American journalism has devoted massive attention to reporting on
business in recent years. Overall news outlets are enthralled with
efforts in our society to maximize corporate profits and personal
wealth. Top executives and shrewd investors are good bets to emerge as
media heroes, unless or until they appear to be headed for prison.
Insatiable avarice -- always pushing for more, more, more -- is
unlikely to cause bad press. In fact, journalists are apt to cite
enthusiasm for boosting "net worth" as evidence of sturdy character.
Half a century ago, sociologist C. Wright Mills warned of "a
creeping indifference and a silent hollowing out." In the United
States, he observed, "money is the one unambiguous criterion of
success," and behind the obvious fact that people "want money" lurked
the more unsettling reality that "their very standards are pecuniary."
A few years later, author Vance Packard asked a key question: "By
encouraging people constantly to pursue the emblems of success, and by
causing them to equate possessions with status, what are we doing to
their emotions and their sense of values?"
Today that question echoes more ominously than ever. While
advertising and other commercial messages keep extending their reach,
news coverage routinely gives fuel to society's preoccupation with
financial assets. Fixated on money and what it might bring, the media
fascination with purchasing power never stops. Mainstream news
organizations have steadily shifted resources and priorities to the
business of business. When PBS launched "Wall Street Week" with Louis
Rukeyser in 1970, the program was conspicuous. By the time Rukeyser
departed earlier this year, it was just one of dozens of national TV
shows -- most of them daily -- devoted to 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 coverage of
and commentary about the stock market.
A decade later, when host Lou Dobbs left "Moneyline" in spring
1999 at the start of his two-year absence from CNN, it was the leading
cable network's most profitable show. By then, broadcast networks were
fervently targeting the same lucrative demographics, and not only with
expressly financial programs. Between the mid-1980's and the late
1990's, the main TV networks doubled the amount of airtime devoted to
the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Regular news shows got
accustomed to lavishing attention on minor business developments not
because of significant economic implications for the general public,
but because of decisions being made by management executives with
oversight of news departments.
Some viewers, the ones with plenty of disposable income, became
far more equal than others. 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 '50's. You just have to do it." And the unstated goal was not
simply to attract a higher number of viewers. As The Associated Press
reported last year, noting intense competition between "Moneyline" and
CNBC's "Business Center" program: "The audiences are small, but
affluent, so advertisers pay a premium to run commercials."
Many news stories now amount to little more than human interest
narratives about the glories and tribulations of entrepreneurs,
financiers and CEO's. At networks owned by multibillion-dollar
conglomerates like General Electric, Viacom and Disney, the news
divisions solemnly report every uptick or downturn of the markets. In
contrast, when was the last time you heard Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, or
Peter Jennings report the latest rates of on-the-job injuries or the
average wait times at hospital emergency rooms? While many viewers
assume that coverage reflects the considered judgment of journalistic
pros, those journalists are enmeshed in a media industry dominated by
corporate institutions with enough financial sway to redefine the
meaning of functional professionalism.
In theory, noncommercial TV and radio outlets are insulated from
the inordinate power of money. But across the country, each year,
"public broadcasting" relies on hundreds of millions of dollars from
corporations that are pleased to provide underwriting to burnish their
images among upscale viewers and listeners. Whatever other benefits
accrue, those firms buy some valuable PR with their de facto
commercials, known euphemistically in the trade as "enhanced
underwriter credits."
Along with the politically appointed board of the nonprofit
Corporation for Public Broadcasting, corporate donors exert hefty
influence on programs by "underwriting" -- and, in some cases,
literally making possible -- specific shows. Private money is a big
determinant of what's on "public" broadcasting. Without corporate
funding for specific programs, many current shows would not exist.
Public television airs the "Nightly Business Report," but viewers can
search in vain for a regular show devoted to assessing the fortunes of
working people. At PBS, no less than at avowedly commercial networks,
the operative assumption seems to be that wealth creates all labor,
not the other way around. Back in the 1770's, Adam Smith articulated a
more progressive outlook, writing: "It was not by gold or by silver,
but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally
purchased."
Years ago, National Public Radio initiated "NPR business updates"
to supplement newscasts many times each day on stations nationwide.
Listeners will be disappointed if they wait for an "NPR labor update."
Various public radio stations feature "Marketplace," a national daily
program, and the weekly "Sound Money" show, but there is no broadcast
such as "Workplace" or "Sound Labor."
Meanwhile, print outlets are loaded with money-related
obsessions. Time and Newsweek have often done cover stories on the
race to amass wealth which were upbeat or even ecstatic in bullish
times, and somber when the news is hard for investors to bear. 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's daily business section went from two to 12
pages. Around the country, the pattern has been similar, with dailies
vastly enlarging their financial coverage -- at the expense of other
news. The "general circulation" press has become transfixed with the
investor.
Along the way, these trends have transformed basic concepts of
what it really means to be a journalist. "As the 1980's rocketed
along, our 'readers' became 'consumers,'" recalls New York Times
reporter Diana B. Henriques. "As the 1990's 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 in
Columbia Journalism Review's last issue of 2000. "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."
Back in 1989, business reporter David Cay Johnston, then at the
Philadelphia Inquirer, told me: "The financial pages of the newspapers
of this country see the world through the eyes of bankers as opposed
to through the eyes of bank customers." These days, his words also
apply to many other pages of newspapers -- as well as to other types
of media outlets. With business stories migrating so extensively
across the media board, the accompanying sensibilities and priorities
have drastically shifted mindsets about "news." Idolatry of high-tech
magnates, from Bill Gates on down, harmonizes with a prevalent tone
that presents dollar assets as tacit measures of human value. In sharp
contrast, across the mass-media landscape, average workers hardly
qualify as noble. Often, their very human needs come across as clunky
impediments to economic progress.
Contemporary journalists are accustomed to depicting the "cost"
of the work force as a barrier to wealth creation. In the midst of the
last decade's great boom, on April 30, 1997, a cheery article about
the latest economic news appeared under this headline on the front
page of The New York Times: "Markets Surge as Labor Costs Stay in
Check." (For non-affluent readers, the headline might as well have
read, "Great News: Your Wages Aren't Going Up.") "The stock market
rocketed yesterday to its greatest gain in more than five years," the
Times reported. Why? Because important people were happy that wages
had barely increased in the United States, and employers had not
shelled out more for "benefits like health insurance and pensions."
The story spotlighted the jubilant comment of a senior economist at
Goldman Sachs: "There is no question this is a better labor cost
report than we had anticipated." Indeed, the conditions were "better"
for employers. How about employees? Well, they didn't merit any ink.
The 18-paragraph article quoted a few current and former government
economists without a word from workers, their representatives or labor
advocates.
Monologues of mass media keep confronting viewers, listeners and
readers with a demand that is frequently implicit: "How much are you
worth?" The usual response provided to us: "Not enough."
At the same time, big money tilts reporting and punditry. On
major networks, we rarely hear a strong voice speaking against the
outsized power of large corporations. Yet there are a few cracks in
the media walls. In recent years, Time magazine has featured several
muckraking cover stories about corporate influence and power that
could hardly have pleased their targets. But the essence of
propaganda, as any ad exec knows, is repetition. When certain stories
and themes are repeated endlessly, the odds are stacked heavily
against occasional muckraking journalism reverberating inside the
national media's echo chamber.
Much of journalism now routinely wields monetary yardsticks. Even
the most esteemed daily newspapers often cover cultural offerings by
using dollar figures as overarching benchmarks, highlighting the
financial earnings of various films, plays, books, paintings, CD's and
music videos. The internalization of dollars as markers for human
worth and artistic achievement has insidiously skewed how we view the
meaning of culture and creativity. And the deep concern that Packard
voiced many years ago is rendered silent, in part by the unwillingness
of most American journalists to keep his question in mind. Yet it is a
question that, if asked, would surely alter the steady drumbeat of
today's reporting. "By encouraging people constantly to pursue the
emblems of success, and by causing them to equate possessions with
status, what are we doing to their emotions and their sense of
values?"
_________________________________________________
This article was originally published in the Summer 2002 Nieman
Reports.
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/contents.html
Norman Solomon's books include "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media"
and "The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last
Laugh." His syndicated column focuses on media and politics.
