Media Influence

here is a good comment from another blog

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/01/why-the-fiscal-times-is-off-to-a-very-very-bad-start-indeed.html

Bruce Wilder said in reply to Fred the first...

You are sadly deceived, Fred.

Media, which is free, or very cheap, to readers or viewers, and paid for by advertisers, has its content dictated to it, by those willing to prepare the copy or the video, and those willing to pay to see it broadcast.

If you would care to glance at the operations of any newspaper or magazine or cable news operation, you would see editorial staff, overworked by design, dependent on public relations flacks for ready-made copy, and editors contending with publishers eager to please corporate advertisers.

Anyone familiar with the history of magazine publishing -- particularly the last 20 years as the cost of printing and distribution has plummeted and many, many titles have been tried on venture capital -- can give you numerous examples of magazines that have achieved great editorial success, and remarkable popularity with their target audience, but failed financially, as corporate advertisers shied. It is no mystery really. Car buffs really like a car magazine written by enthusiasts, who tell the truth -- you think anyone, who really loves cars, is anything but repulsed by Motor Trend? Please! And, teens want to hear about and discuss . . . (surprise!). . . sex. Not the well-scrubbed doings of the Jonas brothers, but actual sexual relationships and their emotional hazards.

The Washington Post cannot afford a staff of journalists and editors, able to put out a daily paper, on the strength of fail ad revenues. Classifieds -- the highly remunerative cash flow from advertisers too small to make demands about content -- are history in this age of ebay and craig's list. They publish unlabeled advertorials from the Fiscal Times, because that's what they can afford.

Politico.com, Robert Allbritton's right-wing tabloid political news operation, is on Washington Week in Review and Charlie Rose and Meet the Press, not because they're good and viewers are attracted and satisfied by their crappy reporting, but because they're cheap, and they're cheap, because someone's paying for them, and it ain't you and it ain't me.

I know libertarians like to believe in consumer sovereignty in a market of free, un-coerced choice. But, people have only so much time, and so much money, and there are heavily subsidized choices presented to them in great superabundance, deadening their taste, overwhelming their discrimination. We are talking about broadcast media here (and I include daily newspapers and large circulation magazines available on every newsstand as having many of the characteristics of a broadcast media), which are distributed as something akin to public goods. Editorial is bait for eyeballs, but the goal is to deliver corporate, commercial advertising. And, by design, the goal is to deliver TOO MUCH of this public good of broadcast news, entertainment and information. The equilibrium outcome is one where people are consuming TOO MUCH, and the product -- the advertising -- is actually noxious at the margin.

Advertising-supported broadcast media is an economic structure practically designed to substitute volume for quality, and make the audience choke on it.

On the supply side, there simply isn't enough money is advertising to pay for quality editorial content. And, a premium is placed on strategies for overcoming the power of the public to resist or discriminate.

In this system, those, who are willing to pay for content, have a lot of power.

This includes those who are willing to pay public relations flacks to create content. That's what the Fiscal Times is. 80% of the Wall St. Journal on any given day, consists of lightly-edit corporate press releases, and that's the best newspaper in America.

And, don't think large advertisers don't exercise influence over content. Do you think Motor Trend's Car of the Year award is given on merit? But, quite beyond that, major television advertisers have long had blacklists targeting various kinds of political and social and cultural content, even in dramatic or comedy programming. (I, personally, have seen the Mars, Inc., blacklist, and it is predictably right-wing in its agenda.)

The Media in the U.S. has evolved into an homogenous propaganda operation on behalf of corporate interests, including the interests of corporate executives and the very wealthy. It's a compound of the interests of celebrity journalists, who themselves are made wealthy, the corporations that produce content both as production companies and as public relations operations, and corporate advertisers.

If your petty rentiers are frightened, it is because someone in Corporate America has decided that it is worthwhile to scare them, the better to manipulate them.
Reply Jan 11, 2010 at 11:00 AM

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Bruce Wilder, a valuable commenter at the Economists View blog, also has his own blog:

http://comingperfectstorm.blogspot.com/