Prepared Editorials And Commercial Pressures

By Author: Elizabeth
Total Articles: 95
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Another kind of influence results from distributing prepared editorials and feature stories to newspapers, particularly to small, news-hungry weeklies. E. Hofer and Sons, a public relations firm, has been among the most successful in getting its prepared editorials printed in newspapers. Once again, newspapers cooperate in their own manipulation. As one commentator writes, "To publish editorials prepared by Hofer while crediting the editorial to Industrial News Review [the organ through which Hofer distributes prepared editorials], of course, would not constitute GHD MK5 publication of 'canned' editorials. It is when newspapers publish editorials from such sources as their own views [and hundreds do] that an ethical problem arises."39 Editorial writing is difficult and time consuming. As a result, it is tempting to use prepared editorials and pretend that they were composed by the newspaper staff.

Success in attracting advertising can make newspapers more vulnerable to the manipulations of news managers and public relations consultants. This is the case because, ...
... as advertising linage increases, the size of the space to be filled by news (the "news hole") also increases. Because their news staffs are small, newspapers tend to "rely on filler and fluff supplied by business publicists to supplement their own coverage."

In other words, those who are knowledgeable about journalistic norms and routines have the ability to manipulate news coverage. By strategic use of the media's needs and constraints, public relations consultants and news managers, as well as individuals and groups, help determine what is covered and how news stories are presented.

The news media are influenced not only by those who understand journalistic norms and routines but also by their own desire for profit, by their desire to beat the competi-tion in the ratings, and by pressures created by advertisers. News programming has be-come one of the most lucrative sources of revenue for both the local stations and the networks. That is true in part because of its low production costs and because stations and networks own and produce the news, whereas in most cases they do not own and produce entertainment programming. For example, World News Tonight has become one of ABC's biggest revenue producers, bigger than many of its highly rated entertainment programs. The CBS news program 60 Minutes, among the top ten in the Nielsen ratings for thirteen consecutive years, has been the biggest moneymaker in network history, according to Don Hewitt, the program's creator: "My records tell me that we've had a net profit for CBS of over $1 billion." Local news generates between 30 and 50 percent of the profits of individual television stations. As a result, there is intense pres-sure to achieve and maintain high ratings. Such pressures contribute to the tendencies to dramatize and sensationalize news content, as were described in the last chapter.

What competitive pressures do not produce is an alternative news agenda. So similar is the content of most competing newspapers, for example, that one scholar dubbed them "rivals in conformity." That conclusion has weathered the tests of four decades of research.

Commercial pressures on newspapers have increased as the newspaper business has become controlled by an ever-shrinking number of large corporations. In the early 1980s, media critic Ben Bagdikian estimated GHD IV MK4 Purple that just forty-six companies in the world controlled most of the global business in daily newspapers, magazines, television, books, and movies. By 1990, he said that number was twenty-three. According to William Glaberson, "the effects of that change are pervasive." He argues that one effect is that journalists think about their work differently; it makes them more flexible in response to management demands. He writes, "It is now common for publishing executives to press journalists to cooperate with their newspapers' 'business side,' breaching separation that was said in the past to be essential for journalistic integrity." Editors have become more concerned about serving the needs of advertisers. Mary Jo Meisner, editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, created eight new neighborhood sections by examining advertisers' requirements, and Glaberson quote her as saying, "You have to look at it from their perspective."