“We report. You Decide.”
Wondering where your news comes from? One of the underlying principles of a “propaganda environment” is an information complex in which the values of the system are internalized. Remember that traditional media are corporations in the business of selling programming, including news. One of the criticisms of traditional media (as opposed to networked media or citizen journalism) is that they generate their own reality: they define what is “information,” not the reverse (i.e. the Fox News slogan, “We report. You Decide.”). Only rarely do the carefully orchestrated presentations of news get unhinged: natural disasters and major events like 9/11. I found it curious, though, that within 12 hours of the airplanes hitting the WTC, news companies had already edited amateur video into a narrative that looked like a film trailer. This is an example of how events are made into packages.
Anyhow, below is an interesting map of the interlocking interests between news companies and other major multinational corporations. For a detailed map of corporate board rooms, go here. The following is a snapshot that is a couple years old, and some of the members will have changed by now, but you will get the picture.
Project Censored Media Democracy in Action:
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
Gannett does not have a board member that also sits on the board of Pepsi.
Tara, the article is a little dated, but Pepsi is really the least of the problem when you have Lockheed-Martin (a military contractor), and war coverage is part of the business of news. But thanks for letting us know anyway. Please let the article authors know that their piece needs updating.