Why Corporate Media won't show anti-war protests (huh?)
Category: News Commentary...
Posted Saturday, March 29, 2003 at 02:47 PM [GMT-6]

Via a convoluted series of links that began with a web development blog, and moved through a soap-box touting the benefits of XML, with a side-trip to an article about the "Barbie Liberation Organization," I ended up reading this article, entitled "For Broadcast Media, Patriotism Pays."

The referring page used the article as proof that "the corporate media are very reluctant to cover opposition to the war." This obviously-anti-war website seems to believe that vast corporate conspiracies are arising to prevent the proper education of the American public, and if we'd only fix it, the war would end, peace would prevail, and we could make 8% APY on our 401Ks. (OK, I made up that last thing, but I'm in favor of it.)

The funny thing is, I don't get that message from this article at all. My spin cycle must rotate in the wrong direction. Let's break it down, shall we?

Now, apparently, is the time for all good radio and TV stations to come to the aid of their country's war.

That is the message pushed by broadcast news consultants, who've been advising news and talk stations across the nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war.

So far, so good. Although, based on my viewing experience, this message has been rather broadly ignored.

The influential television-news consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates recently put it in even starker terms: Covering war protests may be harmful to a station's bottom line.

In a survey released last week on the eve of war, the firm found that war protests were the topic that tested lowest among 6,400 viewers across the nation. Magid said only 14 percent of respondents said TV news wasn't paying enough attention to "anti-war demonstrations and peace activities"; just 13 percent thought that in the event of war, the news should pay more attention to dissent.

IOW, most Americans support either the war, or the troops, or both.

Magid, whose representatives did not return phone calls, offers no direct advice about what stations should do. However, the research's implied message reinforces antiwar activists' assertion that media outlets have marginalized opposing voices.

"The antiwar movement in this country is far bigger than it was during the first few years of the Vietnam War, but you wouldn't know it from the coverage," said Adam Eidinger, a Washington activist. "I think the media has been completely biased. You don't hear dissenting voices; you see people marching in the streets, but you rarely hear what they have to say in the media."

This is where it gets sticky. Mr. Eidinger is apparently spending too much time blocking traffic and not enough time in front of the tube. But, his RDS ("Reality Denial Syndrome") is not the issue here. The issue is just how anyone can stretch and spin and contort this situation into "Corporate Media Censorship."

See, in my 25+ years of working for one of the 20 largest companies in the US, I never saw any corporate behavior that wasn't driven by the bottom line. Corporations exist for one thing: to make their stockholders happy, and they do that best by doing profitable things. Even seemingly altruistic activities such as supporting the local United Way can be deemed to contribute to the bottom line in an intangible but nevertheless real fashion.

So, if media conglomerates aren't giving wide coverage to anti-war protest (which I don't believe), it's because they understand (better than the protestors) that the majority of their viewers are anti-anti-war protest. If the anti-war protestors have been marginalized, it's because they ARE marginal. The media conglomerates are simply attending to what they do best under our wonderfully efficient system of capitalism: making money for their shareholders by giving their customers what they want.

If anything, some of the media are acting contrary to this logical behavior by seemingly ignoring their constituency. They can get away with it in the short run, but it'll hit 'em where they live in the long run: the bottom line. That's what happens when they try to project their own biases onto their viewers, hoping to change minds by overload. It rarely works.