unreported.
The majority of respondents in the study said that they themselves have avoided stories, or softened the tone on stories, to benefit their media company's interests.
In a 2000 study one-third of the local TV news directors surveyed by the Project on Excellence in Journalism indicated that they had been pressured to avoid negative stories about advertisers, or to do positive ones.
It would seem that today's reporters just don't have to worry about getting their facts right, but they also have to worry about those facts finding favor with corporate officers whose goals center more on protecting and enhancing profits than on the integrity of their newscasts.
Although, legally, the public airwaves belong to the public, the public now seems to only be a pawn in the game of maximizing corporate media profits.
The question becomes whether the goal of maximizing media profit is in the best interests of the public. Very few would agree that it is.
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