Mass Media: Democracy Undermined? by Cameron Gaut

In his essay on civil disobedience, Henry David Thoreau once said, “The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich,” (Gage 164). The Mass Media, the collection of newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs that reach a mass audience, is usually owned and controlled by media corporations. Today, media corporations are such institutions that make people rich. America’s free market economy is a game of evolution which allows dominating media corporations to expand their empires while crippling the less powerful independents. This expansion, important to keeping news sources diverse, discourages competition between media companies. The conglomeration and concentration of media outlets impedes the functioning of the democratic process because a democratic process can only function when its citizens are informed by unbiased, diverse media.

Charles Darwin’s widely accepted theory of social evolution, survival of the fittest, applies to several aspects of American society, including media companies. Survival for these companies entails fierce competition to catch the most viewers and/or readers. Over time, strategies for catching attention of viewers and readers have become more and more extreme. The news media will often rely on the ability to exploit our most innate, primitive instincts. Agner Fog, Ph.D., tells us, “Some of the most important survival factors for primeval [humans] were food, danger, sex, and children” (Fog Online). These topics always catch our attention, whether we like it or not. Therefore, we will listen attentively when news programs document disasters, and we will buy the paper when it warns us about the next new hazard. These attention-catching subjects are metaphorically called “buttons”. Take the death of Princess Diana, or even the anthrax scare. The Mass Media capitalized off of these stories because they pressed people’s emotional buttons. Problems involving fear and danger are very captivating to audiences, therefore very lucrative for the media. This contest to see who can push the most buttons is a downward spiral that only gets worse with each new shocking headline. In a free market economy, if you aren’t always outdoing your competitor, your competitor will outdo you.

In recent decades, the competition between Media corporations has transformed the way that they are managed. According to Frank A. Blethen, the publisher and CEO of the Seattle Times Co., the following things have happened in the Media. “Convergence”: Just recently, on July 2nd of 2003, the Republican controlled FCC loosened a ban on cross-media ownership. It is now possible for a company to own a daily newspaper and a television station in the same town or area. Also, a single TV network can now reach as much as 90% of the nation’s TV audience (FCC Online). “Concentration”: Media corporations are owned by only a few individuals, instead of many independent individuals. “Commercialization”: Advertisers that provide the news media with their income have nearly gained editorial control. Also, advertisements are present more than ever before in the News Media. “Trivialization”: There has been more of what the Public “wants”: sex, violence, and celebrities, which do nothing more than distract us from issues that are truly important, such as the one discussed in this essay. But of course, the media would prefer not to talk about what I’m about to tell you.

A competitive economy is a breeding ground for monopolies. A monopoly is defined as exclusive control by one group of the means of selling a commodity. In this case, the commodity on sale is information. When media corporations compete, thrive, and grow stronger, it makes it easier for them to dominate and monopolize their industry. Once the corporation achieves its mega-corporation status, smaller companies have difficulty succeeding, and eventually will die off, or will be assimilated by its larger counterpart. The trend of amalgamation of small companies and larger businesses results in a lack of diversity, as well as a loss of checks and balances. It could be argued that diversity is not lost with the conglomeration of media companies; the companies simply join together with other diverse companies under one name or conglomeration. While this is true, the inherent problem with this is that the companies are no longer owned by several people from diverse backgrounds, but one or two people with a single agenda.

Diversity and Checks and Balances in the media ensure that the public is heard, and that the government and businesses are held accountable for their behavior. The first amendment of our constitution says that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” This guarantees that there will be a multitude of voices to represent the diverse opinions, interests, and backgrounds of the population. Diversity is essential to the mass media, but diversity is only part of the solution. Checks and Balances are also essential. Without opposition or competition, an unrestrained organization can effectively carry through with whatever agenda it desires. Admittedly, the first amendment has been successful in upholding our right to speak out without fear of prosecution. The problem is that it’s very difficult to extend our voices beyond public access television, ‘zines, and local newspapers. The only way to reach beyond our neighborhoods and communities is to gain access to the Mass Media, which isn’t possible without the essential commodity: money.

Today, media conglomerates are not only influenced by Big Money interests, but they are often themselves Big Money interests. For example, General Electric owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, CourtTV, Bravo, A&E, the History Channel, GE Consumer Electronics, GE Power Systems, GE Plastics, GE Transportation systems, and much more (General Electric, Online). Media corporations have billions invested in varieties of industries. We can see how this can be disruptive to accurate and fair reporting. To illustrate, a news program shown on NBC will probably never do any deep investigative muckraking on, say GE Power Systems. The business community in the United States generally wants material in the media that supports their image, as well as the White House, Pentagon, State Department, and local police departments; they desire the media to serve as a pipeline for the word of government officials (Herman 13). To illustrate this point, 78 percent of stories in the NY Times and the Washington Post stories are based on “official sources” (Lee 17). The angle from these officials is not often supportive of non-officials and competitors who do not side with the president. Financial influence from outside interests and reluctance to offend partners of business ultimately results in a news establishment biased in favor of wealthy corporations.

The automatic endorsement of information from any “official” by the media makes it very easy for government propaganda to appear real and truthful; the agenda of mainstream media is also almost always strikingly similar to that of the government and wealthy corporations because of this fact (Herman 5). Professional journalism relies heavily on “official sources.” Spokespeople, White House press secretaries, and the army general are all considered official sources. Their perspectives are automatically legitimate; not many people question an “official source.” Reporters will sometimes use specific sources to illustrate their point, because they know that they can count on the viewpoint of the source to coincide with the agenda. But it's not the reporters who are at fault. They just report what they are told to report. Even if they did find something that would be of interest to the public, editors re-write, slash, and pick out parts that they find unnecessary (Lee 16). Reporters that do uncover scandalous stories, such as the Watergate incident, are rarely independent voices in search of the truth for the sake of the public. Woodward and Bernstein, the reporters that “uncovered” the Watergate scandal actually received a leak from a hired investigator. It turns out that the grand jury had already presented the incriminating information in court a month before it was released to the Washington Post on August 1 (Epstein Online). Often the reporters who uncover stories are the ones most subservient to their superiors. By being obedient, reporters can compete for access to the “best” sources (Lee 18).

The competition of media corporations allows money to be a more important asset than providing the public with informative, quality journalism. To be successful in America, you need money. To successfully compete in the media marketplace, the necessity of money is also necessary. To fulfill this necessity for more and more money, the news media will often write from one angle because it’s more lucrative to tell only one side of a story (Fog Online). Most people want to hear points of view that they agree with. In essence, the mass media will often give the public “what they want to hear” to increase their revenue. By appealing to many readers, newspapers and magazines can not only increase sales, but also charge advertisers more money because the audience reached is wider.

Money earned from advertising impedes the news media’s ability to deliver the most truthful and unbiased information, because the media’s ability to make a profit partly depends on delivering an audience to advertisers. Martin Lee, a nationally syndicated columnist, says that to advertisers, the public exists mostly as a mass of potential customers (Lee xiii). Since advertisers provide a bulk of the money to the media, the media does not want to offend the advertisers. For instance, in Newsweek’s June 6, 1983 issue, Newsweek published an article detailing the nonsmoker’s rights movements. When the tobacco advertisers learned about this, they withdrew their advertisements from that issue, which may have cost Newsweek as much as one million dollars in advertising (White 139). It is true, though, that not all media broadcasters and publishers rely on advertisements. There are the rare few exemplary stations such as Oregon Public Broadcasting and publications like Adbusters that don’t rely on advertisements. However, these kinds of organizations usually don’t fit the definition of Mass Media. Although advertisers have a role in the suppression of information from the media, they aren’t the only perpetrators in preventing information from reaching the public eye.

“Gatekeepers” can prevent people with opposing viewpoints from those of the Mass Media from making their voices heard, which is dangerous to democracy. Originally, gatekeepers were essential to newspapers because without them, newspaper stories might have run on for much longer than most people’s attention spans could tolerate. This power over what is left in and what is cut out of the media has given gatekeepers a very influential role in the news that reaches the public. However, a new kind of gatekeeper now exists. Wealthy individuals who represent corporate establishments that advertise in the media can also influence what gets published and what doesn’t. Political economist Edward Herman writes that the biases of gatekeepers are reinforced by external biases: those of advertisers and convenient government officials from the White House, Pentagon, and State Department (Herman 12). It seems that the freedom that our constitution guarantees us can only be exercised with little public significance. People may have something to say that the public would like to hear, but gatekeepers are free to exclude any individual opinion from public news at their will. Although wealthy gatekeepers have this ability, it doesn’t mean that they will always exercise it. Admittedly, it isn’t too difficult to submit controversial opinion articles to local newspapers. If you’re lucky, it’s even possible to get your opinions published in state-wide newspapers. However, the quantity and variety of newspapers that you can submit opinion articles to is diminishing.
America is losing independent news sources at an alarming rate. In 1975, there were 863 daily newspaper owners and 543 television station owners. In 2000, there were only 290 newspaper owners and 360 television station owners (Blethen Online). The disappearing establishments are those that don't push quite as many “buttons” as the larger, more extreme equivalents. At the time of the Time-Warner merger, company executives were asked why they were merging, they said that “it would not be long before there would be five businesses that controlled all the media on the Planet Earth, and they intended to be one of them” (Blethen Online). The thought of so few companies dominating the Mass Media scares me, and I hope that the day never comes when we have to depend on a just a few corporations for our news. Although independent news publications are disappearing, another form of independent news is rapidly becoming the preferred alternative to mainstream media for countless individuals. Online news organizations such as indymedia.org and accuracy.org are paving the way in community-run, online independent news. Maybe there is some hope for democracy.

Democracy can be thought of as a four-legged stool. Each leg represents a different element that ensures the integrity of the system. The four legs are separation of church and state, inclusion (the Public's ability to vote), the constitutional balance of powers (the President, the Congress, Judiciary) and most critically, freedom of speech and press. If any of these legs are taken away, then our democracy is at risk. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are what keep the stool in balance, their purpose is to prevent abuse of power, give the public a voice, and keep the government and businesses responsible for their actions. The media conglomerates that have been acquiring independent news affiliations are threatening the purpose of free press. If no action is taken soon to correct this error, democracy will not be able to function.
Works Cited
Blethen, Frank A. " Concentration of Media Ownership Is Eroding Our Democracy.” 12 Sept. 2002. <http://www.iwantmedia.com/people/people19.html>
Epstein, Edward Jay. “Did the Press Uncover Watergate?” July 1974. <http://edwardjayepstein.com/archived/watergate.htm>
FCC (Federal Communications Commission). “FCC Sets Limit on Media Concentration.” 2 July. 2003.
Fog, Agner. “The supposed and the real role of mass media in modern democracy.” 2003. <http://www.agner.org/cultsel/mediacrisis.pdf>
General Electric Company. “Our Company: GE Business Directory.” 1997-2003. <http://www.ge.com/en/company/businesses/index.htm>
Herman, Edward S. Beyond Hypocrisy. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992.
Lee, Martin and Norman Solomon. Unreliable Sources. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group, 1990.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Resistance to Civil Government.” The Shape of Reason. Ed. John T. Gage. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2001.
White Larry C. Merchants of Death. New York: William Morrow Beech Tree Books, 1988.