Advertisers

The media is inextricably linked to the wider corporate system in many ways - for example, by its dependence on advertising which constitutes fully 75% of the average British broadsheet's total revenue. Writing in the Observer in 2001, Richard Ingrams noted that The Daily Telegraph had lost 100,000 readers over the previous year, adding:
"No doubt this alarming fall explains a recent meeting between Telegraph executives and advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, at which the admen attacked the poor old Telegraph editor Charles Moore for his outdated Little England attitudes coupled with homophobia." (Observer, Nov 4, 2001)

An ad-dependent press is unlikely
- to reveal the destructive aspects of the corporate system, which includes advertisers.
- to emphasise the adverse health effects associated with products promoted in its pages.
- to seriously analyse the role of corporations in seeking to influence domestic and foreign policy.
- to reveal the network of links between corporations, state policy makers, Third World dictators and profits.

Editors and journalists will not admit the pressure of advertisers. Media Lens questioned some editors, for example, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian: is material printed sensitive to the pressure of advertisers? He replied:
"Um, no, I don't think so. No, I think... I wouldn't have thought so. Sometimes you publish stories and advertisers may sulk and go away. Eventually the advertisers need you more than you need them, or... I don't think it's a huge issue in the mainstream press in a thriving economy. I think it's much more of an issue for magazines that are heavily dependent on a narrow range of advertisers."
But big advertisers tell another story.

An international memo put out by tobacco company Philip Morris said:
"The media like the money they make from our advertisements and they are an ally that we can and should exploit... We should make a concerted effort in our principal markets to influence the media to write articles or editorials positive to the industry position on the various aspects of the smoking controversy."
In 1993 Mercedes Benz told 30 different magazines that it would withdraw its advertisements from any issue that contained articles critical of Mercedes, German products or Germany.
In a letter to over 100 magazines, Chrysler corporation advised in 1997:
"In an effort to avoid potential conflicts, it is required that Chrysler corporation be alerted in advance of any and all editorial content that encompasses sexual, political, social issues or any editorial content that could be construed as provocative or offensive."
Proctor & Gamble, the world's biggest advertiser, explicitly prohibited programmes "which could in any way further the concept of business as cold, ruthless, and lacking all sentiment or spiritual motivation".
The Economist reports how media projects "unsuitable for corporate sponsorship tend to die on the vine," adding that media "have learned to be sympathetic to the most delicate sympathies of corporations".

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR - www.fair.org) reports that in a 2000 Pew Centre for the People & the Press poll of 287 US reporters, editors and news executives, about one-third of respondents, said that news that would "hurt the financial interests" of the media organization or an advertiser goes unreported. 41% said they themselves have avoided stories, or softened their tone, to benefit their media company's interests.
A 2000 Time magazine series on environmental campaigners, sponsored by Ford Motor Company, failed to mention anti-auto campaigners because "we don't run airline ads next to stories about airline crashes" (international editor).
In a rare, dissenting article, Richard Ingrams of the Observer indicated the hidden connection between media silence on mobile phone health risks and profits: "When the newspapers are obviously doing so well out of all this advertising, it is not so surprising that they tend not to give much coverage to the growing evidence that mobile phones are not only anti-social but extremely dangerous." (Observer, 19.12.99)

Advertising is only one of a range of powerful constraints on free reporting - media entities are themselves profit-seeking corporations, owned by giant parent companies (arms manufacturers, nuclear power construction companies, and the like), and by wealthy moguls with all kinds of fingers in all kinds of business pies. They are vulnerable to attack by powerful corporate front groups and flak machines, and deeply dependent for breaking news on business-friendly state news sources.

These pressures combine to create the media servility that we see all around us. Corporate criminality is exposed, globalisation challenged, but so feebly that the public fail to grasp the true scale & destructiveness of corporate power. The 'free press' is a lynchpin of the corporate system. Its role is to maintain the vital illusion of neutrality and objectivity, while promoting an establishment & business controlled agenda and hiding state-corporate responsibility for huge human rights abuses abroad.

Source: Media Lens: www.medialens.org (Oct 2001)
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