During junior theme, a lot of my research surprised me. But the most shocking discovery I made was that advertisements are starting to have an effect on the media. According to the articles I read, advertisers can censor the material magazines and newspapers cover. This is done by advertisers making numerous demands. For example, if Newsweek wanted to run an article on the adverse affects of smoking, Marlboro would pull their ad. Although this may seem like a minor problem, newspapers and magazines need revenue from ads to stay in business. They can't always afford to lose an account on behalf of an article. In this case, they'd just pull the article, which essentially is limiting freedom of the press. To give you an idea of how wide an impact this has, here is a list of all the brands Philip Morris owns:
Marlboro
Virginia Slims
Capri Sun
Country Time
Crystal Light
Kool-Aid
Tang
Maxwell House
Balance Bar
Cool Whip
Handi-Snacks
Jell-O
Cream of Wheat
Golden Crisp
Grape-Nuts
Great Grains
Honey Bunches of Oats
Honeycomb
Oreo O's
Raisin Bran
Shredded Wheat
Cheese Nips
Chips Ahoy!
Honey Maid
Newtons
Nilla Wafers
Nutter Butter
Oreo
Ritz
SnackWell's
Teddy Grahams
Triscuit
Wheat Thins
Planters
Milk-Bone dog treats
Altoids
Creme Savers
Gummi Savers
Jet-Puffed marshmallows
LifeSavers
Now and Later
Cheez Whiz
Cracker Barrel cheese
Di Giorno
Easy Cheese
Kraft
Velveeta
Breakstone's sour cream,cottage cheese
Breyers yogurt
Kraft macaroni & cheese and other dinners
A.1.
Grey Poupon
Kraft barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, salad dressings
Miracle Whip
Shake'N Bake
Lunchables
Oscar Mayer
Boca burgers
Claussen pickles
Tombstone pizza
Splendid
Miller Lite
Miller Genuine Draft
Miller Genuine
Draft Light
Miller High Life
Miller High Life Light
If any article in a magazine offends a single one of theses products, the magazine could lose several accounts. Basically, you probably won't print the article you wanted.
According the article Can't Live Without It by Alan Durning, "most American magazines reserve 60% of their pages for advertising...Newspapers are no different; in the United States, they typically contain 65 percent, up from 40 percent half a century ago" (3). In order for ads to print, they need to sell a certain number of ad pages. If companies are pulling their ads, they cannot meet their quota, and the magazine will lose money. This technique is essentially blackmailing the media into printing only articles it approves of.
Some see this as a huge problem. According to the article The Cost of Commercialism by Gray Ruskin, "Advertising is a 'powerful censor and influential taskmaster that systematically undermines a free and democratic press,' writes University of Pennsylvania law professor C. Edwin Baker in his book Advertising and a Democratic Press" (5). There are many examples to back Baker up.
One example includes, "when Fortune Magazine ran a 1997 cover story about IBM CEO Louis Gerstner describing his as arrogant and obsessed with status, IBM and its subsidiary Lotus removed their advertising--worth about $6 million a year--from the publication" (5). Although the ad company has the right to remove its advertising pages if it feels necessary, I think the practice of threatening is detrimental. Now Fortune Magazine probably feels it necessary to censor the articles it prints now for the benefit of the ads. But in reality, we should have freedom of press, and this essentially restricting it.
1 comment:
I think this is a very interesting point, and I have never thought about articles that way. I do have two questions though. If some groups do pull-out due to these negative articles, doesn't that just attract other companies to advertise in that newspaper/magazine? For example, in the IBM case, wouldn't another competitor like HP buy advertisements to show how good they are comparatively? or in the Phillip Morris/ Altria group example, wouldn't "Drug Free America" and other groups jump on the gun? Even though the negative articles would essentially be an advertisement in itself for the criticized companies' competitors, I think that additional advertisements would be the perfect opportunity to attract people that have just finished reading about why other products are bad.
Also, I'm not sure if this is really limiting the freedom of press. I do understand that the articles the press prints might be limited due to financial concerns, just because they might be persuaded not to print an article doesn't mean they can't.
(in a completely unrelated note, altria/phillip morris doesn't own kraft anymore, so they're strictly a tobacco company now.. your point that these articles lead to a domino-effect of withdrawals still completely applies, though)
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