FAIR is pleased to announce our first annual roundup of the year’s most egregious examples of owner, advertiser and government influence on the news: “Fear & Favor 2000: How Power Shapes the News.”
A “serious” talkshow turns itself into an infomercial for Campbell’s Soup, complete with a veteran news anchor leading a chorus of the “M’m, m’m, good!” jingle. A Boston reporter is suspended without pay after writing critically about a bank that is a major advertiser in his paper. A network news show interviews a sock puppet—a puppet that is the mascot for a company the network’s owner has a stake in.
Welcome to the whimsical, frightening world of the corporate media, where the “fear and favor” of the powers that be can shape—and twist—the news. A few items detailed in the report:
In the final days of the 2000 presidential campaign, conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review publisher Richard Mellon Scaife ordered all photos and prominent mentions of Al Gore removed from the front page. As a result, the pre-election Sunday edition featured George W. Bush in every front-page campaign-related headline and photo.
The AP‘s longtime Bolivia correspondent, Peter McFarren, resigned amidst revelations that he had lobbied the Bolivian legislature for a $78 million water privatization project profiting a foundation he presided over. One of the biggest stories in Bolivia, water policy was central to McFarren’s beat. After a query from FAIR, the AP did a story on the resignation, but glossed over key aspects.
After receiving pre-publication complaints from various bigwigs, Brill’s Content watered down a piece whose subject—entertainment reporter Lynn Hirschberg— apparently has too many powerful friends. Brill’s editor David Kuhn reportedly told staffers, “You don’t understand: I have to go to cocktail parties with these people.”
Nearly every journalist has heard war stories about controversial articles that got cut or quashed before they were written, or, more chillingly, of careers cut short. The breakneck consolidation of media ownership means news divisions are increasingly subject to corporate control, but it can be difficult to find documentation of specific instances in which this has distorted the news. With that in mind, FAIR has compiled reports of some of the most outrageous examples of “fear and favor” in the newsroom from the last year.
We hope “Fear & Favor 2000” will serve to support journalists who are struggling to seek truth and report it, empower the public to demand accountability from the media and inspire all of us to fight back when the powerful try to restrict the free flow of information.
