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After billionaire Michael Bloomberg won the race to become New
York's next mayor, the French news agency AFP noted that he "was among the
first to see how the information age could serve investors in unprecedented
-- and lucrative -- ways." In recent months, Bloomberg's campaign spent at
least $50 million from his vast personal fortune, made possible by a media
environment teeming with reverence for accumulation of wealth.
Bloomberg News became a far-reaching wire service during the 1990s
as financial news gradually loomed larger in mass media. The operative
definition of "general interest news" kept tilting. Mainstream outlets
steadily shifted resources and priorities to the business of covering
business.
Back in 1970, when PBS launched "Wall Street Week" with Louis
Rukeyser, the program was conspicuous. Now it's just one of many national
TV shows -- most of them daily -- focusing on the quest for high returns.
After "Moneyline" premiered on CNN in 1980, cable television news grew
while embracing the world of investment. In 1989, General Electric opted to
dedicate much of its startup news channel CNBC to the stock market.
When host Lou Dobbs left "Moneyline" in spring 1999 at the start
of his two-year absence from CNN, it was the cable network's most
profitable show. By then, broadcast networks were fervently targeting the
same demographics, and not only with explicitly financial offerings like
"CBS Marketwatch." Regular news programs got accustomed to lavishing
attention on minor business developments -- not because of significant
economic implications for the general public, but because of executive
decisions in news departments.
When CNN revamped its daytime schedule in mid-1999 to make room
for three and a half hours of programs about commerce and investment, the
cable giant's president Richard Kaplan explained: "We look at business and
finance as something we have to cover on a general interest news network.
It's like the Cold War in the '50s. You just have to do it."
Some viewers became far more equal than others. For broadcast and
cable television, the goal has not simply been to attract a high number of
eyeballs. As the Associated Press reported this year in an article about
the intense competition between "Moneyline" and CNBC's "Business Center"
program: "The audiences are small, but affluent, so advertisers pay a
premium to run commercials."
Countless news stories now amount to little more than human
interest narratives about the glories and tribulations of entrepreneurs,
financiers and CEOs. At networks owned by conglomerates like GE, Viacom and
Disney, the news divisions solemnly report every uptick or downturn of the
stock market. Between 1988 and 1999, the TV networks doubled the amount of
air time they devoted to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
Viewers may assume that coverage reflects the considered judgment
of journalistic pros. But those journalists are in a media industry
dominated by corporate institutions with enough financial sway to redefine
the functional meaning of professionalism.
National Public Radio airs the "NPR business update" as part of
its regular newscast, heard many times each day on stations nationwide.
There's no "NPR labor update." Public radio listeners have easy access to
the national daily "Marketplace" program and the weekly "Sound Money" show,
but there's no "Workplace" or "Sound Labor" broadcast.
In the quarter century since The New York Times founded its
"Business Day" section, daily papers have turned more and more newsprint
over to targeting the affluent readers most coveted by business
advertisers. The Washington Post expanded its everyday business section
from two to 12 pages. Around the country, the pattern has been similar,
with a range of media outlets boosting their financial coverage -- at the
expense of other news.
Along the way, these trends have transformed basic concepts of
what it really means to be a journalist. "As the 1980s rocketed along, our
'readers' became 'consumers,'" recalls New York Times reporter Diana B.
Henriques. "As the 1990s unfolded, those 'consumers' morphed into
'investors.' And today, some of us are speaking only to investors who also
own computer modems."
The quality of mainstream journalism has always suffered due to
the power of big money in the form of ownership and advertising, but flawed
bygone eras are apt to evoke fond nostalgia in the present day. "As our
intended audience has gotten narrower, so have we," Henriques lamented a
year ago in the Columbia Journalism Review. "Business news today rarely
sounds the sonorous chords or heart-lifting themes of great journalism.
Most of it simply buzzes and squeaks, a reedy clarinet against a rhythm
section of cash registers and ticker tape."
That sort of high-rolling muzak provided the backbeat for Michael
Bloomberg's march into the elite ranks of billionaires -- and into the New
York mayor's office.
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Norman Solomon's latest book is "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media." His
syndicated column focuses on media and politics.
