Consider the Sources
excerpted from the book
Unreliable Sources
a guide to detecting bias
in news media
by Martin A. Lee & Norman
Solomon
A Lyle Stuart Book, Carol
Publishing Group, 1990
p16
On a typical weekday evening, more than 29 million households
tune in for a half-hour news show on one of three national TV
networks. Most people tend to believe what comes across the luminous
screen.
p17
Sam Donaldson to a Southern California newspaper
"... As a rule, we are, if not handmaidens
of the establishment, at least blood brothers to the establishment...
We end up the day usually having some version of what the White
House...has suggested as a story."
p17
Los Angeles Times staff writer David Shaw, a specialist in examining
media practices, has found that "reporters often call a source
because they want a quotation to illustrate a particular point,
and they are sure to get exactly what they want if they call a
source whose attitudes they already know."
p17
Professor Robert Entman observes in a 1989 book
"The elites who make most of the
national news, are the ones who control policy outcomes in Washington...
News reports can advance or undermine the policy proposals they
want enacted or privileges they want maintained. The information
they provide is tainted."
p17
Walter Karp, Harper's Magazine, 1989
"The overwhelming majority of stories
are based on official sources-on information provided by members
of Congress, presidential aides, and politicians... The first
fact of American journalism is its overwhelming dependence on
sources, mostly official, usually powerful."
p17
... when covering highly-politicized matters of foreign policy,
NPR reporters at the State Department, Pentagon, Congress and
White House are prone to do little but raptly transmit the utterances
of politicians and their appointees. The tilt is against non-officials,
and against officials not on the president's team.
p18
Walter Karp, Harper's Magazine, 1989
"It is a bitter irony of source journalism,
that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile.
For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they
gain access to the 'best' sources."
p18
Walter Karp, Harper's Magazine, 1989
"So pervasive is the passivity of
the press that when a reporter actually looks for news on his
or her own it is given a special name, 'investigative journalism,'
to distinguish it from routine, passive 'source journalism.' It
is investigative journalism that wins the professional honors,
that makes what little history the American press ever makes,
and that provides the misleading exception that proves the rule:
the American press, unbidden by powerful sources, seldom investigates
anything."
p18
Professor Robert Entman observes in a 1989 book
"Government sources and journalists
join in an intimacy that renders any notion of a genuinely 'free'
press inaccurate."
p18
More than any other publications, the Washington Post and the
New York Times exert tremendous impact on American political life.
Every day these newspapers contain more comprehensive coverage
than any other U.S. media. While enjoying reputations for hard-hitting
journalism, both papers are integral to the prevailing political
power structure. They publish exclusive news stories and eminent
punditry that greatly influence the direction and tone of other
media. And their printed words carry heavy weight within the government's
"national security" leviathan.
The Media Elite
The Media Cartel: Corporate Control of
the News
p60
Dependent on corporate sponsors for financial sustenance, TV networks
and print media are under tremendous pressure to shape their product
in a way that best accommodates the needs of their advertisers.
"I would say they are always taken into account," Herman
Keld of CBS acknowledged. An obvious example of sponsor intrusion
in regular network programming occurs when corporate logos and
brand name products appear as props in game shows, sporting events
and other entertainment media. For the most part, however, advertisers
wield influence by restricting and watering down show biz content,
rather than by adding to it. One way they do this is by yanking-or
threatening to yank-financial support from certain programs.
In 1989, for example, a television special
produced by the National Audubon Society was aired without commercials
on a cable channel owned by Turner Broadcasting System after eight
advertisers pulled out because of pressure from the logging industry.
The special, Ancient Forests: Rage Over Trees, was deemed too
radical by U.S. Iogging companies. Meanwhile, Domino's Pizza cancelled
its advertising on NBC's Saturday Night Live because of the show's
alleged anti-Christian message.
These days, no commercial TV executive
in his or her right mind would produce a program without considering
whether it will fly with sponsors. Prospective shows are often
discussed with major advertisers, who review script treatments
and suggest changes when necessary. Adjustments are sometimes
made to please sponsors. This riles a lot of TV writers, who complain
of frequent run-ins with network censors in the "program
standards" department, which monitors sex, violence and obscene
language, as well as the social and political content of dramatic
programs. A poll of the Writers Guild of America disclosed that
86 percent of queried members said they knew from personal experience
that entertainment programs are raked over by censors.
It may come as a surprise to many Americans
that censorship is so prevalent on network television. But corporate
sponsors figure they are entitled to call the shots since they
foot the bill-an assumption shared by network executives, who
quickly learn to internalize the desires of their well-endowed
patrons. For starters, they are likely to frown upon programming
that puts a damper on the "buying mood" that advertisers
require. Network censors admit that loss of advertising revenue
is one of their main concerns. These are the principal guidelines,
explicitly spelled out by big-league sponsors, that TV censors
follow:
* Make sure nothing in a script undermines
the sales pitch for the advertised product. For example, a gas
company sponsoring a TV version of Judgment at Nuremberg demanded
that producers delete references to "gas chambers" from
accounts of Nazi concentration camps. Pharmaceutical firms won't
tolerate scenes in which someone commits suicide by overdosing
on pills. On a lighter note, a writer was forced to delete the
line "She eats too much"-a concept anathema to the breakfast
food manufacturer that sponsored the show. This kind of script
tampering is endemic in television entertainment.
* Portray Big Business in a flattering
light. Sponsors are adamant about this. Procter & Gamble,
which spends over a billion dollars a year on advertising, once
decreed in a memo on broadcast policy: "There will be no
material that will give offense, either directly or indirectly
to any commercial organization of any sort." Ditto for Prudential
Insurance: "A positive image of business and finance is important
to sustain on the air." If a businessman is cast as the bad
guy, it must be clear that he is an exception, and the script
must also include benevolent business folk so as not to leave
the wrong impression. Corporate sponsors are unlikely to underwrite
programs that engage in serious criticism of environmental pollution,
occupational hazards or other problems attributable to corporate
malfeasance.
Marshall Herskovitz, co-executive producer
of ABC's thirtysomething, had to knuckle under when censors insisted
that a character embroiled in a political discussion not say the
government cut safety regulations "so that car companies
can make more money." Entertainment programs aren't a forum
for political debate, Herskovitz was told, and besides it would
upset advertisers. "One of the most dangerous, subversive,
destructive forces in our country today is advertising,"
said Herskovitz-not just its hold over commercial TV, but the
ads themselves. "I would rather have the messed-up and occasionally
confused motivations of television producers than I would to have
the very simple motivations of corporate sponsors making decisions
of what we should see on television."
* Cater to the upper crust. Sponsors don't
want just any audience; they want affluent viewers with buying
power. To impress potential sponsors, ABC once prepared a booklet
with a section called, "Some people are more valuable than
others." If the elderly and low-income counted for more in
the advertising department, their particular concerns would figure
more prominently in the tone and content of TV programming. But
the fixations of mass media are far more demographic than democratic.
* Steer clear of overly serious or complex
subjects and bleach out controversy whenever possible. DuPont,
a major advertiser, told the FCC that commercials are more effective
on "lighter, happier" programs. Comedy, adventure and
escapism are standard fare, as advertisers push mass media toward
socially insignificant content that offends as few viewers as
possible. "You can't take up real problems seriously,"
complained Charles Knopf, a TV scriptwriter and former president
of the Writers Guild. Acutely sensitive to sponsor proclivities,
many writers and producers automatically avoid controversial topics.
When a dicey story is proposed, it is usually killed before it
gets written. Scripts that survive the editing process often bear
little resemblance to the original concept.
p82
Blueblood media and their corporate cousins have a vast stake
in decisions made by the U.S. government. Through elite policy-shaping
groups like the Council on Foreign Relations and the Business
Roundtable, they steer the ship of state in what they deem to
be a financially advantageous direction. (GE, CapCities, CBS,
the New York Times and the Washington Post all have board members
who sit on the Council on Foreign Relations.) They have much to
gain from a favorable investment climate in Third World countries
and bloated military budgets at home.
This was made explicit by former GE President
Charles Wilson, a longtime advocate of a permanent war economy,
who worked with the Pentagon's Office of Defense Mobilization
during the 1950s. In a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers
Association, he urged the media to rally behind the government's
Cold War crusade. "The free world is in mortal danger. If
the people were not convinced of that, it would be impossible
for Congress to vote vast sums now being spent to avert that danger,"
said Wilson. "With the support of public opinion, as marshaled
by the press, we are off to a good start... It is our job-yours
and mine-to keep our people convinced that the only way to keep
disaster away from our shores is to build America's might."
p84
PBS: Pro-Business Service?
Public television, as originally conceived
by its proponents, was supposed to make room on the airwaves for
risky, innovative programming-the kind that might not inspire
big league commercial sponsors to open up their wallets. This
was public TV's initial mandate.
In its promotional literature, the Public
Broadcasting Service (PBS) offers unabashed self-praise: "PBS,
alone among the world's public television organizations, is entirely
independent of political and governmental control or interference."
But is this true? Is PBS really as "independent" as
it claims?
PBS was founded in 1967 when President
Lyndon Johnson embraced a plan for a public broadcasting system
put forward by the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television.
The plan called for government support of public TV and radio,
and recommended the formation of a
Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)
to oversee the disbursement of federal funds. But there was a
catch: Johnson created-and Congress approved-the year-to-year
funding that put PBS on a very short leash and compromised its
independence from the outset.
A veritable news junkie, Johnson often
watched three network news broadcasts simultaneously, and he badgered
reporters when he didn't like their coverage of the Vietnam War.
He appointed Frank J. Pace Jr., formerly Secretary of the Army
and chief executive of General Dynamics (one of the biggest U.S.
military contractors), as CPB's first chairman. Upon accepting
the post, Pace announced that he had already commissioned research
on using public television for riot control.
Angered that public television occasionally
aired programs critical of the Vietnam War, President Nixon slashed
CPB funding while unleashing one of his media thugs, Patrick Buchanan
(then Special Assistant to the President), to lobby publicly and
behind the scenes in an effort to run reporters like Bill Moyers
and Elizabeth Drew off the noncommercial airwaves. In 1972, public
television pulled the plug at the last minute on a show written
by comedian Woody Allen because it lampooned a Henry Kissinger-like
character and other members of the Nixon administration. Commenting
on PBS censorship, Moyers warned that public broadcasters might
convince themselves "not that it's dangerous to take risks,
but that it's wise to avoid them."
The Petroleum Broadcasting Service
It was during Nixon's tenure as commander-in-chief
that big business emerged as a visible force in public television.
Burdened by serious image problems because of windfall profits
reaped from the "energy crisis" in the early 1970s,
oil companies like Mobil began pumping funds into cultural and
public affairs programming on PBS. Business support for public
TV increased six-fold between 1973 and 1980. With oil companies
"underwriting" in full or in part 72 percent of prime-time
PBS shows in a typical week in 1981, the initials PBS seemed to
stand more appropriately for Petroleum Broadcasting Service. Although
PBS commands only four percent of the viewing audience, the network
flaunts its upscale demographics, which appeal to corporate donors
who gave a record $70 million for PBS programs in 1989. Twenty
big firms forked up more than a million dollars each.
The sad truth is that PBS and National
Public Radio (NPR) are "made possible" to a large degree
by the same corporate sponsors that bring us commercial programming.
With corporate contributions for NPR rising from $2.7 million
in 1983 to $10.6 million in 1988, its news programming began to
imitate commercial formulas. A mainstay of public radio's weekly
listenership of 11 million, NPR is a favorite of advertisers-oops!
we mean "underwriters"-because of its disproportionately
affluent audience. An NPR news employee, who asked not to be identified,
explained that "as we've gotten a larger audience, we've
tended to be more mainstream. We used to be a lot more alternative
and talk to different people."
While many NPR reporters have concentrated
more on quality journalism than ratings, higher-ups were long
accustomed to fixating on Nielsen or Arbitron figures. In 1989,
for instance, both the executive producer of NPR's Morning Edition
and the vice president for news at NPR were former top producers
at CBS News. Anne Garrels, a hawkish correspondent for ABC and
then NBC News, became NPR's chief diplomatic correspondent. And
the door was swinging both ways. ABC News hired NPR congressional
reporter Cokie Roberts, one of several NPR journalists who went
to the major networks. (In a unique arrangement, Roberts was able
to keep reporting for NPR and ABC at the same time.) Whether on
public radio or commercial TV, Roberts' analysis and reporting
were unlikely to disturb the status quo.
PPS documentaries
According to former CBS News president
Fred Friendly, "corporations exercise a kind of positive
veto" by financing and promoting programs of their choice.
Political influences are also a factor, despite claims to the
contrary by PBS and NPR officials. During the Reagan era, the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting board, which allocates PBS
funding, was reduced in size and packed with conservative ideologues,
who were particularly stingy when it came to supporting independent
projects. As a result, independent film and video had an increasingly
difficult time getting on PBS. Corporate-financed programming
was not similarly encumbered.
PBS programs with corporate backing have
gotten special preference. Documentaries on health and medicine,
for example, are usually funded by pharmaceutical firms such as
Eli Lilly, Squibb and Bristol-Myers. (Not surprisingly, these
programs emphasize high-tech medical remedies rather than alternative
health approaches.) This is not considered a conflict of interest
by the CPB board. But when unions provided money for shows on
labor themes, the CPB board frequently objected, citing ethical
conflicts. In the mid-1980s, labor unions offered to put up seed
money for a multimillion-dollar film series, Made in USA, about
working people's history-not about labor unions per se-to be made
by an independent filmmaker who would be responsible for the show's
content. PBS said such funding would be grounds for not carrying
the series because of a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, the Bechtel
Corporation got a wink and a nod from CPB when it donated money
to Milton Friedman's PBS series, Free to Choose, a conservative
primer in free market economics.
"What's appalling is that public
television has never carved out a distinctive role as an information
medium and public forum," Pat Aufderheide wrote in The Progressive
magazine. "Caught in funding contradictions, it is now stuck
with an ad-hoc mandate to round up the most viewer-subscribers
possible to tempt the underwriters of programming. CPB fulfills
that mandate with programs that function more like mental interior
decoration than compensation for what's missing from advertising-driven
television."
The de facto mission of public TV, said
Aufderheide, is "to avoid the controversial...to entertain
without stooping to vulgarity, and to inform without confronting
the assumptions that keep us from knowing the obvious." Public
television "is not designed to raise public debate, to ask
questions about why our world looks and moves the way it does,"
Aufderheide concluded. "Of course it doesn't. What corporate
underwriter would pay for that?"
This became abundantly clear to WNET,
New York's big public TV station, when one of its corporate benefactors-Gulf
+ Western (now called Paramount) abruptly withdrew funding in
1985. Gulf + Western executives were peeved at WNET's support
for the documentary Hungry for Profit, which strongly criticized
multinational corporations for their role in exacerbating food
and hunger problems in the Third World. WNET officials acknowledged
that before the documentary aired, they "did all they could
to get the program sanitized." The London Economist put the
incident in perspective: "Most people believe that WNET will
not make the same mistake again." In other words, WNET would
work even harder to sanitize programs in an effort to win corporate
backing.
Haunted by the specter of short-tempered
corporate funders and vocal conservative lobbies, public TV officials
have refused to broadcast programs such as Sun City, a documentary
about the making of a music video by Artists United Against Apartheid.
PBS claimed it was biased-against apartheid! Mobil Oil, GE and
other PBS-underwriters with heavy investments in South Africa
at the time were likely pleased by the decision.
MacNeil/Lehrer doesn't rock the boat
While PBS sometimes presents challenging
documentaries, its most glaring weakness is in news programs and
public affairs talkshows. This is where the impact of corporate
sponsorship is most evident. The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour is funded
by AT&T, a military contractor; it has become a virtual clone
of commercial news shows-albeit a half-hour longer. A Conservative
Political Action Conference poll ranked MacNeil/Lehrer as the
"most balanced network news show," which speaks volumes
about MacNeil/Lehrer's biases. Like Washington Week in Review,
another PBS program, its narrow guest-list insures against novel
or unconventional insights. TV, said co-host Robert MacNeil, "does
not enjoy rocking the boat, politically or commercially."
MacNeil/Lehrer's one-hour news hole allows
for more lengthy discussions of the day's events than the three
major networks, but the NewsHour's spectrum of experts is often
even more narrow than the other networks. Preoccupied with politicians
traversing Pennsylvania Avenue, MacNeil/Lehrer features "both
sides" of issues that, like diamonds, actually have many
sides; ensuing "debates" run the gamut of political
opinion from A to C.
MacNeil/Lehrer has presented countless
panels in which right-wing Democrats represent the furthest left
position: Pro-contra Senator David Boren from Oklahoma has been
the "dove" in discussions of the Iran-contra scandal
or the CIA, while hawkish Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia has been
the "dove" on panels about the nuclear arms race. The
only suspense in such "debates" is who will emerge as
the true conservative: the Republican or MacNeil/Lehrer's Democratic
"oppositionist." According to NewsHour staffers, co-anchor
Jim Lehrer dislikes interviewing genuine oppositionists from peace
and public interest organizations. He refers to such people as
"moaners" and "whiners."
Right-wing tilt at PBS
As for political talk shows on PBS-it's
a virtual sweep for right-wingers. William Buckley, editor of
the conservative National Review magazine, has long hosted the
weekly PBS program Firing Line. And John McLaughlin, one of Buckley's
ex-colleagues at National Review, hosts two weekly shows, the
McLaughlin Group and One on One.
Described by Jody Powell, President Carter's
press secretary, as "an ideological foodfight," the
McLaughlin Group is carried on two-thirds of PBS stations. It
reserves three chairs for outspoken right-wing pundits and none
for progressives, the kind of numbers that resonate favorably
with GE, the sole underwriter of the program. GE has also tapped
McLaughlin, formerly a special assistant to President Nixon, to
host a prime-time public affairs show every day on its CNBC cable
channel. American Interests, a weekly PBS show offering a conservative
look at foreign policy, was spawned by the American Enterprise
Institute, whose "experts" appear frequently on PBS.
Shortly before the 1988 elections, PBS
aired a pair of one-hour specials on the two major political parties.
The Democratic special was hosted by Ben Wattenberg, an AEI fellow
and right-wing Democrat who had supported much of the Reagan agenda.
The view from the Republican side was represented by ex-Reagan-aide
David Gergen, also once an AEI fellow. This is what passes for
a spectrum of opinion on public broadcasting.
Business viewpoints are certainly well-represented
on PBS. In addition to the Nightly Business Report (underwritten
by Shearson Lehman Hutton, the stock brokerage firm), PBS regularly
airs Wall Street Week, hosted by antilabor commentator Louis Rukeyser,
and Adam Smith's Money World, both of which have corporate backing.
In a presentation to a PBS review committee,
FAIR director Jeff Cohen criticized the conservative, big business
tilt of PBS public affairs panel shows. He pointed out the glaring
imbalance in the PBS talkshow lineup. "Why is there no regular
PBS show hosted by a progressive or a partisan of the left?"
asked Cohen. "Would it not serve the public good to provide
a public affairs show that reflected the concerns of those constituencies
that sometimes conflict with big business-namely, the consumer,
environmental and labor movements?" Cohen added: "PBS
public affairs shows are populated almost exclusively by white
males. Shouldn't minorities and women be better represented as
hosts and panelists?"
PBS officials acknowledged a political
imbalance. "There happens to be an oversupply of entertaining,
glib, right-wing commentators," said Barry Chase, head of
news and public affairs programming for PBS. But this glib remark
dodged the real issue. A bombastic conservative like John McLaughlin
is a fixture on PBS not because he fulfills a quota for responsible
news analysis, but because GE puts up the money for his show.
Indeed, corporate backing is the main reason for McLaughlin's
metamorphosis from a fringe right-wing columnist in the late 1970s
to one of the most prominent faces on public affairs TV.
After PBS subscribers and public interest
activists complained about the lack of diversity in the network's
news and talkshow lineup, some PBS stations began to air the Kwitny
Report. This hard-hitting weekly show was hosted by Jonathan Kwitny,
formerly an ace investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal.
Kwitny soon ran into political resistance from higher-ups at WNYC,
the New York PBS station which launched the show. "There
are occasions when the accepted wisdom handed down by the government
and corporations is wrong," he told the Los Angeles Times
shortly after WNYC cancelled his program, claiming a lack of funds.
According to Kwitny, one of the station
managers was hostile because he linked Jonas Savimbi, leader of
the U.S.-backed UNITA rebels in Angola, to terrorism-a charge
supported by human rights and church groups. "He's just one
more bloodstained autocrat on the U.S. taxpayers' payroll,"
said Kwitny. Station management was also upset by an episode that
charged the Reagan administration with undermining grand jury
and congressional probes of drug smuggling by the U.S.-supported
contras fighting the Nicaraguan government. As of late 1989, Kwitny
was seeking financial support and another flagship station with
the hope that PBS executives would live up to their promise to
distribute his show nationally.
p93
Flirting with fascists
Media owners have ways of making their
presence felt among working journalists. Time-Life publishing
magnate Henry Luce, well-known for his conservative politics,
used to flood his editors with story ideas. Prior to World War
II, media critic George Seldes took Luce to task for devoting
"an entire issue of Fortune to glorifying Mussolini and Fascism,
and...permit[ting] an outright pro-fascist, Laird Goldsborough,
to slant and pervert the news every week" in Time. Seldes
also exposed a secret $400,000-a-year deal between Hitler and
press baron William Randolph Hearst, which resulted in pro-Nazi
articles in all Hearst papers. As late as December 1940, Hearst
was ordering his editors not to include "unnecessarily offensive"
cartoons of Hitler and Mussolini in his papers.
Described as the founder of yellow journalism
and a debaucher of public taste, Hearst is perhaps the most notorious
of the 20th century press barons. Instead of telling the news,
Hearst headlines were intent on selling the news. He routinely
invented sensational stories, faked interviews, ran phony pictures
and distorted real events. Having begun his career as a reform-minded
socialist, Hearst ended up a right-wing megalomaniac whose papers
carried on the most sustained campaign of jingoism in U.S. history.
Hearst propaganda masquerading as journalism played a major role
in starting the Spanish-American War in 1898. His media empire
also was instrumental in backing Senator Joe McCarthy when he
launched his anti-Red crusade in 1950.
Hearst wasn't the only media mogul who
supported the anticommunist witch-hunts during the Cold War. A
majority of U.S. newspapers, including the Scripps-Howard and
Gannett chains, applauded McCarthy's baseless diatribes about
alleged communists in the U.S. government. But McCarthy's rise
to prominence cannot be attributed solely to the proclivities
of press barons like Hearst. The Wisconsin Red-baiter was adept
at exploiting a perennial weakness of U.S. reporters who allowed
themselves to function as stenographers for those in power. Trapped
by their own "objective" techniques, most journalists
covered the McCarthy story straight, reporting his hysterical
charges without commenting on their accuracy. "There was
very little opportunity in those days to break out of the role
of being a recording device for Joe," said John L. Steele,
formerly a correspondent with the United Press wire service. Indeed,
this was how much of the press corps felt and acted at the time.
While a few courageous editors consistently
denounced McCarthy, it wasn't until he began attacking President
Eisenhower that the press turned against him. In a case of better
late than never, CBS aired Edward R. Murrow's TV documentary on
McCarthy in 1954, and then it was all downhill for Joe. By this
time, thousands of patriotic Americans had been hounded out of
their jobs, and groups advocating for civil rights and social
justice were tarred as "subversive." Nevertheless, certain
media owners felt that McCarthy had served a useful purpose by
alerting the American public to the Red Menace. "His methods
have been bad," said Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, but "have not the results on the whole
been good?"
Annenberg's thugs
Another press magnate who favored the
McCarthy witch-hunts was Walter Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia
Inquirer and, later, TV Guide. Young Walter had inherited a formidable
media empire from his father, Moe, who began his newspaper career
as circulation manager of the Hearst daily in Chicago during the
bloody news wars of the early l900s. With a gang of street toughs
on his payroll, Moe made sure Hearst's product got maximum distribution.
Trucks delivering competing papers were wrecked and 30 newsboys
were murdered, but Annenberg's hoodlums escaped arrest.
Resorting to similar goon squad tactics
while working for Hearst's New York Daily Mirror, Moe solicited
the services of fledgling gangsters, including Meyer Lansky and
Lucky Luciano. "I used to think of the Mirror as my kind
of paper," Luciano fondly reminisced. "I always thought
of Annenberg as my kind of guy." With the Mob's muscle at
his disposal, Annenberg started to acquire his own newspapers,
eventually amassing what Fortune magazine called the largest annual
income in the U.S. When Annenberg went to jail for tax evasion
in the 1930s, his son, Walter, took over the family business.
Described by Philadelphia attorney Harry
Sawyer as "the greatest institutional force for evil"
in the city of brotherly love, Walter Annenberg did not hesitate
to throw his weight around the editorial room. He maintained a
blacklist of people and organizations he didn't like (including
Ralph Nader and the American Civil Liberties Union) and ordered
that their names never be mentioned in Philadelphia Inquirer news
stories. Annenberg also reportedly gave Frank Rizzo, Philadelphia's
brash right-wing mayor in the late 1960s and 1970s, veto power
over certain stories. And he used his paper to attack a gubernatorial
candidate who opposed plans that would have boosted the profits
of the Pennsylvania Railroad, but Annenberg did not inform his
readers that he was the railroad's biggest stockholder.
Murdoch meddles
The Annenberg publishing dynasty came
to an end in 1988 when Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch purchased
TV Guide. With farflung media operations spanning three continents,
Murdoch's News Corporation ranks fifth among the world's largest
media conglomerates. As such, it is part of an emerging international
media cartel that includes companies even bigger than Murdoch's-Time
Warner, the German-based Bertelsmann empire, CapCities/ABC, and
Canada's Thomson newspaper chain-along with publishing firms controlled
by British tycoon Robert Maxwell and French arms merchant Jean-Luc
Lagardere. If predictions by U.S. media executives are correct,
these few gigantic corporations will dominate the global communications
market as we enter the 21st century.
When asked why he kept buying up more
media organs, Murdoch explained: "It's the challenge of the
game. It gives me a great thrill." It was doubtless quite
a thrill for Murdoch to have used his British newspapers to help
install Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and keep her in power.
News stories and editorials in Murdoch's drug-and-crime-crazed
New York Post were unabashedly slanted to please the likes of
Mayor Ed Koch and President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s.
Murdoch's most ambitious project to date
is the launching of a fourth TV network in the U.S., Fox Broadcasting.
In June 1988, Fox heavily censored "The Nelson Mandela 70th
Birthday Tribute," a rock concert held at London's Wembley
stadium to promote human rights and freedom in South Africa. Unbeknownst
to the performing artists, most of their political comments were
not heard by millions of people watching the show on U.S. television.
Fox TV had surgically removed "the most passionate and especially
the most political moments of the day," according to the
Boston Globe.
Among the anti-apartheid statements deleted
by Murdoch's network were Dire Straits' dedication of the song
"Brothers in Arms" to the imprisoned Mandela and Peter
Gabriel's remark that "South Africa is the only country in
the world which has racism enshrined in its constitution."
South African singer Miriam Makeba was totally omitted. Little
Steven (Van Zandt) and other musicians who performed at Wembley
were angry when they learned what happened. "This was the
ultimate Orwellian sort of event," said Little Steven. "We
did one show and America saw a different show."
Fox refused to identify who was responsible
for censoring the concert, but the version that it broadcast probably
pleased Murdoch. An outspoken conservative, Murdoch doesn't try
to hide his penchant for editorial meddling. "To what extent
do you influence the editorial posture of your newspapers?"
queried a reporter with Cosmopolitan magazine. "Considerably,"
he responded. "The buck stops on my desk. My editors have
input, but I make final decisions."
Such candor is rare among media owners
who seek to exert maximum control over the news product with a
minimum of direct interference. Unlike the audacious press barons
of old, today's news execs prefer the velvet muzzle to the iron
fist. They meet on a regular basis with editors hand-picked to
fulfill the role of loyal gatekeepers. Editors decide what to
feature on the front page, which articles to assign and not to
assign, whether to cut, rewrite or kill a story.
Ownership influence on the news
Former managing editor of the New York
Times Turner Catledge noted in his memoirs how he frequently conveyed
publisher Arthur H. Sulzberger's comments to his staff as if they
came from himself in order to avoid the impression that the top
boss "was constantly looking over their shoulders. In truth,
however, he was."
Despite assurances to the contrary, media
owners continue to promote self-serving content into the news
and banish subjects they dislike. As Bagdikian, formerly national
editor at the Washington Post, has written, "When an editor
makes a news decision based on corporate commands, or knowledge
of ownership wishes, the editor seldom states the real reason."
This would "violate the prevailing dogma of American journalism
that serious news is the result of whatever is true and significant,
let the chips fall where they may."
The extent of ownership influence on the
news was indicated by a 1980 survey by the American Society of
Newspaper Editors. Thirty-three percent of all editors employed
by newspaper chains admitted that they would not feel free to
publish news stories that were damaging to their parent firm.
Years have passed since this survey was taken, and the parent
firms are now bigger and more powerful than ever before. TV producers
have expressed similar misgivings about news broadcasts that might
conflict with the economic or political interests of their parent
company.
Covering up for the Gipper
In the course of selecting what to air
on the evening news, many stories get "spiked"-an old
newspaper term that refers to rejected stories that were literally
jammed onto the editor's filing spike. During the months prior
to the 1984 presidential election, ABC World News Tonight spiked
three exposes that could have proved damaging to the Republican
campaign. As Mark Dowie later disclosed in Mother Jones magazine,
producers and reporters at ABC's special investigative unit had
documented serious health and safety violations at nursing homes
owned by U.S. Information Agency director Charles Wick, an intimate
friend of Ronald Reagan; an FBI cover-up of Labor Secretary Raymond
Donovan's association with organized crime figures; and an attempt
by Senator Paul Laxalt, a close Reagan ally, to persuade the Justice
Department to stop an undercover probe of his campaign contributors.
Although considerable resources had been
devoted to developing these stories, higher-ups at ABC got cold
feet. "It was political pressure...classic spiking,"
said senior producer Marion Goldin, who worked on the Wick investigation.
Someone at ABC didn't want to embarrass the Reagan administration.
At the time the stories were killed, according
to Mother Jones, ABC executives were preparing to lobby the Republican-controlled
FCC to change the so-called 7-7-7 rule, which stipulated that
a corporation or network could own no more than seven television
stations, seven AM and seven FM radio stations. With big sums
of money at stake, ABC executives sought an amended ruling which
would expand the allowable number of holdings to 12 in each broadcasting
category. The FCC did replace the "7-7-7 rule" with
a "12-12-12 rule" in early 1985, thereby greatly enhancing
ABC's financial status and making it much more attractive to CapCities,
which subsequently acquired the network in a friendly buyout.
p101
News media are not monolithic entities. They occasionally report
things that cast big business and other powerful interests in
an unfavorable light. But corporate control of the media limits
the spectrum of news coverage and, by implication, the range of
options available to the U.S. public. This has weakened our ability
to respond imaginatively, and appropriately, to the daunting problems
our country faces. "It is ownership of the mass media by
the wealthy," said Robert Cirano, "rather than a conspiracy
of any kind, that explains why the important decisions usually
favor viewpoints that support things as they are, rather than
viewpoints that support fundamental changes in society."
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