Page 61 - Mass Media, Mass Propoganda Examining American News in the War on Terror

All the News That's Fit to Omit 51

legal person, meaning that it could now exist indefinitely without fear of the
state revoking its charter or infringing upon its property rights in other ways.
Along with this transformation of the corporate form came the rise of pro-
fessional, "objective" reporting. Before this period, newspapers were free to
pursue partisan reporting without fear of being labeled biased or unprofessional,
in large part because newspaper markets in major cities often contained over a
dozen papers, owned by many different companies. If one did not like the views
of a newspaper, they had many others from which to choose. Corporate consoli-
dation changed all of this, as major cities like Chicago saw their number of daily
newspapers shrink drastically during this period. The Chicago American news-
paper, for example, swallowed up fourteen papers between the late 1800s and
early 1900s, as it consolidated its control over the city's news through corporate
mergers and buyouts. Today, the city of Chicago no longer has a large number
of competing dailies, but two: the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun
Times-and the Tribune has traditionally been the more dominant of the two.
David Cromwell and David Edwards, authors of Guardians of Power: The
Myth of the Liberal Media maintain that: "by promoting education in formal
'schools of journalism,' which did not exist before 1900 in the United States,
wealthy owners could claim that trained editors and reporters were granted
autonomy to make editorial decisions based on their professional judgment,
rather than on the needs of owners and advertisers.'** With partisan reporting
and journalism out of the way, corporate newspapers were free to engage in the
merger mania that was sweeping the country. This necessarily contributed to a
reduction in diversity of viewpoints throughout American cities and towns, as
the corporate interest in ever-increasing profits through growing advertising
revenue became the major factor driving the reporting of the news. This meant
that partisan reporting became a liability, as monopolization meant that the
openly expressed biases of fewer and fewer papers were harder to accept when
there no longer existed serious competition between a large number of papers
and a wider variety of views.
In short, the reduction in the number of newspapers throughout each market
meant that partisan journalism seemed all the more inappropriate in the modem
era of media controlled by fewer and fewer corporations. The motivation for
increased corporate profits drove the reporting of media companies, which now
controlled a radically larger portion of individual markets. This promoted more,
rather than less, uniformity of views by omitting radical or institutional critiques
and analysis by those who were opposed to corporate ownership of media. To-
day, such views are seen only in Progressive-Left press, and are left out of main-
stream media coverage almost completely, as they are largely considered unwor-
thy of attention or rebuttal.
The effects of corporate monopoly dominance of media are still relevant
today. This is evident when contrasting the major media markets in Britain and
the United States. In Britain, corporate consolidation has taken hold at a slower
pace than in the U.S. Take, for instance, two comparable cities: New York and
London, which both retain similar populations at eight million people for the
former and 7.4 million for the latter. Both are international cities, yet London