Disinformation and media propaganda

[jdobbin]

Another hilarious MSNBC put down of FOX's right wingnut O'Reilly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTM7oJXr2NM...rch=FOX%20MSNBC

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear August1991,

Conrad Black would let you hang if it meant $2 more for him - he did it to his partners! The Irvings and Aspers are no different. Even Thomson. They're competitive bast***s.....

Doing a deal is a tough art, and reputation matters. Talk to a matchmaker.

I agree with your point, but they don't really 'deal' with each other. However, I was inferring that their collusion isn't about 'market shares' or the money...it is about what is or is not going to appear in their mediums.

[lost&outofcontrol]

Rescued from rape and slavery.

[Toro]

I'm always amazed that the people who believe in the media-propoganda model seem to have almost no understanding of the motivations and rolls of journalists, editors and shareholders. The propoganda model makes these grand assumptions and proclimations from 20,000 feet without explaining why people behave the way they do.

Groups defend their interests.

This is an argument I find that comes from philosophers and the like, as opposed to people with any practical exeprience in business or journalism.

As a shareholder, my interest is to make as much money as possible. In media, that means getting as many people as possible to watch/read my platform. The more people who buy my product, the more money I get because people are a.) buying my product, and b.) ad rates rise. Well, of course, the argument is then "the corporations won't advertise if their interests are threatened." But companies don't think that way. Companies want to sell product. They will go to where their demographic is highest. So media outlets want to pull in as many viewers as possible so they can charge as much as they can. And to do that, they must be relevant. Ad rates are set by the market and are influenced by demographics. Not only that, but corporations don't even act that way. What the proponents of this media-propoganda model seem to miss is that many if not most of the largest corporations play only a minor role in what and where they advertise. The largest buyers of advertising in the United States outsource most of their ad buying to ad buyers who do it for them. The companies will say "Okay, this is who we want to sell to and this is how many units we want to sell" and the ad buyers will then go and buy the ad based on the goals of the corporation. And the goals of Proctor and Gamble are to "sell as many Swiffers" as they can, not "maintain our socio-economic dominance." Corporations are not instructing their ad buyers to manipulate the media for political reasons. They just want to sell stuff.

There is no nefarious cabal working to protect the interests of corporations in general along with the media because the two are often at cross purposes. It must baffle the proponents of this argument when Ken Lay gets up on the stand in a court of law for which he is accused of fraud and accuses the media of creating a run on his company leading to its collapse. Not only was Ken Lay the single biggest political donator to George W. Bush's career outside his family, but it was the Wall Street Journal - the media bastion of free enterprise capitalism - that broke the story of the off balance sheet accounts that eventually lead to the downfall of Enron. The Wall Street Journal is the newspaper that broke the story about the recent options expensing scandal that will send many executives to jail. Worldcom, Adelphia, Healthsouth, etc., etc., etc. are all companies that have been rocked by financial scandal and the Wall Street Journal has been at the forefront bringing the misdeeds of corporate America to the forefront. And its not just the WSJ. Its the likes of The Economist, Forbes, BusinessWeek, etc., too. And these weren't insignificant companies either. These were companies that were the poster children of the New Economy, the new American corporation that would lead America into the 21st century, much-admired, politically-connected corporations. The business media outlets - owned both by public shareholders and private owners - are the ones that brought these companies down. If its the media that protects the "interests" of corporations, you certainly would think they wouldn't be reporting items that would lead to the destruction of those companies.

I'm going to get to the dual class structure issue in a minute, but this is a good time to segue into the roll of journalists. Ultimately, it was journalists that brought down these companies. The media-as-propoganda model doesn't seem to understand the role and motivations of journalists. Reporting on the financial misdeeds of corporations can make a jourmalists' career spectacularly. So financial and business journalists have great motivation to find nefarious actions of corporations because it can make the journalist rich and famous, or at least highly esteemed within the profession. Then the argument is that "Well, the journalists are working hard, but its the editors that kill the story." Hardly. Not only were the editors usually journalists, but try and imagine what would happen if a journalist went to an editor with a hot story and the editor killed it for political expediency - "so they could protect the interests of the wealthy." The journalist would quit and go work for someone else who would print it, even if it were out of country or a publication called Mother Jones. Then, the editor would have to tell her boss that they had the story - the story that would have sold more newspapers - but lost the story to a rival. The boss would then have to report to the shareholders - me - that they could have made more money and that they damaged the reputation of the media outlet (something even more worrisome) by deep-sixing the story. That makes me - the shareholder - very unhappy. Now tell me how this helps me again? Also, if corporations are willfully suppressing "the truth" for political expediency, tell me where are all the disgruntled journalists? Where are all the bitter journalists telling us about this? "Trying to protect their jobs," you'd answer. Okay, where are all the retired journalists then, the ones who have nothing to lose? Or the ones on their deathbeds? You don't think they want to get their stories out? They're journalists! Getting the story out is what motivates them!

Finally, on the dual class structure, several media companies have issued dual classes of stock to retain control. But why? The media-as-propoganda model would tell you "to further their interests" No, not really. if you sit and talk with original founders or media companies that list dual class shares of stock, they will tell you that one of the reasons they did so - and sometimes the main reason - is to preserve the media outlet they are bringing public. Running a public company is very different than running a private company. Managers will tell you in private - and some in public - that the public markets are too focused on near term, quarterly results. That's debateable, but it is valid. The thinking is that focusing too much on the short term damages the long term value of the company. Companies will cut costs, for example, to meet this quarter's earnings estimate so the stock price doesn't get pummelled, but in the mean time, the area they cut is important to a segment of consumers that will drift away over time thus hurting the franchise of the outlet. Its not so much the private owners' reaction that contradicts the media-as-propoganda model but rather the public market's. The public market's focus feared by the private market doesn't give two hoots about any political model. It cares about right now. What are you doing for me now. Not five years from now, but this year. This quarter. The public market doesn't care about any grand socioeconomic structure. It wants immediate - or near immediate - results. But even here, its not that simple, because shareholders of public companies aren't really all that strong. Often times, its the management of media companies that is more powerful than the shareholders. And many in upper management came from, yup you guessed it, deep within the media companies. Not only that, but the role of the different classes of stock aren't particularly cut and dried. Public shareholders have rights that the courts will enforce when private shareholders are running roughshod over the interests of shareholders of subordinate classes of stock. So even the holders of the super-voting stock who would have the most to gain in "maintaining political control" when it comes to the media-propoganda model are at least partially subject to the pressures of the public markets.

So any large shareholder would find the media-as-propoganda model to be one that doesn't apply in the real world.