There is a lot of talk about how most journalists are liberal. Therefore the news has a liberal bias. It’s more complicated now, because there is so little straight news, and so much opinion. The cable news networks are mostly opinion shows, with an hour or two of actual newscasts. The major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) do a half hour newscast per day. PBS does an hour-long newscast. The cable networks (Fox, MSNBC, CNN) then get to massaging the news with talking heads. The talking heads often are not trained journalists (let’s include talk radio here–definitely not trained journalists). But the good ones are adept at talking, filling up air space, and attracting and keeping an audience.

Sociological theory suggests that as people get more formal education, their views become more liberal. Not hard to understand, really–most of us see our views change when exposed to more perspectives, and many of the perspectives we haven’t been exposed to are people whose interests often lie closer to the margins of a society–racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, the LGBTQ communities, etc. These are groups that traditionally have had less power to make their voices heard in mass media.

Now keep in mind. We’re talking probabilities here–this doesn’t mean that when you leave EOU you’ll be a card-carrying communist, or even democrat. It just means that most people, given more education, tend toward more liberal or progressive views on issues as their sources of information about those issues change and expand. Social theory also suggests that as people age, their views get more liberal. Call it wisdom, experience, senility, whatever. However, theory also suggests that as people’s incomes increase, their views become more conservative. Why? Well, maybe they would like to hang on to more of their money (i.e., pay less taxes, support smaller government), but we don’t know for sure. BUT . . . we also know that people’s incomes tend to increase over time.

Confused yet? Well, the point is that journalists as professionals generally have an above average level of formal education. Their professional training involves at a minimum a bachelor’s degree. This is probably a good thing–journalists should be well-trained, and should probably have some experiences beyond the communities in which they were raised, if they’re to be well-informed and open-minded about events occurring on which they’re reporting. Their views are likely to be more liberal than people with less than a college degree.

However, while most journalists get by, a small minority do fabulously well. Research also suggests that journalists tend to be social liberals, but often fiscal conservatives (The research is based on a 1981 study, results from which you can see here. A more recent 1998 study by David Croteau shows journalists’ fiscally conservative streak). In other words, they’re personally likely to be pro-choice, pro same-sex marriage, but also likely to oppose new taxation, or universal health insurance for all Americans. They do tend to vote more often for democrats in election. Does the way journalists vote mean they’re biased toward liberals in their presentation of the news? That would represent an individualist approach to understanding the news media–that they’re made up of individuals, and we can understand what news media corporations do by understanding the views of those who work for them. It is also taking one measure, and using it to draw some pretty broad conclusions about a professional class. In terms of a persuasive social science argument, the logic is pretty weak.

However . . . let’s imagine you work at a fast food restaurant. You’re also a vegan. You continue to try to convince the lunch hour crowd to order the salads (without eggs!) and bottled water. Does that mean that your restaurant patrons will, within the next few months, begin boycotting furriers and tossing blood on their clients’ coats?

What about their bosses?

Let’s look at the other end of the spectrum: ownership. The owners of the largest TV networks are all multinational corporations, with financial interests in a variety of media industries, such as cinema, radio, print, as well as telecommunications infrastructure (satellite services, cable TV, etc.). Some, such as General Electric (former owner of NBC among hundreds of other things), have their fingers in most every economic pot imaginable. There are less and less corporations owning more and more capacity to deliver news and information to us (you can thank the FCC for never finding a merger it couldn’t embrace.

When you hear about the big 5, though, they’re ABC (Disney), NBC (Comcast), CBS (Viacom), CNN (Warner/AT&T), and Fox (NewsCorp). The only thing we can know for sure is that they will all be trying to buy each other, so the owners and names change frequently. And while the names keep changing, the industry gets more and more concentrated in the hands of fewer corporate owners. There are no mom n’ pop media shops out there that can swim with the sharks.

The Black Lives Matter movement has opened another wound in media–the lack of representation, on staff or in coverage, of people of color. The BLM has provided an opportunity for public debate (but note that Soledad O’Brien wrote this op-ed as a self-employed/freelance journalist).

And these are the corporations that those liberal journalists work for. The former CEO of General Electric, owner of NBC, once made sure the President of NBC knew who his boss was. Journalists who cross the line are likely to lose their jobs. This happened to Peter Arnett in Baghdad (he had been a journalists’ hero in the 1991 Gulf War), and also to Geraldo Rivera (who thankfully has returned–Oh how we missed him!). Bill Maher at ABC. Dan Rather was forced out at CBS. Even PBS–the Public Broadcasting System and the CPB, Corporation for Public Broadcasting–recently went through a period of purging ‘liberal’ programs under the direction of then-chair Kenneth Tomlinson. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson–all pulling in millions and perhaps billions for Fox News–were unceremoniously fired. Did things change much under an Obama Administration? It would appear that large corporations still wielded greater influence than the public, and that there was little effort being put toward helping the public understand some of the complex issues. And public media? It’s down to less than 15% funded by taxpayers–the rest comes from sponsors/advertisers, and viewers/listeners like you.

In any case, media corporations are worth tens and in some cases hundreds of billions of dollars. As the above shows, they each own various kinds of media outlets, and other types of firms as well. They have a broad range of economic interests that they certainly don’t want to endanger by reporting news that may threaten their bottom lines, or those of one of their subsidiaries. And to top it off, even their news divisions are expected to make money, meaning they have to sell audiences and high ratings to advertisers, who aren’t likely to take kindly to stories that expose corporate scandal, excess, or that promote social change and justice. They benefit quite nicely from the status quo, thank you.

Concentration of media ownership

Why should commercial news media be any different than the banking, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, oil and gas, health care, insurance, defense, publishing, and food industries? Let’s consider corporate concentration of media over time:

• In 1983, 50 corporations dominated most of every mass medium; the biggest media merger in history was a $340 million deal. …
• In 1987, 29 corporations dominated mass media markets.
• By 1990, this was down to 23 corporations.
• By 1997, 10 corporations dominated; the biggest merger involved the $19 billion Disney-ABC deal, at the time the biggest media merger ever.
• In 2000, AOL Time Warner’s merger-$350 billion-more than 1,000 times larger than the biggest deal of 1983.” From Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, Sixth Edition, (Beacon Press, 2000), pp. xx – xxi
• From a study  by the Center for Public Integrity:
  • The three largest local phone companies control 83 percent of home telephone lines. Ha. Just a joke. three biggest wireless network companies–Verizon, AT&T and T Mobile–control over 95% of the wireless market.
  • Cable controls about 30% of the TV market, having been outpaced by streaming services (Forbes).
  • It’s virtually impossible to keep up with the changes in visual media and their ownership structure. And of course, the ‘free’ channel streaming services (once you have some sort of streaming service like Roku or Fire Stick) now–much like cable started doing soon after it sold itself in the 80s as ‘commercial-free TV’–is selling advertising.

It’s no coincidence that much of the recent media concentration occurred after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed, which relaxed restrictions on ownership. For instance, before 1996, no company could own more than 40 radio stations in the country. Clear Channel–now iHeartMedia–alone at one time owned 1,225 radio stations. Now they appear to be around 885. Does ownership affect what we see, hear, read?

Here are a couple of telling quotes:

“The New York Times (considered a liberal newspaper) is a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don’t make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. … You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations.”
— Noam Chomsky, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream, Z Magazine, June 1997.

“There is some strategy to it (bashing the ‘liberal’ media). I’m a coach of kids’ basketball and Little League teams. If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is ‘work the refs.’ Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one”
-Republican party chair Rich Bond (Washington Post, 8/20/92)

As for concentration of ownership:

“Corporations have multimillion-dollar budgets to dissect and attack news reports they dislike. But with each passing year they have yet another power: They are not only hostile to independent journalists. They are their employers.”
-Ben Bagdikian. 2000. The Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press. (still relevant with a simple change from ‘multimillion’ to ‘multibillion’)

No one is saying there aren’t liberal journalists. And polls do show that more journalists have liberal views (keeping in mind that those terms can be wildly stereotyped). But there are conservative journalists, too, and they both work for large profit-making enterprises, often vertically integrated, and multinational in scope. They’d benefit from the status quo, wouldn’t they? Do these companies seem likely to be forces for social change? Do we really think Dan Rather called the shots at CBS, or Peter Jennings ran the show at ABC? Or that Katie Couric is a power-hungry bleeding heart liberal now orchestrating radical change at CBS’s news division?

Take the example of Bill Maher. After 9/11 he said that it was difficult for him to understand how the terrorists could be called cowards. After all, they hijacked planes with box cutters, and flew them into the pentagon and world trade towers. This took months if not years of planning, and quite a bit of courage. We may not agree with it or even understand it, but to call it cowardice is missing the point, said Maher. He went further stating that the U.S. military were cowards when they dropped bombs on people from thousands of miles away. And anyway, aren’t these the kinds of discussions we should have, especially in the media, if we’re to understand why this happened?

Apparently not on ABC, who “let Maher go” shortly thereafter. Why did they fire him? After all, it was a talk show, and that’s what talk shows do–drum up controversy. In this case, ABC no doubt was worried about the bottom line–what if the White House criticized the network for airing such anti-American views? What if groups around the country initiated a boycott against the network as being unpatriotic? What if people decided to go to Six Flags instead of Disney World (insert gasp here)?? People were pretty hypersensitive at the time. ABC could have lost viewers, and valuable advertising revenues had it not done something. So it made the decision to support the bottom line, rather than free speech. And stockholders were no doubt relieved. Maher now works for cable company HBO (owned by Warner!), and has more latitude to speak freely (and insert his oversized ego into debates).

As Noam Chomsky has said, the idea that the important question is whether the media is biased toward liberals is ridiculous on its face. Multibillion dollar companies are not liberal, don’t espouse liberal views, generally don’t support liberal political candidates, and can use massive marketing and public relations budgets–which amount to a great deal of power–to influence public opinion. Do corporations benefit from higher wages and benefits for workers, more safe workplaces, more strict pollution laws, reductions in consumer spending (which most scientists studying the issue say is necessary to combat global warming), or in credit card debt? No, says Chomsky, the real question to ask is, Are the media free to report the news as they see fit? What would prevent the Media from reporting news that might jeopardize a corporation or its stock value? You’ll be surprised by some of the things our government and others are doing that apparently the corporate news media didn’t think would boost their ratings (from Project Censored).

Some other concerns about ownership concentration:

• It is likely to lead to less diverse views in the media (biased in any direction?)
• There is greater potential for control by politicians–interlocking interests, less ‘loose cannons’ or independent journalists to worry about
• More ownership concentration–less diversity of viewpoints, more focus on profit
• Increasing commercialism–Remember the golden years of cable TV, when it was billed as ‘commercial free?’ They actually lasted a few hours.
• Vertical integration is one goal–what is it?
  • It means controlling the whole process of bringing a medium to consumers–from the satellite service, even the manufacture of fiber optic cables, to the boxes in your house and the shows over your phone, on your TV and in your theaters.
• Horizontal integration
  • This means owning different kinds of media
  • Horizontal integration allows cross-advertising (movies, TV, merchandising, theme parks, concessions at stadiums, etc.). In other words, Time Magazine (AOL Time Warner) might turn into a news magazine that serves mainly as advertising for other media companies owned by AOL Time Warner, disguised as a weekly news magazine. See how cheaply you can get a subscription to it these days. Who owns Newsweek? General Electric (NBC, MSNBC, etc.)
  • Interlocking interests–all those different companies, often sharing board members (on the board of directors
• monopolies–keep in mind, we as a society have allowed some utilities to control large parts of the market, but the trade-off was that they would be regulated by public entities, so that they could not enjoy monopoly control over their rates. How’s your cable bill been lately? Going down??
• What can we do?
  • Support public/community access to the airwaves (here’s an example from Salem, OR). Cable companies were required to support channels that the public can use. Who watched them? Not even out of a perverse interest in what’s going on locally? We are used to high-tech entertainment, and you won’t find much of that on the public access stations. ‘Just’ local news and programming.
  • Support public media, what’s left of it. There are less filtering pressures, but public media still has to receive its funding from politicians or do seasonal fundraising.

Why is ownership important?

Media ownership is important for a variety of reasons:

• Media deregulation-corporations want the right to own more outlets, and different kinds of outlets. At some point this is likely to reduce competition (think of your monthly cable bill, and how it’s been steadily going down, down, down as a result of more competition since 1996 … ). There are two kinds of ‘integration’ that corporations might pursue–either horizontal or vertical. Horizontal integration might occur where one company for instance tries to purchase all of the radio stations, or newspapers, in a market. Why? Vertical integration happens when a company tries to control every facet of production–say, a PR firm also owns television studios (to produce programming), television stations, some of the products advertised on those stations (e.g., sports teams, theme parks), maybe even the cable or satellite service that brings you those stations, and gets to decide which to include / exclude.
• Cross advertising–owning different kinds of outlets allows companies to advertise from one to another (for instance, Disney can advertise for ABC’s programs, ABC for ESPN, Time Magazine on CNN, HBO, Warner Brothers, the Atlanta Braves, etc.)
• Less tax burdens–corporations can lobby for tax breaks from politicians, who it just so happens need lots of money to pay for TV advertising for their re-election campaigns. The larger the corporation, the greater the likelihood they have a substantial budget for lobbying activity.
• Business and a free press. Large media corporations are usually for profit, working for their shareholders to increase their stocks’ value. This has little if anything to do with ensuring freedom of the press. They’re not in the business of informing the public, in other words (although they will attempt to market themselves and project such an image–why?). A well-informed public might disagree with some of the things that large media corporations believe will increase their profits and keep shareholders happy.
• Advertising. Don’t forget how commercial media make most of their money. TV ratings are assessed, viewership determined, and networks use this information to determine advertising rates. Advertisers look at the ‘demographics’–who’s watching what shows, where their advertising will be most effective, etc. So as viewership declines, revenue declines because networks can’t charge as much for advertising. Anything that negatively affects viewership/ratings is dangerous in such a climate. If that happens to be well-informed news that draws on knowledgeable but potentially less-entertaining experts, expect to see it on C-SPAN, or Democracy Now.
• Diversity of programming. Or lack of. How many viewpoints do we get from the Big 5? Does the quotation at the bottom of this lecture page help answer that question? Yes, there’s bias in the news media. Is it liberal? Sometimes, maybe. Is it conservative? More often, probably, merely because a conservative view of the world is more consistent with how businesses maximize profit. Just check out a few of the Project Censored stories and you’ll quickly see that social change is not on the corporate newsroom’s agenda. But the bias in commercial news media is definitely commercial, if not corporate. So ask yourself–why the media shorthand that treats bias as a partisan issue, as liberals vs conservatives? Does that, as Jon Stewart suggested, play into the strategies of the Cokes and Pepsis of the political world?

So . . . think back to the conservative and liberal views about government. Yes, journalists may tend to vote more often for democrats. But do their personal politics wield great influence over corporate behavior? Do corporations vow to fight poverty? Pay more taxes to support public services? Demand regulations that might cut into their profits? As ownership concentrates, journalists are increasingly likely to work for corporations that benefit from less government, less regulation, more tax breaks, etc. As these companies get larger, they have more interests, more kinds of companies, and there isn’t likely to be much news that wouldn’t affect one of their companies in some way. Does that mean they won’t print anything that runs counter to their interests? No. They’d lose all credibility if they went that way. It does mean that they will be careful about protecting the bottom line, though. Remember all the editorial latitude media organizations have …

Also, keep in mind the role of advertising. Advertisers can exert great pressure on the media. Yes, the media have audiences, presumably which they know something about through market research. And they sell these audiences to advertisers. The more readers/viewers/ listeners, the more attractive a media outlet is to advertisers. Anything that threatens ratings, threatens the sacred bottom line, shareholders’ interests, etc., will be dealt with delicately, walking that fine line between credibility with the public, and the need to please owners/ shareholders.

You will see and hear lots of media outlets and journalists talk about a liberal bias in the media. You must decide for yourself–is it true, or effective public relations? If a liberal bias can be portrayed as ‘radical,’ can stories that appear to question the status quo, their motives, their public statements, be dismissed as dangerous and unworthy of serious consideration? In this class, we will discuss bias, and we all have our personal biases. As a sociologist, my bias is toward a structural view of the world–individual behaviors are often constrained by large social structures, institutions, government, laws, corporations, employers, cultural norms, etc. Journalist A.J. Leibling once said: ‘ a free press belongs to those who own one . . . ‘ And, do media represent a valuable form of social control for their owners?

And last, the journalists. None of the above should be construed as condemnation of the profession of journalism. It is a noble profession, and one that, when performed well, can put the journalist in peril. There are powerful forces in the world that do not take kindly to scrutiny of some of their actions. But journalists must make a living, too, and must balance their livelihoods against their abilities to hold the powerful to account, to seek the truth and report it, independently, minimizing harm to those who through no fault of their own become part of a story, with an obligation to hold themselves accountable to their own ethical standards. Some journalists fall short of these marks.

As with any other profession. But based on 40-plus years of personal observation . . . they consistently outperform the politicians who make the news.