Corporate Influence in the Media
by Anup Shah
Advertising is the art of arresting the human intelligence just long
enough to get money from it.
- Chuck Blore, a partner in the advertising firm Chuck Blore & Don
Ruchman, Inc., quoted by Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth
Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), p.185.
Ever since mass media became mass media, companies have naturally
used this means of communications to let a large number of people
know about their products. There is nothing wrong with that, as it
allows innovative ideas and concepts to be shared with others.
However, as the years have progressed, the sophistication of
advertising methods and techniques has advanced, enticing and shaping
and even creating consumerism and needs where there has been none
before, or turning luxuries into necessities. This section introduces
some of the issues and concerns this raises.
Tableofcontentsforthispage
This web page has the following sub-sections:
* Free media channels have a cost
* The Audience as the Product
* The Audience also as the Consumer
* Advertorials - Advertisements disguised as News!
* Advertainment - Advertisements disguised as Entertainment!
* Product Placement
* Political influence
* Globalization of consumers
Free media channels have a cost
Various public and free media such as the numerous channels available
in America and other nations are naturally subsidized with
advertising to help pay the costs. However, as corporate competition
has increased, so too has the need for returns on massive
expenditures on advertising. Industries spending from millions to
billions to win our hearts and influence our choices towards their
products and ideas. The sheer amounts of money this brings to media
companies is significant and for many cases forms then main form of
support for the media company. Hence if something is reported that
the advertiser doesn't like, the media company risks losing much
needed revenue to stay alive.
As a result, the mainstream media is largely driven by the forces of
the market.
The Audience as the Product
Additionally, as Noam Chomsky points out in his article, What Makes
Mainstream Media Mainstream, for a company such as the New York
Times, it too has to sell products to its customers. For the New York
Times and other such companies, Chomsky points out that the product
is the audience, and the customers are the corporate advertisers.
This at first thought doesn't seem to make sense. It is not, as we
would normally think, and it should be that the product is the
newspaper, and the customers are the audience/readers. Sure, readers
buy the paper, but as he further points out, readers fit a demography
and it is this that is valuable information that can be used by
advertisers. Hence, to the advertisers, the product that the New York
Times and such companies bring to them, is the audience itself and it
is the advertisers that bring the money to the media companies, not
the audience.
[T]he New York Times [is] a corporation and sells a product. The
product is audiences. They don't make money when you buy the
newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free.
They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience
is the product. ... You have to sell a product to a market, and the
market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses).
Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling
audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations.
- Noam Chomsky, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, Z Magazine, June 1997.
The Audience also as the Consumer
Ben Bagdikian, a prominent media critic, and author of the
well-acclaimed book The Media Monopoly, provides more detail and
examples. In Chapter 6 of his book, for example, Bagdikian describes
in detail the pressure on media companies to change content (to "dumb
down") and to shape content based on the demographics of the
audiences. Slowly then, the content of media isn't as important as
the type of person being targeted by the ads.
He also shows that the notion of "giving the audience what they want"
is also a bit misleading because, if anything, it is more about
targeting those readers that can afford the products that are
advertised and so it is almost like giving the advertisers what they
want!
The "dumbing down" of the content also acts to promote a "buying
mood." Hence, as Bagdikian summarizes, "programming is carefully
noncontroversial, light, and nonpolitical" (see p. 133). As he traces
briefly the history of advertising in magazines he also hints that
this has happened for a long time:
The influence of advertising on magazines reached a point where
editors began selecting articles not only on the basis of their
expected interest for readers but for their influence on
advertisements. Serious articles were not always the best support for
ads. An article that put the reader in an analytical frame of mind
did not encourage the reader to take seriously an ad that depended on
fantasy or promoted a trivial product. An article on genuine social
suffering might interrupt the "buying" mood on which most ads for
luxuries depend. The next step, seen often in mid-twentieth century
magazines, was commissioning articles solely to attract readers who
were good prospects to buy products advertised in the magazine. After
that came the magazine phenomenon of the 1970s - creating magazines
for an identifiable special audience and selling them to particular
advertisers.
- Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press,
2000), p.138.
Advertorials - Advertisements disguised as News!
Sometimes, news stories or editorials are often subtle product
advertisements, even with a rise of new terms in critical circles,
such as "advertorials."
In other cases, due to large ownership, a news company will advertise
another program belonging to the parent network and highlight it as a
news story, as some "reality TV" programs in America, such as the
Survivor series, have shown. Another example is the hype on ABC News
of Disney's Pearl Harbor movie (Disney owns ABC), which some have
even described as propaganda. Examples abound, and it would be a
futile effort to attempt to list them all here. Such use of news time
to promote entertainment has come under criticism of late.
Richard Robbins also captures this well:
Protected by the free speech provision of the First Amendment,
corporations marshal huge public relations efforts on behalf of their
agendas. In the United States the 170,000 public relations employees
whose job it is to manipulate news, public opinion and public policy
in the interests of their clients outnumber news reporters by 40,000.
A study in 1990 discovered that almost 40 percent of the news content
of a typical U.S. newspaper originates as public relations press
releases, story memos, and suggestions. The Columbia Journalism
Review reported that more than half the news stories in the Wall
Street Journal are based solely on corporate press releases (cited in
Korten 1995:146 [When Corporations Rule the World]). United States
corporations spend almost half as much on advertising (approximately
$120 per person) as the state spends on education ($207 per person).
- Richard Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism,
(Allyn and Bacon, 1999) p. 138
On April 7, 2002, UK's BBC aired a documentary called Century of the
Self looking back at the rise of consumerism in the 20th century. In
discussing the role of the media, it was pointed out how journalism
also changed as big business started to gain more influence. Many, in
order to get stories that would attract readers, would have to agree
to editorial content being dictated by business, such as placement of
specific advertising in the pictures, placing certain sentences and
paragraphs, and mentioning key products related to the story, etc.
(More about consumerism in general can be seen on this site's section
on Consumption and Consumerism.)
Advertainment - Advertisements disguised as Entertainment!
We are also seeing more sophisticated techniques, such as short films
where the aim is to sell a product but to cleverly do the advertising
in a subtle way. These mini films can be very entertaining and
exciting, but also promote a product behind the main theme.
While it could be argued that there is nothing wrong with this, it is
just a more sophisticated way to sell products, more forthcoming and
explicit mention that this is a commercial would be good for more
people to be aware of what they are watching. (Although, that might
be as hard as asking a government to tell their audience that they
are about to watch some propaganda and to take it in appropriate
consideration!)
Also, the enormous sums of money that can back up this sort of
entertainment versus others, can in the long run further affect the
type and diversity of the content we receive.
In fact, "brand-sponsored content" as Steve Golin likes to call this,
is as old as television. Today, many gripe that the World Wide Web is
nothing but a World Wide Commercial for which securing eyeballs for
advertisers is the first and last concern. Lest we forgot, TV was
also invented to sell to us in the comfort of our home. Content has
always been an after thought. At the dawn of TV, soap operas got
their name from the soap that was hawked by the show's sponsors, who
exercised a good deal of control over the show's themselves, (which
existed merely to fill the space between commercials.)
- Erika Milvy, Advertainment's New Frontier, AlterNet, June 25, 2001
Product Placement
As Milvy has noted above, advertisements in television programming
goes back to the beginnings of television. These days, whether you
are watching a film from Bollywood (India's film industry), or
Hollywood, there will be some obvious advertisement, and some
not-so-obvious ones.
This "product placement" is becoming more pervasive. Also noting the
old-age of product placement in films, the BBC also adds that it is
now also extending to other forms of entertainment:
Cinema-goers will be familiar with product placement in films: those
countless examples where the camera lingers just a little too long
over a logo before shifting back to the main action. Now, more than
50 years after Hollywood wised up to the fact that companies will pay
to have their brands featured within the narrative of a movie,
advertisers have begun to extend the principle to formats such as
books, pop songs, videos and computer games.
- Jonathan Duffy, Well Placed, BBC News Magazine, BBC, March 30, 2005
This therefore begs the question (as Duffy also asks), "Who is in
charge - the producer or the product brand manager?"
Duffy also adds, "research shows that in programmes recorded,
two-thirds to 80% of ads are skipped." That is, people don't want to
watch advertising. Hence, the increased interest in placing brands in
actual programming where it is sometimes less obvious.
British television has long resisted explicit product placement in
its television programs (a limited form is allowed to be "realistic",
where the company is not allowed to profit from it). Now, as the same
BBC article reports, it seems that the British regulator is
considering allowing more product placement because the industry is
losing money as people try to skip ads where possible. A question
that the BBC article does not raise however, is why a regulator -
supposedly there for the public interest - is helping save an
industry. Market forces are supposed to govern if some industries and
companies are viable or not. Markets are meant to adapt to changes in
consumer behaviour (though markets also try to create consumer
behaviour)...! Similar companies often complain when regulation
restricts their "freedom", often in the public interest, yet are
happy to use those regulatory bodies to help them.
Political influence
Bagdikian also goes on to show that mass advertising also "introduced
a new factor in selling: It began to prevent competition" and that it
would "negate the classical theory of supply and demand" that was
described by Adam Smith (see p.143). And this isn't just an
observation limited to Bagdikian. Robert McChesney, for example also
observes similar things:
Advertising [in oligopolistic markets] provides a way to protect or
expand market share without engaging in profit-threatening price
competition.
- Robert W. McChesney, Rich Media Poor Democracy; Communication
Politics in Dubious Times, (University of Illinois Press, 1999), p.139
In addition, corporate influence has affected what gets reported and
what doesn't, as John Prestage highlights:
Even some mainstream journalists are sounding the alarm.... Henry
Holcomb, who is president of the Newspaper Guild of Greater
Philadelphia and a journalist for 40 years, said that newspapers had
a "clearer mission" back when he began reporting. That mission was to
"report the truth and raise hell." But corporate pressures have
blurred this vision, he said.
Janine Jackson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a news
media watchdog group, told the American Free Press that 60 percent of
journalists surveyed by FAIR admitted that advertisers "try to change
stories."
"Some advertisers kill some stories and promote others," she said,
asserting that there is an "overwhelming influence of corporations
and advertisers" on broadcast and print news reporting.
"The trends are all bad, worse and worse," Nichols said. Newspapers
and broadcast journalists are under "enormous pressures to replace
civic values with commercial values."
He labeled local television news a "cesspool." Local broadcasters are
under pressure from big corporations to "entertain" rather than to
inform, and people are "more ignorant" after viewing television news
because of the misinformation they broadcast, he said.
- Jon Prestage, Mainstream Journalism: Shredding the First Amendment,
Online Journal, 7 November 2002
Bagdikian also points out that as economic and political influence
also becomes a factor for large businesses, ownership of media
companies is often a result:
Mass advertising is no longer solely a means of introducing and
distributing consumer goods, though it does that. It is a major
mechanism in the ability of a relatively small number of giant
corporations to hold disproportionate power over the economy. These
corporations need newspapers, magazines, and broadcasting not just to
sell their goods but to maintain their economic and political
influence. The media are no longer neutral agents of the merchants
but essential gears in the machinery of corporate giantism. And
increasingly they are not only needed but they are owned by the
corporate giants.
- Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press,
2000), p.150.
UK's Channel 4 aired a documentary on September 27, 2002 about the
photographer James Natchway, who has produced pictures of poverty,
famine, war etc and has been published in many magazines. In that
documentary he also highlighted a growing issue of concern, whereby
advertisers were increasingly pressuring publications to not put
their adverts next to such harrowing pictures, because it would
affect they buying mood of the readers. As a result, Natchway has
felt that this has contributed to a large decline in coverage of such
issues, making way for less controversial issues of entertainment,
celebrities and fashion.
Globalization of consumers
As globalization becomes ever more prominent, the role of media and
advertising and consumerism also increases. Ideal for the large
multinationals that can take best advantage of globalization include
the even larger "market" to which products can be sold. However,
diverse cultures could sometimes be an obstacle to easy selling.
Ideally then, attitudes and consumption habits need to be similar for
best effect. As a result many media companies promote and project a
more aligned culture that will cross these boundaries but also allow
easier consumption of their products. The United Nations Development
Programme's 1998 Human Development Report summarizes this quite well:
Globalization is integrating not just trade, investment and financial
markets. It is also integrating consumer markets. ... [Economically,
] there is fierce competition to sell to consumers worldwide, with
increasingly aggressive advertising.
On the social side local and national boundaries are breaking down in
the setting of social standards and aspirations in consumption.
Market research identifies "global elites" and "global middle
classes" who follow the same consumption styles, showing preferences
for "global brands". There are the "global teens" - some 270 million
15- to 18-year-olds in 40 countries - inhabiting a "global space", a
single pop-culture world, soaking up the same videos and music and
providing a huge market for designer running shoes, t-shirts and
jeans.
... At the same time the consumer receives a flood of information
through commercial advertising. An average American, it is estimated,
sees 150,000 advertisements on television in his or her lifetime. And
advertising is increasing worldwide, faster than population or
incomes. Global advertising spending, by the most conservative
reckoning, is now $435 billion.
- Human Development Report 1998 Overview, United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP)
Also worth quoting at some length is part of a paper looking at
democracy and transnational media, labelled "promotion of consumerism
at all costs":
The leading transnational media giants are often American or at least
Western corporations. To expand markets they must continue to look
for new regions for expansion. Southeast Asia, for example, may be
one of the last major regions to be affected by international
satellites.
It really was not until the 1990s, for example, that Southeast Asia
saw Western television enter on a massive scale. Advances in
technology plus market liberalization were reasons. Asia, of course,
is the largest worldwide market (2.8 billion) and has one-third of
the world's television sets. While Asia has been known to foster a
distinct culture and linguistic heritage, this specialty is now in
jeopardy. We see MTV, Western news and movie channels, and other
Western media influences spreading across Asia. The cultural heritage
of these countries is being threatened by trans border data flow,
media images moving across national borders thanks to new electronic
forms of media delivery. People are told they need products they
never "realized" they required. They are told via media that Western
styles and habits may be better or more desirable than their own
traditions and customs. Young people in particular now grow up with
stronger ties to New York and Los Angeles than their own capitals and
families.
Then there is the danger that comes when making money is more
important than quality of information flow. China's 1.2 billion
people are a very desirable audience. Consider what happened when
News Corporation purchased STAR TV in 1993. A controversial program
on the Chinese government on BBC Work Television News lead to PRC
official complaints. Murdock simply pulled the plug. Note that he
also was an investor in the Beijing People's Daily. Similar pressures
caused him to pressure Harper Collins of London to cancel a book
contract with a former ambassador to China because it too was
critical of the regime.
The problem goes beyond economic concentrations. Because the product
of media industries is cultural programming, the concern centers on
the very fabric of life.
As stated earlier, the movement is toward grabbing attention and
creating a desire for things that people never knew was needed. It
also is about using the media to homogenize culture. It involves the
world's children, even in the most communication-savvy communities
where children below the age of ten are targeted with clever media
campaigns. Yet these children are incapable of cognitively
understanding what media does. Hence we have animated television
programs as those developed several years ago, He-Man and She Ra,
where the programs primarily were introduced to market massive lines
of toys for the Christmas season. We are submitting innocent children
to strategies of a mega-million dollar advertising industry and most
parents are incapable of responding to sales campaigns of this
magnitude. MTV is another example. Here we have entertainment
programming which doubles as a continuous commercial for music CDs,
clothing lines, talk shows involving music personalities, and a
variety of other marketing ploys.
- Richard C. Vincent, Transnational Media and the Survival of
Democracy, Department of Communication, Indiana State University, 16
March 2001. (Emphasis Added)
In this web site's look at media in the United States,
http://globalissues.org/HumanRights/Media/USA.asp
there is further discussion on how the market imposes its desires on
the media. In the next section though, we see how this power to
influence consumers also affects the perspectives and ideologies
portrayed in the mainstream when it comes to international political
and economic issues.
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