Page 169 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

148 Critical investigations in political economy

also McQuail 1992: 135). All these conditions have been significantly eroded
since the 1980s with the firewall protecting the integrity of journalism from
corporate interests crumbling; ‘That’s all gone now. Out the window’ the
veteran journalist Dan Rather is quoted as saying (McChesney 2013: 178). The
results of surveys, interviews with practitioners, commentary and analysis of
corporate data indicate how pressures have increased on advertising-dependent
media to comply with advertiser demands and offer a host of added benefits
(Hardy 2010a). Advertisers have been able to exact more and more ‘editorial
support’ beyond paid advertising (McAllister 1996, 2000). Further, as Bogart
(2000: 290) observes, such journalistic professionalism as existed in news jour-
nalism was never as firmly established in the entertainment business, or in media
sectors like consumer magazines based on close relationships between media and
marketers. Herman and McChesney (1997: 140) describe how:

major TV networks offer their ‘stars’ to sell commercials and appear at
advertiser gatherings; they enter into joint promotional arrangements with
advertisers, each pushing the other’sofferings; they show ‘infomercials’
produced entirely by or for advertisers and displaying their products; and
they co-produce programs with advertisers and gear others to advertiser
requests and needs.

Various studies show increased integration of advertising through plugs in
news programmes (Compton 2004; Hardy 2010a; McAllister 2002), entertainment
marketing and cross-promotion.
Advertiser pressure to integrate promotional content into ‘independent’ editorial
content is a complex matter for analysis, but three main considerations are pertinent.
First, strategies of ‘embedded persuasion’ (advertising in media content) increase
the promotional content of media discourse. Second, such promotional practices
influence how media adopt and adapt to them. Third, they influence norms and
professional ideology as increased reliance on and accommodation to advertiser
interests shapes a more commercial and promotional orientation. At its best,
CPE work has brought a long-range historical and analytical perspective and
resisted the tendencies to presentism, and autonomisation, in media analysis.
Scholars have identified various factors influencing a return and reworking of
promotional practices which dominated the early years of radio and television
broadcasting in the United States, such as advertiser influence through programme
sponsorship, in-programme promotions and product placement and plugola
(Newell et al. 2006; Smulyan 1994). Baker (1994: 105) notes, for instance, how
programme-length commercials and product placement are ‘basically identical’
to the paid ‘reading notices’ which appeared in American newspapers at the
turn of the century. Another approach has been to identify the close and
enduring relationship between promotional and media content in both news and
entertainment media, against either ahistorical idealisations of media performance,
or generalised accounts of commercialism.