Page 60 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

50 Chapter 2

reflecting upon expectations that television stations provide critical reporting,
rather than entertainment news.
Fluff news, however, encompasses much more than just a few high profile
stories such as those mentioned above. Rather, fluff is used on a daily basis, and
applied to a slew of less sensational "news" stories. In one example, Rudi Bak-
htiar, reporting for CIW Headline News, asked who would win in a battle be-
tween the Hulk and the Terminator? Bahktiar assured viewers that, of course,
the Hulk would win.45 This example, although only one of many, reveals a
growing trend in the corporate media-namely the use of fluff stories as a guise
for advertising company products under the facade of "reporting the news." That
AOL Time Warner, the media conglomerate that released Terminator 3, did not
see their efforts to advertise summer films as a blatant violation of journalistic
standards and ethics shows the extent to which fluff "news" has taken hold of
television media, as media corporations resort advertising their own products to
fill "news7' space. As Jason Miller argues in Z Magazine, this drive for profit
translates into a "need to maximize the number in their [network] audiences to
satisfy their advertisers." Gossip and sensational news, simply put, "draw view-
ers," and "the higher the shock value, the bigger the draw."46
While serving the needs of advertising and trivializing important news sto-
ries, fluff news also plays an important part in strengthening notions of con-
sumer-driven citizenry. Emphasis is placed on consuming news, not for the sake
of learning about important social events. Rather, news is focused on the "life-
styles of the rich and famous," as celebrity news sells the virtuousness of high
levels of fashionable consumption. As a result, Americans who consume a large
amount of fluff news may be less adequately informed about other stories that
have more direct relevance to their lives, such as the tremendous cost of the Iraq
war, escalating American and Iraqi casualties, corporate corruption, lax govern-
ment regulation of business and the cost to the public, and the increasing danger
of groups like A1 Qaeda. An inverse relationship develops between "news" con-
sumption and public knowledge of crucial national and international events,
issues, and developments, at least according to what limited studies are avail-
able.47

A History of Corporate Media Consolidation

The modem conception of objective journalism is only about one-hundred years
old, as it parallels the rise of the modem corporation, which took its latest form
during the mid-to-late 1800s. During this time period, states began to rewrite
corporate charters so as to relieve many of the restrictions that had limited the
corporation's size and power. Charters were reworked so as to promote further
corporate conglomeration and monopolization, as state laws were revised to
allow the lifting of restrictions preventing corporations from owning other cor-
porations, essentially relaxing regulations on mergers and acquisitions. Laws
were also rewritten to eliminate restrictions on how long a corporation could
exist. In 1886, the Supreme Court ruled that the corporation was considered a