Are the media subject to a corporate bias?

Résumé du document

Independent media are a sine qua non to a functioning and healthy democracy, in the sense that they basically are the principal vector of information for citizens to evaluate governments, public policies and socioeconomic situations. Admittedly, objectivity is a pipe dream: journalists are human beings and are, therefore, unconsciously subjective. However, even if the media cannot realistically be totally objective, they still can, and have to get as close as possible to neutrality and/or fairness regarding their value judgments. A recent global trend has led to an ownership concentration. Nowadays, most news media are owned by a few conglomerates and influent corporations. For many scholars, the consequence is the emergence of a corporate bias: the media's submission to its owners' capitalist interests is considered to have significant repercussions on news content.

Extraits

[...] Are the media subject to a corporate bias? Independent media are a sine qua non to a functioning and healthy democracy, in the sense that they basically are the principal vector of information for citizens to evaluate governments, public policies and socioeconomic situation. Admittedly, objectivity is a pipe dream: journalists are human beings and are, therefore, unconsciously subjective. However, even if the media cannot realistically be totally objective, they still can and have to get as closest as possible to neutrality and/or fairness regarding their value judgments. [...]

[...] Is the media so “self-interested”? In order to figure that out, Boyle and Hoeschen used the network themes typology established by Keck and Sikkink (information, symbolism, leverage, accountability) as a tool to study the primary goal of various articles about female genital cutting, from 1978 to 1998. Doubtlessly, most articles used emotional, symbolic elements (individuals' stories, description of the ritual, etc.) but their primary goal was to raise the public's attention about what they considered to be a social issue out of 256 articles were primarily about leverage and accountability, whereas only 50 of them limited themselves to neutral information and emotional symbolism[2]. [...]

[...] David Altheide mentions, for instance, the fact that many believe that the media systematically covers negatively foreign Nations (especially those part of the Third World) because they present an alternative to the American dominant and hegemonic ideology of capitalism. The negative coverage of communism and, more recently, Islamism tends to support this idea. For Kollmeyer, the three characteristics previously evoked (ownership structure of the media, dependence on advertising and journalists' unconscious norms and work practices) lead the media to adopt a systematic “pro-capitalist perspective”. Thus, news media, acting on behalf of the powerful societal interests that finance them, portray the economy in a way that lends ideological support to society's existing economic arrangements”[10]. [...]

[...] Kollmeyer considers that indirect corporate interests push the media to adopt a “power elite perspective”. That's what Gans calls “responsible capitalism”: the news media, which have strong links with political and economic centers of power, hence share natural common points of view with the corporate community and business groups. Admittedly, the “routinized” information-gathering process relies, primarily, on official sources, that is to say power-holders, rather than on labor representatives or unions' spokespersons. As a consequence, the media tends not only to be positive about the economy, but would to emphasize the problems affecting corporations rather than workers. [...]

[...] Boyle, Andrea Hoeschen, “Theorizing the Form of Media Coverage over p Christopher J. Kollmeyer, “Corporate Interests: How the News Media Portray the Economy”, p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p David L. Altheide, “Media Hegemony: A Failure of Perspective”, p. [...]