Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America
From Media Channel – by Peter Phillips
Mainstream
media is the term often used to describe the collective group of big
TV, radio and newspapers in the United States. Mainstream implies that
the news being produced is for the benefit and enlightenment of the
mainstream population-the majority of people living in the US.
Mainstream media include a number of communication mediums that carry
almost all the news and information on world affairs that most
Americans receive. The word media is plural, implying a diversity of
news sources.
However,
mainstream media no longer produce news for the mainstream
population-nor should we consider the media as plural. Instead it is
more accurate to speak of big media in the US today as the corporate
media and to use the term in the singular tense-as it refers to the
singular monolithic top-down power structure of self-interested news
giants.
A
research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished
conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big
media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people
comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media
giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate size
university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the
corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In
fact, eight out of ten big media giants share common memberships on
boards of directors with each other. NBC and the Washington Post both
have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while the
Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who
share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of
interlocks and shared interests. The following are but a few of the
corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US:
New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark, Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi
Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette, G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody’s
Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels
The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft, McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo
News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments
GE (NBC):
Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM,
Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter &
Gamble
Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette, Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo
Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America
Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target, Pepsi
AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton
Can we trust the news editors at the Washington Post to be fair and
objective regarding news stories about Lockheed-Martin defense contract
over-runs? Or can we assuredly believe that ABC will conduct critical
investigative reporting on Halliburton’s sole- source contracts in
Iraq? If we believe the corporate media give us the full un-censored
truth about key issues inside the special interests of American
capitalism, then we might feel that they are meeting the democratic
needs of mainstream America. However if we believe — as increasingly
more Americans do- that corporate media serves its own self-interests
instead of those of the people, than we can no longer call it
mainstream or refer to it as plural. Instead we need to say that
corporate media is corporate America, and that we the mainstream people
need to be looking at alternative independent sources for our news and
information.
— Peter
Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and
director of Project Censored, a media research organization. Sonoma State University students Bridget
Thornton and Brit Walters conducted the research on the media
interlocks.
(Source)
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