Marketers buy advertising in exchange for news coverage

[Riddley]

A rather sizable number of senior American marketers – 19 percent – say their organizations have bought advertising in return for a news story, despite growing criticism of these “pay-for-play” practices, according to a recent survey conducted on behalf of PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L) by Millward Brown. The sixth annual Marketing Management Survey polled 252 U.S. chief marketing officers, VPs of marketing and marketing directors and managers about digital media and marketing ethics.
Source (http://www.mslpr.com/in-the-news/press-releases/19-of-senior-marketers-or-one-in-five-say-their-organizations-have-bought-advertising-in-return-for-a-news-story)
This sort of bias makes Liberal/Conservative bias kind of immaterial wouldn't you say?

[serenity]

Obviously. In fact, Herman and Chomsky's "Propaganda Model," which examines five "filters"--and advertising is one of them--puts the "liberal" (or "conservative", for that matter) bias theory to shame, being far more expansive and complex, taking systemic and institutional factors into account, rather than "which [centrist, wealthy, powerful, establishment] party that an individual journalist votes for."


The competition for advertisers has become more intense and the boundaries between editorial and advertising departments have weakened further.


http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20031209.htm


The second filter of the propaganda model is advertising. Newspapers have to attract and maintain a high proportion of advertising in order to cover the costs of production; without it, the price of any newspaper would be many times what it is now, which would soon spell its demise in the marketplace. There is fierce competition throughout the media to attract advertisers; a newspaper which gets less advertising than its competitors is put at a serious disadvantage. Lack of success in raising advertising revenue was another factor in the demise of 'people's newspapers' in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is clear, therefore, that for any publication or commercial radio or TV station to survive, it has to hone itself into an advertiser-friendly medium. In other words, the media has to be sympathetic to business interests, such as the travel, automobile and petrochemical industries. Even the threat of withdrawal of advertising can affect editorial content. A letter sent to the editorial offices of a hundred magazines by a major car producer stated: 'In an effort to avoid potential conflicts, it is required that Chrysler corporation be alerted in advance of any and all editorial content that encompasses sexual, political, social issues or any editorial content that could be construed as provocative or offensive.' In 1999, British Telecom threatened to withdraw advertising from The Daily Telegraph following a number of critical articles.




http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/2002----.htm

[patrickt]

"This sort of bias makes Liberal/Conservative bias kind of immaterial wouldn't you say?"

Not at all. To begin with, when I see a full-page ad and a puff piece in the publications I can put two and two together. When I read that Enron has bought Paul Krugman I can read is comments accordingly.

On political bias, it's deny, deny, deny.

Oh, and no commercial operation has ever had the power to take money from me by force.

[serenity]

Oh, and no commercial operation has ever had the power to take money from me by force.


No one's made that claim; it seems a bit divorced from the subject.

[patrickt]

Sorry. I thought the original thread started with a comment comparing political bias in the media with commercial bias in the media.