This Space for Sale

Would you like to buy this blog? Thousands, maybe tens of thousands – many of them actually solvent --read it every week, making it an ideal place to promote your brand or company. The idea is simple: You give me money in the high four-figure range and you get your company name at the bottom of the page. Maybe you’d like a pop-up too? No problem. Naturally, as an honorable journalist, I will retain complete and utter independence and the right to say whatever I want, whenever I want… until, of course, I tire of cashing those high four-figure-range checks.

Something like this just happened at the Philadelphia Inquirer. The venerable old paper is about to start running a new column called PhillyInc. which will be sponsored by Citizens Bank. Got that? An editorial column sponsored by a bank and festooned with the bank’s logo and ads. William K. Marimow, the Inquirer’s editor, admits that, “instinctively, as a reporter, I would have recoiled at the idea.” But he has “come to terms with it,” the New York Times reports, and promises that the editorial staff will maintain “complete, independent control” of the column’s content.

Sure. I’ve been a columnist in one place or another for three decades, and I know that advertisers don’t have to own the column to exert censorship. A few years back, as a columnist for a national magazine, I wrote a piece about direct-to-consumer drug advertising, leading off with a description of the Claritin commercials: blue skies, flowers, and the instruction to ask your physician about this wonder product. The column, which I will admit was a tad sarcastic, was rejected without intelligible explanation. At least there was no explanation until I saw the magazine’s next issue, which featured a two-page advertisement for Claritin.

And note: My column was not called the Schering-Plough Healthcare Products Inc. Column. It would have been separated by many pages from the Claritin ad. But that apparently wasn’t far enough. As Gloria Steinem reported in 1990, advertisers can be very finicky about the editorial content that might appear in the same magazine as their ads. Ms. magazine ran into trouble because it often contained the dangerously upsetting word “lesbian.”

We all know that newspapers – and news magazines – are in trouble. Advertising revenues are falling, as is circulation, and the corporate owners of news outlets see them as “profit centers,” not public services. How much profit? Well, the Los Angeles Times was raking in a profit of 20 percent, which is more than most Fortune 500 companies, when it went through one of its recent bloodbaths, with the top editor axed for refusing to fire more reporters. So the papers cut international news and devote more and more editorial space to thinly veiled advertising for things you don’t need and can’t afford anyway – spas, travel, fashion, dining, home decorating—all of which attract pages of real ads.

But company-sponsored newspaper columns bring us to a new low. What next: The Wal-Mart column on social class in America? The Phillip Morris column on health issues? Remington bringing us essays on school violence? And will columnists be required, as a condition of employment, to find their own corporate sponsors, as in all those great nonprofit jobs you can have if you just do the fundraising to pay your own salary?

Somewhere out there there must be a corporation that will sponsor me. Citizens Bank, for example: I can even promise you subtle forms of product placement, as in the sentence, “Citizens screwed by high bank ATM fees.”

Comments

[Anarcissie]

As you point out advertiser control of editorial content isn't new, to say nothing of the class and individual interests of the publishers. What's new is making it so blatant. But people walk around with corporate brands on their butts -- maybe it's the wave of the future.

[lc2]

Frankly, I think I'd find such naming rights refreshingly honest ... especially if they were paired w/a brief corporate summary/prospectus. It would give the reader some immediate context for the opinions/material they're reading ... rather than thinking they're reading some "truth" that wasn't slanted in the least by the publication's underwriters whose ads appear on a whole diff. page.

[Monica]

To put this into perspective, there have been times and places when the spread and confidentiality of written information was controlled (not necessarily on purpose) by simply limiting the number of literate persons who could read and write, or do so for others who could not. Sometimes, an economic factor was added to that when poor people had to pay. And imagine having to make sure the contents of any letter is acceptable in the eyes of the priest or teacher of some remote village where the addressee lives, and not too embarrassing to dictate to the local writer in the sender's area.

[Tim Worstall]

Err, I'm sorry? A journalist complaining about advertisements in newspapers and magazines? Those things that pay her very wages?
(Cover prices, for those who don't know, just about cover distribution costs. Ads pay for everything else.)

[Tom]

Okay, so let's just give up then and let corporate America run the whole show. After all, they've taken over the government now as well as most of the media, and advertising is everywhere, whether you want it or not (and plans to go high-tech are in the works). They start with TV when you're too young to know what anything is about and continue right up through your formative years and college. By then if you aren't brainwashed to the corporate world's way of thinking, you just don't fit. But then, what do you know, Big Pharma comes along to cure all your troubles with mind numbing drugs. (Don't worry about the side effects, the FDA - which has been headed by corporate people over the years - has fully explored them and found that they're negligible).

[Anarcissie]

So, the corps control nearly everything. What's the alternative? (Not a rhetorical question.)

[Millard Fullbore]

"So, the corps control nearly everything. What's the alternative?"

It won't be accomplished easily, but we probably need to do away with the legal fiction that a corporation is a "person":

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/

I haven't read everything on that site so I can't endorse it unreservedly, but it introduces the concepts involved and it's a place to start.

Alternatives? Decide which human necessities should and should not be left to the tender mercies of the for-profit sector, and keep it on a short leash with a tight collar.

Again, easier said than done, but I think it's what needs to be done.

[Sharon DiLeo]

Err, I'm sorry? A journalist complaining about advertisements in newspapers and magazines? Those things that pay her very wages?
(Cover prices, for those who don't know, just about cover distribution costs. Ads pay for everything else.)

Posted by: Tim Worstall | April 27, 2007 at 03:45 AM

Tom, with all due respect, the reason we do not hear the "truth" in mainstream media is precisely because of the big bucks these greedy and unscrupulous money-grubbing corporations payout to the large (and, unfortunately, more visible) media outlets. Sure, this works great at indoctrinating the masses who are not encouraged to think critically and arrive at their own opinions and views.

I suggest you step out of your insular box and think about other ways to pay media salaries. Maybe the CEO could take a cut in his or her pay. Or, maybe media outlets could move away from being "Money-grubbing hos" and consider being more selective about from whom they get their advertising dollars.

Gee, I guess it's all about money, huh?

Tom, imagine an advertising CEO who thinks more about the environment, the lives of the worker bees beneath him or her, and the high cost of supporting a war dedicated to mass murder...

[lc2]

Of course before the stories even get written, there is the issue of freedom of information and what the press has access to. We're ranked fifty-something in the world for press freedom ... I'll try to hunt down that link.

[Anarcissie]

We do have alternative media, most of which is non- or low-profit. We're using it right now, in fact, to have this discussion. Its existence so far doesn't seem to have made a critical difference. Apparently the masses, so-called, want to be fooled, even at ruinous cost.

[chris]

Based on comments here, there are only four people -- self-identified -- who have escaped the bamboozlement, deceptions and brainwashing perpetrated by the Mainstream Media and our Corporate Overlords. Those four are Tom, Sharon Dileo, lc2 and Anarcissie.

In other words, everyone else is a dupe. Roughly 300 million useful idiots. But four minds among us have slipped away, minds unaltered and free of the power of the cabal of Corrupt Media and Corporate Bigwigs who control every dimension and aspect of life. Yikes.

[chris]

lc2, you wrote:

"Of course before the stories even get written, there is the issue of freedom of information and what the press has access to. We're ranked fifty-something in the world for press freedom ..."

Are you stating that reporters, or anyone writing anything about anyone or any entity must first receive permission from an authoritative agency and must base the story on pre-approved information issued by that agency?

You claim among the nations of the world the US is 52nd in press freedom?

Insanity.

I challenge you to name five countries with greater freedom of the press.

Give me one example of a true statement that is not permitted in the American press.

I challenge you to find one writer in this country who's been jailed for the words he/she has written.

Don't respond with nonsense about a couple of people who've been jailed for not revealing their sources.

As you might know, a movie was recently filmed and screened that included a scene of a Bush assassination. What followed? Nothing more than a little ranting and raving in the press.

As a result of cheap video cameras and the internet, citizen reporters and watchdogs are EVERYWHERE. It is no longer possible to live anonymously.

But it isn't the government watching us. We're watching each other. We're performing for each other. Via YouTube and MySpace we've become a nation of exhibitionists.

You wrote:

"I'll try to hunt down that link."

Look in North Korea, Cuba, or the islamic theocracy of your choice.

[Anarcissie]

chris: '... Based on comments here, there are only four people -- self-identified -- who have escaped the bamboozlement....'

I find it very curious myself.

I was looking at Bill Moyers's compendium of boss media breast-beating (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html) and wondering about it. I expect the government to lie and get things wrong, and I expect the media to lie and get things wrong, but I don't understand why so many people believe in them uncritically.

The only thing I can come up with is that they want to be told fables.

[Anarcissie]

Link to Moyers program above won't work. Try this:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

[lc2]

Ha ha chris, nice try!

(this will be my stock response from now on btw ... just in case you want to consider addressing the issues I raise in a more general sense, rather than goading _me_ personally into a tit-for-tat). It will not work, aside from getting me to write, "ha ha chris, nice try!"

OK, I tried to post that link last night but apparently this blog's software filters web addresses. But I can assure you that we are ranked 53rd, tied with Tonga and Croatia. I can name five nations w/greater press freedom but why bother? There are 50+ there for you to see for yourself. North Korea is indeed ranked last ... you will have to look harder to find a North Korean apologist. Google "U.S. ranking press freedom" and that should do the trick.

Cheers!!

[Anarcissie]

Washington Post story is at http://tinyurl.com/yc4kz9

The rating is based on outright threats to the media, however. It doesn't say anything about centralized corporate control, class and personal interest of media business owners, voluntary submission to the government, mass or prestige group culture, marketing, etc., all of which limit the kinds of ideas which are allowed to be disseminated and discussed.

[chris]

lc2, you wrote:

"Google U.S. ranking press freedom"

I Googled. What I found confirmed my expectations. Namely, that you will believe anything, as long as you read it on the Internet and it condemns some aspect of US life.

The report you so blindly respect is the product of Reporters Without Borders (RWB), a biased organization headquartered in France.

Yes. This ridiculous organization ranked the US 53rd among the nations of the world in terms of press freedom.

To highlight the utter absurdity of this claim, I direct you to country number 16 on the list: Bolivia, a nation on its way to dictatorship under the heavy hand of Evo Morales, who has already seized the telecommunications industry and the natural gas industry.

Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. It's literacy rate is also at the bottom among Latin American countries. That means few people can read. There are few TV and radio stations, and their are not many TVs.

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organization's assessment of their press freedom records. Small countries, such as Malta, and Andorra, are excluded from this report. The 2006 list was published on 24 October 2006.

The report is based on a questionnaire sent to partner organisations of Reporters Without Borders (14 freedom of expression groups in five continents) and its 130 correspondents around the world, as well as to journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists.

The survey asks questions about direct attacks on journalists and the media as well as other indirect sources of pressure against the free press. RWB is careful to note that the index only deals with press freedom, and does not measure the quality of journalism.

I like the next paragraph, especially the first sentence. From it you will learn that the RWB rankings are biased guesswork.

Due to the nature of the survey's methodology based on individual perceptions, there are often wide contrasts in a country's ranking from year to year. The ranking also states it takes into account pressure on journalists by non-governmental groups, for example the Basque terrorist group ETA in Spain or the Mafia in Russia, or pressure groups that can pose a real threat to press freedom.

Like most of its neighbors, Bolivia's journalistic tradition began as an extension of Spanish colonial culture and rule. After it gained independence from Spain in 1825, Bolivia's newspapers continued to be official state publications of the new country.

Various political factors created and controlled politically oriented newspapers throughout the 1800s, a characteristic known as caudillismo.

Today, Bolivia boasts 18 daily newspapers, most of which are published in La Paz, where the combined daily circulation is approximately 50,000 copies.

Among the most distributed newspapers are El Diario, La Razon, and El Deber.

The country's overall circulation is not very high, averaging about 55 readers per 1,000 people. There are several reasons for the relatively low circulation, including distribution and infrastructure problems, a high poverty rate, and the high illiteracy rate.

The volatile political nature of Bolivia has made the journalism profession often dangerous, especially for reporters.

Numerous incidents over the last few years have resulted in harm to various media professionals.

[chris]

The following exemplifies the lunacy of the rankings of the Reporters Without Borders organization that ranks the US 53rd in press freedom.

"Denmark (19th) dropped from joint first place because of serious threats against the authors of the Mohammed cartoons published there in autumn 2005. For the first time in recent years in a country that is very observant of civil liberties, journalists had to have police protection due to threats against them because of their work."

In other words, press freedom declined because the muslims were restless. Not because the Danish government restricted the activities of the press.

"War, the destroyer of press freedom..."

Lebanon has fallen from 56th to 107th place in five years, as the country’s media continues to suffer from the region’s poisonous political atmosphere, with a series of bomb attacks in 2005 and Israeli military attacks this year."

Here the Reporters Without Borders establishes itself as an anti-Semitic organization. There is ZERO connection between Israel and the lack of press freedom in Lebanon, a country that is controlled by Iran through hezbollah, its terrorist gang.

"The Lebanese media - some of the freest and most experienced in the Arab world - desperately need peace and guarantees of security."

To claim there is any level of freedom of the press in muslim countries is ridiculous on its face. Though the press is free in Iraq today. Iraq and Israel, the only two places in the middle east.

"The inability of the Palestinian Authority (134th) to maintain stability in its territories and the behaviour of Israel (135th) outside its borders seriously threaten freedom of expression in the Middle East."

Oh boy. Blame the Jews. Yep. The clowns at RWB found the usual scapegoat. A true sign of journalistic integrity.

[chris]

Questionnaire from Reporters Without Borders for compiling the 2006 world press freedom index:

The period runs from 1 September 2005 to 1 September 2006

During this time, in your country, how many journalists:

1. Were murdered?

2. Were murdered, with the state involved?

3. Were arrested or sent to prison (for however long)?

4. Are currently in jail and serving a heavy sentence (more than a year) for a media-related offence?

5. Were threatened?

6. Were physically attacked or injured?

7. Fled the country?

Were any journalists (yes/no):

8. Illegally imprisoned (no arrest warrant, in violation of maximum period of detention without trial or court appearance)?

9. Tortured or ill-treated?

10. Kidnapped or taken hostage?

11. Did any journalists disappear?

Over the period, was/were there (yes/no):

12. Armed militias or secret organisations targeting journalists?

13. Terrorist action against journalists or media firms?

14. Improper use of fines, summonses or legal action against journalists or media outlets?

15. Routine failure to prosecute those responsible for seriously violating press freedom?

16. Prison terms imposed for media-related offences defined by law?

17. Attacks or threats against family, friends or colleagues of journalists?

18. Surveillance of journalists (phone-tapping, being followed etc)?

19. Problems of access to public or official information (refusal by officials, selection of information provided according to the media’s editorial line etc)?

20. Restricted physical or reporting access to any regions of the country (official ban, strict official control etc)?

21. Media outlets censored, seized or ransacked? (how many?)

22. Searches of media premises or homes of journalists?

23. Surveillance of foreign journalists working in the country?

24. Foreign journalists deported?

25. Problems getting journalist visas (undue delay, demand to know names of people to be interviewed etc)?

26. Censorship or seizure of foreign newspapers?

27. Jamming of foreign broadcasts or regulating who can have satellite dishes?

28. Independent or opposition news media?

29. An official prior censorship body systematically checking all media content?

30. Routine self-censorship in the privately-owned media?

31. Subjects that are taboo (the armed forces, government corruption, religion, the opposition, demands of separatists, human rights etc)?

32. A state monopoly of TV?

33. A state monopoly of radio?

34. A state monopoly of printing or distribution facilities?

35. Government control of state-owned media’s editorial line?

36. Improper sackings of journalists in the state-owned media?

37. Journalists forced to stop working through harassment or threats?

38. Opposition access to state-owned media?

39. Strictly-controlled access to journalistic profession (compulsory certificate or training, membership of journalists’ institute etc.)?

40. Use of withdrawal of advertising (government stops buying space in some papers or pressures private firms to boycott media outlets)?

41. Undue restriction of foreign investment in the media?

42. Licence needed to start up a newspaper or magazine?

43. Cases of violating privacy of journalistic sources?

44. Serious threats to news diversity, including narrow ownership of media outlets?

45. A state monopoly of Internet service providers (ISPs)?

46. ISPs forced to filter access to websites?

47. Websites shut down over the period?

48. ISPs legally responsible for the content of websites they host?

49. Cyber-dissidents or bloggers imprisoned (how many?)

50. Cyber-dissidents or bloggers harassed or physically attacked (how many?)

[Anarcissie]

In assessing press freedom it seems reasonable to take into consideration the effects of violence by terrorists and paramilitaries as well as repression by the government.

However, I don't think the Washington Post or the New York Times were afraid of them, or of the government. They just recited the government's lies or "mistakes" and forgot to investigate or criticize. Lack of political freedom doesn't explain their behavior. Nor do I see any commercial interest in playing dumb. So it's still a mystery. Maybe just pure sycophancy?

[MB]

Please know that the situation at the Philadelphia Inquirer is even more serious than this. About a year ago, the Inquirer was sold to a group of local investors and since then very serious problems have occurred or been revealed: http://www.hallwatch.org/news/1162499107159. The new owner of the Inquirer is a key investor/player in bringing unwanted casino development to residential neighborhoods. The quality of the Inquirer's coverage of this issue has seemed like rah-rah cheerleading, despite serious opposition from the nearby neighbors who have had no say in this at all. There is a huge crisis for democracy in Philadelphia right now regarding the placement of two casinos in residential neighborhoods. Citizens are struggling to defend their neighborhoods against unwanted casinos. After an intense effort, citizens succeeded in putting a referendum on the ballot in the May 15 election. However, at the moment, the question has been struck from the ballot by judicial politics which favor the friends of the casino industry. The right to vote is being denied in Philadelphia, the cradle of American democracy (http://phillysballotbox.org/). The Inquirer's new owner, also a casino investor, seems intent on destroying the editorial integrity of this once great newspaper. And we are saddened by this loss. Philadelphia desperately needs its great journalists to be able to do their jobs properly--we need full muckraking investigation regarding the pay-to-play politics that brought casinos to Philadelphia. Please continue to focus attention on the Inquirer's plight bc this is just one important example of how democracy is compromised when the newspapers are run by the businessmen who profit from distorting the news instead of reporting the news.

[Anarcissie]

The Inquirer's plight derives from its management as private capital. The only way you could have a newspaper (or other media) free of private bias and special interest would be to have one owned and operated as a public cooperative. Why do we expect private parties to be above private interest in the media, when they are obviously not above it anywhere else?

Yet I know of only a few examples (radio stations) of media owned and operated cooperatively, with the exception of the Internet, which is fortunately fairly anarchic -- so far.

[Justin K.]

hmmm

[Justin K.]

hmmm

[Why Not?]

Welcome to the machine.

[mcvnv]

Very good site! I like it! Thanks!�

[Jones]

Hi our little brothers.

[mason]

Pretty nice site, wants to see much more on it!a

[fox]

You have an outstanding good and well structured site. I enjoyed browsing through it.T

[sara]

O, super project.c

[sank]

Thank you!s

[van]

Excellent resource you\'ve got here!!! Will definately be back!!!c