Because of the centrality of the U.S. media in the global system, their trend-setting character, and their representation of the most mature dominantly commercial sys-tem in a world in which commercialization is becoming ever more important, this chapter focuses on the relationship between media and markets in the United States.
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the domestic industry. In these cases the financial community and mainstream me-dia were also very quiet, reporting the minimal facts, but not stressing or protesting very strenuously the violation of the basic principles of free trade. In addition, at times when foreign competition has widespread scale and learning curve advan-tages and infant industries are weak, there may be a virtual consensus of the market that protection is in the national interest. However, when national industry and fi-nance have competitive advantages across a wide range of activities and freer trade and improved opportunities for foreign investment would serve their interests, we would expect the market to support “free trade” and oppose protectionism, with opportunistic exceptions as noted (DuBoff 1989, pp. 55–56, 152, 165–66; Schumpeter 1954, pp. 397–406).
At times when the market supports free trade and opposes protectionism, work-ers and the general public may have a different view. This was the case during the U.S. debates about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 and 1994 and later controversies about the operations and plans of the World Trade Or-ganization (WTO). Public opinion polls during 1993 and 1994, for example, showed public majorities regularly opposed to NAFTA (for details about media treatment versus polls of citizen opinion see Herman 1999, chapter 14), while elite opinion, and surely the market, was for it. The mainstream media of the United States were also for it, so that in this important, and far from unique, case the media could be said to support the market in the dual senses of supporting an agreement that enlarged the reach of markets and constrained the role of government in economic activity, and also supporting what market opinion favored.
As the general public was hostile to NAFTA, media support for it raises questions about whose interests the media serve. Another question is whether the media cov-ered the issue with the fairness and objectivity consistent with their theoretical role as managers of a public sphere in which sufficient information is provided to make democratic choices and public participation in the democratic process real.
The media’s alignment with the market on the NAFTA issue was predictable. As already noted, the mainstream media in the United States are members of the mar-ket, so, for example, if they are businesses that hire labor and have to deal with labor unions (and frequently try to fend them off), they are, from the start, in an adversary relationship with labor.2 This is a structural fact that will almost certainly affect the attitudes of the owners and top managers of media enterprises, and these are the individuals who control the organization, hire the top personnel, and set the tone of its work as a media enterprise. Note that during the NAFTA controversies of 1993 both the New York Times (November 16) and the Washington Post (September 23) ran editorials criticizing organized labor’s attempts to influence the outcome of the 2. The Washington Post, New York Times, Knight-Ridder, Gannett, and others have had serious labor conflicts over the years (see Puette 1992).
struggle, suggesting that this was improper and that labor should know its place.
They did not publish comparable criticisms of the efforts of business to influence the legislative outcome, or even of the Mexican government’s intervention in the debate represented by an estimated expenditure of US$30 million on public relations within the United States.3
The forces that affect media treatment of these kinds of issues can be summarized in a model or framework that focuses on media structures and relationships and reflects the media’s integration into the market system and political economy. Herman and Chomsky’s (2002, chapter 1) propaganda model attempts to do this, featuring five factors that profoundly influence the media’s editorial positions and news choices, namely, (a) ownership and control and bottom-line orientation, (b) funding by ad-vertisers, (c) sourcing, (d) flak, and (e) ideology.
Ownership and Control and Bottom-Line Orientation
The mainstream media in the United States are privately owned and are controlled by wealthy individuals or by other corporations. With stock outstanding, they have fiduciary obligations to their owners to focus on the bottom line, which may well conflict with any theoretical public service obligations. Thus broadcasters did not keep their promises, made in earlier years, to provide public service programming, because the growth of advertising and advertisers’ preference for entertainment led them to steadily displace documentaries and other politically enlightening fare with entertainment (see Herman and McChesney 1997, chapter 5, and sources cited therein).
Private owners, especially those of major media, are likely to favor markets, of which they are a part and of which they are major beneficiaries. There is some dispute about the extent to which owners influence media behavior and performance. At a minimum, even where the stock of a media organization is widely distributed, the controlling management will face strong pressure to focus on the bottom line. This in itself has policy implications, as such a focus implies catering to advertisers, cultivat-ing relationships with dominant information sources, and avoidcultivat-ing conflict with other powerful constituencies. The media organization will often have policies in place that affect the treatment of economic and other issues for this and other reasons.
Important media proprietors have had definite, strong political views that they have imposed on their media outlets,4 and from time to time the evidence indicates
3. For an extensive treatment of the U.S. business campaign to push through NAFTA and the Clinton administration’s participation in that campaign see McArthur (1999).
4. Famous cases include Henry Luce and his Time-Life-Fortune empire, the Hearst press, Colo-nel Robert McCormick and the Chicago Tribune, the Wallace family’s Reader’s Digest, William Knowland’s Oakland Tribune, Rupert Murdoch’s papers and television stations, the Moon-sponsored Washington Times, Walter Annenberg’s Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Copley papers.
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that a great many less strongly ideological proprietors have had a distinct and ongo-ing influence on media policy choices.5 Close connections and reciprocal service be-tween top media owners and executives, on the one hand, and U.S. presidents and State Department, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Pentagon officials, on the other hand, are also easily documented.6
Despite the extensive evidence of proprietary influence, it is often difficult to prove on an ongoing basis. Compelling documentation is frequently accessible only for the past. Policy is likely to be transmitted to the lower echelons in subtle ways: by hiring senior editors known to fit the owner’s general outlook and to be sensitive to propri-etary demands; by politically biased selection, promotion, and dismissal of report-ers;7 and by editorial instruction on story selection, emphases, and tone that guides underlings as to what is expected of them (see Breed 1955; Soloski 1989).
Equally important, distinguishing between proprietor-editor policy and mere profit seeking is difficult. As noted, however, a decision to focus strictly on profitability is a major and conservative policy decision in its own right. We may distinguish between an explicit and intended policy line and a policy by default, whereby a proprietor who is trying to maximize profits follows the line dictated by dominant sources, which will be cheap (“efficient”) and will not offend the powerful.
5. Turner Catledge, the top New York Times editor for 17 years, noted that the paper’s chief owner, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was in the habit of “making his likes and dislikes known,” and that “he sought executives who shared his general outlook, and he tried, by word and deed, to set a tone for the paper” (Catledge 1971, p. 189). Later, when A. M. Rosenthal was managing editor of the Times and imposed a distinct structure of policies on the paper, this was clearly in accord with the political preferences of the publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (see Herman 1999, chapters 6–8).
Similar conclusions can be drawn from histories of the Washington Post (Davis 1984; Halberstam 1981), CBS (Halberstam 1981; Paper 1987), and the Los Angeles Times (Halberstam 1981).
6. On the links between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal see Herman (1999, chapters 6–9). David Sarnoff, head of RCA and NBC, received the title of brigadier general dur-ing World War II for his armed services propaganda effort. In the late 1940s he chaired an orga-nization called the Armed Forces Communication Association where he promoted numerous Cold War propaganda themes (see Lyons 1966, pp. 270–71). On the extensive connections of Paley and CBS to the government and CIA, see Halberstam (1981) and Paper (1987, pp. 303–4) and Schorr 1978, pp. 204, 275 and following). The revolving door between senior government and media officials has been extremely active. James Hagerty went from being President Eisenhower’s press secretary to serving as chief of ABC News. David Gergen went from Reagan’s White House media staff to a senior editorial position at U.S. News and World Report. Edward W.
Barrett resigned as undersecretary of state for public affairs to work for NBC. Before he went to the State Department he was editorial director of Newsweek. On the Washington Post’s official links to government and the CIA see Davis (1984).
7. According to Davis (1984, p. 302), at Ben Bradlee’s interview for a top job at the Washing-ton Post, Katherine Graham, the publisher, asked him how he planned to cover the Vietnam War, which she consistently supported. “Bradlee said he didn’t know, but that he’d hire no ‘son-of-a-bitch’ reporter who was not a patriot.”
Advertising
The mainstream media depend heavily on advertising to fund their operations, rang-ing from perhaps 70 percent of revenue for newspapers to more than 95 percent for television. Advertisers influence the media not by crude interventions, which are relatively rare, but by their interest in obtaining a programming environment that supports their commercial messages, as well as by their hostility to antibusiness messages.8 Competition for advertising business is a powerful force that causes the media to program and otherwise structure their activities so as to meet the demands of these primary sources of revenue (see Barnouw 1978). Avoiding flak from adver-tisers is a major concern of media managers (see the section on “Flak”).
Sourcing
The major media want steady and reliable sources of news, which they can obtain mainly from other large governmental and business organizations. Fishman (1980, p.143) calls this “the principle of bureaucratic affinity: only other bureaucracies can satisfy the input needs of a news bureaucracy.” The symbiotic relationship that de-velops from this mutual dependency and service gives the large nonmedia organiza-tions an edge in framing the news, and both governmental and large business organizations tend to favor markets, although conflicts about particular policy is-sues may exist between government and business, or even among business organiza-tions, for example, as in the case of the recent protectionist actions favoring steel producers, where corporate users of steel were strongly against protection and in favor of free trade.
Flak
Flak refers to negative feedback to news and other media offerings, which may take the form of individual calls and letters of protest, organized actions such as picketing and boycotts, law suits, and even congressional hearings and regulatory actions. Flak is most threatening to the media, and most effective in influencing their behavior, when it comes from people and organizations that can seriously harm them, like advertisers and organizations and government bodies that can withdraw their pa-tronage, humiliate them, and rule or legislate against them. Thus when CBS pro-duced a documentary critical of the Pentagon and its contractors (“The Selling of the
8. Procter and Gamble had a written policy as follows: “There will be no material on any of our programs which could in any way further the concept of business as cold, ruthless, and lacking all sentiment or spiritual motivation.” It is not alone in such a policy. For more informa-tion see Bagdikian (2000, pp. 155–73).
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Pentagon,” shown on February 23, 1971), CBS was forced to defend itself before a congressional committee, a somewhat chilling experience for CBS and a lesson to other media. When public television station WNET showed the program “Hungry for Profit,” which criticized transnational corporate behavior in the developing world, Gulf & Western withdrew its funding support from the station, and the Economist (“Castor Oil or Camelot?” December 5, 1987) noted that “Most people believe that WNET would not make the same mistake again.”
Flak that seriously worries the media derives mainly from the same large bodies, such as the Pentagon and its contractors, companies like Gulf & Western, and adver-tisers, that are important information sources and also tend to be friendly to mar-kets. There are even institutions created to produce flak, such as Accuracy in Media, The Center for Media and Public Affairs, Freedom House, and The Media Institute, funded mainly by the corporate community, that attack the media for any incipient populist tendencies and press them to support deregulation, privatization, and an aggressive foreign policy.
Ideology
U.S. ideology flows from the strength of the property-owning and business class, and has long been characterized by anticommunism, possessive individualism, be-lief in the merits of private enterprise and markets, and hostility toward the govern-ment except in its role of maintaining law and order and serving business interests abroad (Herman and Chomsky 2002; Katznelson and Kesselman 1979, chapter 2).
These elements of ideology have a firmer grip on the business community and on the elite than on blue-collar workers and others who are not as clear beneficiaries of the status quo. The leaders of the media are members of that elite, and so are many of the journalists of the leading media organizations (Croteau 1998; Gans 1985). Soci-ologist and media analyst Gans (1979, pp. 42–55) lists a number of assumptions, such as “ethnocentrism,” “altruistic democracy,” and “responsible capitalism” that he also calls “enduring values,” and which he contends U.S. journalists take for granted. He gives this set of premises and values the name “para-ideology.” There is evidence that for many journalists the belief that free enterprise and free trade are good and government enterprise and regulation and constraints on free trade are bad are im-portant elements of their para-ideology. The forces of ideology and para-ideology add to the other factors that tend to make journalists favorable to the market.