Democracy in a profit-oriented market?!?!

I am currently reading a book that talks about the large media corporations and their emphasis on business and its primary motive, profits, which have been overriding news flow and journalistic ethics. It talks about the way profits direct the news industry. Now, if it will take a lot of time, effort and money to get a scoop, its not wanted. It is no longer about investigative journalism, but more about quick news. It is less news and more about others like health, beauty, fashion, celebrity gossip. Also now there are a lot of restrictions put on journalists in regards to what they write in their reports as they cannot upset their advertisers, their parent or partner corporations of their news organization, and the corporations or politicians from whom their company needs some kind of favor.

This seems so scary when you become aware of it. It looks like the audiences' interest is the least bit important for these media corporations and ensuring that their advertisers and corporations stay happy and earn from their paper is their primary concern. It has been mentioned that the magazines and newspapers are even afraid to write health articles on use of tobacco as tobacco companies advertisements provide huge avenues. Media corporations research the market, just like any business and they put stuff that the public enjoys and is entertaining, but news shouldn't be about entertainment!! If you think about it, this has been going on since forever but in the past few decades with the growth of corporate giants the emphasis on corporate business has substantially increased.

This got me thinking...aren't the consumers supposed to be top priority for news organisations and not advertisers or government or media corporations? Isn't it their responsibility to give us news that is important and not just fluff about celebrities or some small local robbery? What about the corruptions or conspiracies inside corporations? What about information on our government? Who will inform us about these? It is said that newspapers broadcast news is less about politics as public surveys indicated that people are less interested in learning about politics. There is less profit in that section of the news and hence they don't cover it in as much depth as they should! How does democracy exist in such a society when we are not even aware of half the stuff that goes on around us!?!?!

(sorry for being so jumbled up with the ideas flow above...hehe i think im kind of loopy and high on caffeeine and thus couldnt seem to stop myself from writing so much... =P )

Thought provoking post 👏 !!!
Just now I watched GURU movie on a big screen.
Now I'm liking Dhirubhai Ambaani Sooo much!!
Atleast today, I say Success of the business is important and rest of the factors are minor!!
Cheers,
Mythili

Originally posted by: tania.ganguly

The news industry is like any other industry with the main source of revenue being advertising.So for the comapnies to invest in media publication with the news channels, they want a maximum visibility. So a scoop raises the viewer's interest and hence a good view rate of an ad raises the investing comany's ROI.

I totally agree with you. Bottomline is important to any organisation and the media and the advertiser are just a part of this system. Neither of them is in it for charity.

Originally posted by: tania.ganguly

The audeience loves such scoops and are not interested in the main news sometimes. They give more importance to how much a K soap raised its TRPs then the burning school in TN. Haven't you noticed that every news has a Page 3 segment at the end and that is where the advertisers pay more for an ad space.So the audience's ingnorance should be blamed in this scenario.

I think maybe the audience mainly wants to see the rosier side of the world as they see the darker side in their life everyday. Nowadays almost whole newspapers get transformed into one large Page 3 and gossip section (talking about Indian media here). Even I sometimes enjoy the articles when they have something to do with bikes or cars but other than that I find it pretty silly with all those love quiz, counselling and all.

this is the catch-22 we have in democracies. how do we get to neutral unbiased investigative reporting when we all come as individuals with our own biases, explicit or subconscious?

put sufficient resources on the job, and we can all unearth skeletons in almost every viewpoint/ person. so even investigative news, by virtue of where we focus, can soon appear biased.

i think also that the primary objective for news companies is to make money for their shareholders. would you want to put hard-earned money buying shares in companies that cant sell their products? and incidentally, some of these large companies do have millions of shareholders. do we serve their interests or the interests of someone who thinks the news is not what they want to hear? can we make everyone happy?

i also dont feel that government should be in the business of arbitrating what news we get. dont want the news i receive to be a goebbels-type propaganda broadcast. if one does want to get to the non-titillating substantive news, there are channels such as NPR that one get listen to. dont know if there's much else we can do.

EXCELLENT POST!! 👏 👏 👏

Commercialization is the indirect name of achieving monetary benefits which is the prime motive of any enterprise. It is the driving force of 21st century! We were sure crying at the top of our voice about NEW nation at the fire crackers of Millennium...but IMO our generation will be known as the "Biggest Money worshippers" in history..

Its midnight here.. will add later on 😊 [Yawn Yawn!😳]

Again.. brovo!! Brilliant post!! 👏 👏

Great post Khairu!! 👏 👏

Nice posts all.. I learnt a lot. 😊

[quote=tania.ganguly]The audience has a huge power in choosing what to watch and what not to. As CB said there are always options for watching/reading/hearing "non scoopy" news.Its upto the audience to decide what will sell and what will not.[/quote]

^thats correct Tania, and I agree it is the audience's demand that causes these corporate decisions. In the current times, they also have to make sure news is entertaining as we are so adapted to entertainment that its hard to catch our attention otherwise. The problem is not that they provide us w/ entertainment, the problem is that they don't provide us w/ certain information that will hurt their advertisers or their corporations in any way but that might be useful for us to know. (I gave an example earlier about the tobacco ads and their industry given more importance over articles on harmful effects of tobacco that are imp for consumers) The audience is simply not given a choice to listen to the news that is eliminated before it gets to us, simply because it will hurt the corporation financially...they don't care what effect their decision has on the audience.

@egghatcher: what can i say caffeine can make you do weird things :-p

I have to run, I will reply in more detail later...thanks everyone for responding. :)

Originally posted by: tania.ganguly

Is this happening in India?Could you please clarify? In the US they have stopped airing Marlboro TV ads years back( the ads are now a collection item). There are anti smoking ads coming up all the time. Philip Morris is still paying off law suits.

I guess the trend will catch up in the other parts of the world too, if not already. And who knows the hesiatncy of creating an anti smoking campaign for one channel will become the scoop news in the other one. 😆

No in India also they are banned, both tobacco and alcohol cannot be advertised. However, surrogate advertising does occur. But I think even that has been banned.

don't magazines still advertise cigarrettes? i got that example from the book that i am reading...

Originally posted by: sweet_kp

don't magazines still advertise cigarrettes? i got that example from the book that i am reading...

Maybe you have got an exmple of an old magazine. It has been banned for the last few years now. At first there were surrogate advertising like, Wills Lifestyle, Red & White Bravery Awards, McDowell No.1 Soda, Kingfisher mineral water, Seagrams Cassettes and CDs. I'm not sure but either surrogate ads have been banned or they are on a decline now.