Censored 2011 by Mickey Huff

Author:Mickey Huff [Huff, Mickey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-193-9
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-01-03T16:00:00+00:00

IN ADVERTISERS WE TRUST

Reminders that advertisers have undue influence on the news business are constant, and that message can be sent any number of ways. In December 2009, a Dallas Morning News memo from Editor Bob Mong and Senior Vice President of Sales Cyndy Carr announced a change in policy to employees of the A. H. Belo Corporation: some editors would henceforth report directly to the company’s sales managers.12 The sales team would “be working closely with news leadership in product and content development.” The memo caused “uneasiness” among some news staffers, according to Mong, but others were, well, at ease—one editor was “excited about the idea of working with a business partner on an arts and entertainment segment.” The memo itself called the rearrangement “one of several key strategies we have implemented this year to better serve our advertising clients.”

These blurry lines between advertising and news seem to be getting ever blurrier. In the past year, NBC Universal sought to make special advertising packages tied to specific “causes.” One example—Campbell’s Soup would sponsor health segments on the Today show.13

When Glenn Greenwald exposed that former Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe was making appearances on MSNBC without disclosing his new job at a public relations outfit, Wolffe was unusually direct about his former profession: “The idea that journalists are somehow not engaged in corporate activities is not really in touch with what’s going on. Every conversation with journalists is about business models and advertisers.” Wolffe also recounted that, on the day after the 2008 election, Newsweek sent him to Detroit to deliver a speech to advertisers. “You tell me where the line is between business and journalism,” he said.14

That attitude is commonplace in news media these days. The panelists on MSNBC’s Morning Joe always rather conspicuously consumed Starbucks drinks on the air, and at some point decided to make that arrangement official—and profitable. As New York Times reporter Brian Stelter put it, host Joe Scarborough “sips Frappuccinos on camera so often that some viewers have wondered whether it is a form of product placement, paid for by the coffee company. Starting Monday, it will be.” The $10 million deal included “Starbucks graphics and mentions during each hour” of the show.15

Would the arrangement cause any sort of conflict? MSNBC President Phil Griffin assured the Times that the show “would continue to cover Starbucks as a news item if warranted. ‘They understand that we have standards.’ ” One such “standard” involved interviewing the CEO of the company soon after the deal was reached.16

On April 9, 2009, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page advertisement for the NBC drama Southland that was made to look like a news article; careful readers saw an NBC logo and the small label “Advertisement.” Worse, it was revealed that the concept for the ad came not from NBC but from the paper’s advertising department.17 NBC official Adam Stotsky sounded ecstatic: “What was great about this ad unit is it gave us a quote-unquote ‘editorial voice.’ ”

LA Times readers left

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