"What is in the public interest may not be in the corporate interest. The major corporations that own the media -- and are often involved in may other lines of business -- may not want certain embarrassing stories to be publicized very widely (or at all). They may not want to encourage critical examination of their business practices or the effects their products have on communities or the environment. They may not want stories or programs that offend their advertisers or interfere with the advertising pitch. They may want to avoid stories on subjects they deem 'unpopular.' Their ownership of the media gives them the potential to influence how a story is -- or is not -- covered. If the story affects the media industry as a whole, there may be widespread interest in not covering it. Media are supposed to be a watchdog of government, but who serves as a watchdog of corporate media?" (8-9)
The best part of my education this year has been the ability to fuse together many of the lessons that I'm learning in all my courses. Things I'm learning about poverty and privilege fit in well with my senior perspective course. My senior perspective course is on capitalism, and I always thought it would be interesting to see how capitalism relates to running a media company. I just started the book The Business of Media and I already find it fascinating and yet terrifying. As a country we place so much stock in the notion of "Freedom of the Press." However, what if the press wasn't free? What if it wasn't the government, but instead business that was censoring the flow of ideas and information? For my Senior Perspective, I have to come up with a project, and I'm thinking that I'll use my blog as a means to post it. Look for the finished product sometime around the 24th of April.
As an intern at Entertainment Tonight over the summer, my labor was used for various purposes. A lot of the time I was a tape vault intern; I would file tapes for seven hours. Boring. One day I was asked to work in the newsroom and search out stories. As a future journalist, this interested me. I would finally get to see how a big television show got its stories. What I found disappointed me.
I surfed the Internet all day. Nothing wrong with that, since I do that quite a bit at school; however, I was disappointed to see that new-world journalism was to let other Web-sites break stories before our own reporter was sent to the scene. One of the sources that I was required to check repeatedly was TMZ.
For people who are not into the gossip scene, TMZ is a start-up, Time-Warner subsidy that specializes in celebrity gossip. For a large part, they send out recent graduates with video cameras to follow around the stars. Because they have so many "reporters" out on the streets, TMZ has quickly become one of the leading sources in the business.
Recently while surfing "The Smoking Gun" I came across the following story. TMZ paid $165,000 for a taped audio recording of O.J. Simpson and his collectible dealer that captured their confrontation in a Las Vegas hotel. My ethical radar went off when I saw this and I decided to analyze. I have a few questions.
What are the implications on the media? If one "news" outlet is willing to pay excessive sums of money in order to break a story, does this hurt the free flow of information? To the best of my knowledge the whole reason we have a First Amendment is to help facilitate democracy. If free speech is hindered by the government, an oppressive government like pre-Revolution Britain is possible? Is paying for information or paying for a story hurting democracy because speech is no longer free? Perhaps I'm making a big deal out of nothing since TMZ only paid for media, supplementing another part of a story that had already broken, I can just see these methods hurting journalism in the future.
"The Smoking Gun" says that TMZ is the only Time-Warner subsidy that is allowed to pay for its stories, but in a world where the exclusive is a prized concept I can quickly see other smaller news organizations going toward this method in order to gain notice amidst the major news outlets. I see this as a detrimental exercising of someone's right to free speech, but when someone sells his speech for $165,000 is it free any longer?
